And yes, the power options do seem to have been deliberately hidden on Surface Pro, probably for good reasons, so it doesn't look like you have much control. But the "powercfg" tool gives you full control of the underlying system.
]]>I set the max voices to 64 and can now practice my Scriabin preludes with quasi constant pedal and lots of leaps without any noticeable cuts. It's strange that I never seem to get more than 30 voices though, whatever the setting (even in 'auto pessimistic'), but the max is what seems to count for drop outs...
I did have to turn off 'cpu surcharge detection' to avoid cuts totally though. Let the thing burn down if it must!
On my tablet SP4 the CPU speed is constant in 'perf' (at 2390mhz), so I think I will not try to tweak this. There is an "eco' mode which I always switch off when playing, perhaps that's enough. There are very few options anyway in 'power management' that look useful in windows 10 (I found nothing on cpu power).
]]>After some messing around, I found a way to force the SP3 into solid high performance using the "powercfg" command. You can try this by running (Windows + R) the following command: "powercfg /s SCHEME_MIN" (this means minimum power management, ie max power)
You should now see a "High Performance" option in the Power Options that should be selected as the current scheme. The CPU frequency in Pianoteq should be constant.
My performance factors:
Balanced = 23
High Performance = 39
Unfortunately, this power option doesn't show up if you select Balanced again. It is automatically hidden! The way round this is to duplicate the scheme as a custom one, but that involves a bunch more (ugly) powercfg commands. Try the above first, and let us know if it works.
Interestingly, it seems to be the CPU switching that caused the glitches more than the actual power level. With further experimentation, I was able to create a power scheme that throttled the CPU to a constant 50% power, and it worked fine. This could be useful if you're running on batteries and want to prolong the life.
]]>I agree with EvilDragon on not using the auto polyphony settings: "pessimistic" is not pessimistic enough. Just manually tweak the settings and "torture test" them as you go (give them a tough workout: lots of pedal and notes per minute). Once your OS and sound card are optimally configured, polyphony and sample rates are the main things to play with. Note that for Ptq sample rate you have internal and output. Sometimes it's beneficial to have output < internal but it's usually better if these are the same. Also note my earlier comments about having compatible sample rates from Ptq internal through Ptq output to sound card native.
]]>fntms wrote:That's good to know as I just ordered a surface pro 4 for travel practice with Pianoteq (I think I will go for the Acuna 73 as the masterkeyboard, which seems like the best action/weight/size/price compromise). I already have the Steinberg interface for my home PC and it is excellent...(USD powered as well)...
if you have an i-CPU you should be fine with Pianoteq in standalone anyways.
on my SP3 /Win10 / i5 / 8 GB Pianoteq is quite playable (128 samples audio buffer, 64 voices) using the on-board soundcard. Will have a look at the UR 22MKII myself, however. For higher samplerates and for using it in a VST environment.Best
Update: Pianoteq is unfortunately not usable for classical 'romantic' music (with lots of pedalling and voices) on my surface 4 with i5 , too many drop outs (with 'auto pessimistic' voices and up to 256 samples buffer)...(performance factor is 27 max after tweaking and you can't tweak a lot).
Back to samples then ...(vintage D works fine and has a beautiful sound, with a nicer attack overall, but perhaps it's a little boring when coming from pianoteq).
That's good to know as I just ordered a surface pro 4 for travel practice with Pianoteq (I think I will go for the Acuna 73 as the masterkeyboard, which seems like the best action/weight/size/price compromise). I already have the Steinberg interface for my home PC and it is excellent...(USD powered as well)...
if you have an i-CPU you should be fine with Pianoteq in standalone anyways.
on my SP3 /Win10 / i5 / 8 GB Pianoteq is quite playable (128 samples audio buffer, 64 voices) using the on-board soundcard. Will have a look at the UR 22MKII myself, however. For higher samplerates and for using it in a VST environment.
Best
]]>Thank you for this. Sounds simple. I will look into this product.
Cheers
rob
]]>That's it. Simple, and it works.
]]>Thanks for this.
How does the audio and USB hook up work with this device between your digital piano and PTQ?
Cheers
Rob
]]>At the advice of Didier Martini on this forum, I bought a Steinberg UR-22 Mk II. It completely cured my latency issues, gave me a sturdier speaker output than the mini phone jack on the opposite side of the USB and power on the Surface, and gave me an easily turntable volume knob on the from of the Steinberg. And it comes with Cubase AI.
Totally worthwhile.
In the photo, the Steinberg unit is on the top right of the piano:
]]>Some instruments/presets are likely to be more CPU intensive than others. If you're willing to reduce or give up sympathetic and duplex scale resonances that should speed things up. If I switch them off (push the sliders all the way to the left) the CPU load drops to roughly one third to half, so this definitely helps a lot. (But from what I can see, if they are anything greater than 0, the amount of resonance seems to make little or no difference.) Setting the unison width to zero also seems to result in significant speed-up. There may be other parameters you can tweak to reduce the load on the CPU. Basically anything that simplifies the physical model will result in fewer calculations needed to generate the sound. You're giving up realism for speed of execution.
PS. Funny comment about ASIO. Yeah, you don't want those guys knocking on your door.
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