Surface Pro 4 Mega Test for Music Production

UPDATE: 6 months later things have changed dramatically. There have been numerous updates to the Surface firmware and Windows 10 which have resulted in a marked improvement in performance and the problems I encountered being largely smoothed away. I was also leant a Surface Book from Microsoft so I was able to run tests on both the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book to confirm and compare my findings. The good news is that it’s all so much better now and I have no problem recommending both devices for music production. I’ve done a load of videos testing the performance that you should check out in the YouTube channel, culminating in this review of the Surface Book which will bring you up to speed on where we currently are – https://surfaceproaudio.com/surface-book-review-music-production/

So it’s been a long road and a bit of a struggle but the Surface is now performing as well as it always should have done. I will leave the rest of the article here for comparison purposes and in the hope that history does not repeat itself with forthcoming Surface versions.

 

The following is what I found at the time of testing but thankfully is no longer true – see above.

Shortly after finishing the videos on setting up the Surface Pro 4 for music I started to hit some problems. And so for the last couple of months I’ve been working on these issues, trying every tweak and hack and workaround. I’ve tried gentle persuasion, coaxing, shouting, and poking with sharp sticks to try to get to the bottom of it all. I haven’t really wanted to talk about it until I could gather enough evidence to show what was going on as accurately as possible – it might have been a fault with my Surface – I had to be sure about that. I’ve also been working with Microsoft to identify what’s causing the problems and I needed to give them time to sort it and in the meantime I’ve gathered stories from other users.

Has it been successful? Partly, yes. But I desperately wanted and assumed the Surface Pro 4 would be flawless – and it isn’t.

Some music software works fine and some struggles. Most of the issues can be worked around and I will show you how to do that. It’s also hampered by inconsistencies where something that fixes an issue in one DAW doesn’t fix it in another. All I can really do is present my findings as clearly and as honestly as I can so that you can make an informed choice and hopefully this information combined with other users experiences can help move us along to a solution.




So, this video will show a number of tests that I’ve run using musical projects across a range of DAW software in a low latency environment. It’s long, but I needed to put everything on the table, showing where things go wrong and where they go right. I’ve speeded up bits that show flawless playback and the glitches can be difficult to hear but my physical reaction to them on camera should mark them for you. If you to skip directly to my conclusions at the end then please do so but I recommend watching this through to get a fuller idea of what’s working and where the issues are.

Here’s the video – my conclusions continue below.


At the time of filming, the 5th of May, there’s no overall solution to these problems. Hopefully this will change so please check for any updates!

These tests were the best and most meaningful tests I could come up with in regards to music production – they are not perfect or exhaustive but I’ve worked very hard to give the most accurate picture I can with repeated tests over different Surfaces, Windows tweaks and audio interfaces. And I look forward to this picture changing for the better. Your mileage may vary. I’ve heard from people who haven’t had any problems at all and it may be that the way you use your Surface doesn’t bring any of these issues to light – that’s awesome for you. Unfortunately a lot of other people have had similar issues to what I’ve shown here.

I think I’ve demonstrated that it’s not to do with a faulty Surface, it’s not related to the audio interface. It doesn’t seem to be related to power profiles or Window tweaks. I’ve run DPC latency tests and nothing has stood out as a problematic driver. It could be the Skylake CPU technology where the CPU is simply not changing speed quick enough – although I’ve tested a Skylake based laptop with a similar CPU and not had these problems. It could be down to how the DAW software is written – why does Bitwig Studio work when Pro Tools doesn’t? But then why does all the software work fine on the Surface Pro 3?

Like I say it’s maddeningly inconsistent! I welcome all your theories in the comments below regardless of how half-baked. I could be doing something really stupid but on this occasion that’s looking less and less likely.




So where does that leave us? Let’s summarise my findings:
Pro Tools – although the buffer size switch can get it working if you have an Avid interface I wouldn’t currently recommend Pro Tools on the Surface Pro 4.
Cubase – turning off ASIO Guard seems to sort it out so that can work with just a small drop in performance – so that’s looking cool.
StudioOne – turning off multi-processing gets it running but the resultant lack of CPU headroom makes it less than ideal.
FL Studio – seems to work ok until you start moving the mixer which goes all jerky and can cause glitching – UPDATE: Go to Options-General and then uncheck the “Ultrasmooth” option seems to sort that out.
Ableton Live – overall the current version 9.6.1 looks good – I’ve heard of problems with earlier versions which were solved with this update. However, it doesn’t seem to work as well as it did on the SP3.
Reaper – Seems to work fine
Reason – mixed feelings about this one as I’ve seen very few problems but other people have. I’ve heard problems are sorted out when rewiring into something else so that’s encouraging.
Bitwig Studio – This seems to have no trouble at all. Whatever magic sauce Bitwig are sprinkling on their code needs to shared with everyone else.

Obviously there’s a lot more software I could have tested and I’ll try to get to those as and when I can.

So overall most music production software can be made to work on the Surface Pro 4 but largely not at the level of performance that it should be working. Some have real trouble working without glitches and some work pretty fine – but you don’t expect to have this amount of trouble and fiddling about on a machine of this calibre.

Microsoft have been pushing the Surface as a creative platform – luckily they’ve focused on Bitwig and so haven’t encountered the problems I’m reporting. What I don’t understand is how there doesn’t appear to be anyone at Microsoft who uses music software on the Surface – the issues present themselves pretty immediately and yet this all has come as news to them. If they want a share of Apple’s creative pie then they have to get these things right. They need someone to curate the music production side of their hardware or they are going to miss a massive opportunity to capture a large slice of the creative market. I should add that music apps that use regular Windows drivers such as StaffPad and FL Studio Groove don’t seem to be affected – that all works fine because they have large buffers to keep the data moving – the problem is with the low latency we need for music production.




The Surface Pro 3 was spectacular at running audio software – the basics were never a problem and I could get on with making interesting videos about touch and the pen and using them creatively. The only downside was running into throttling trouble when it got too hot. I had hoped and completely assumed that the Surface Pro 4 would be stunning at the basics and not have such a severe throttling problem – it was going to be awesome and I’m sad to say I’m a bit disappointed.

However – the Surface Pro 4 is still the best laptop type thing I’ve ever owned. I would never go back to a touchless and penless environment – that whole form factor is awesome and the power of the machine for general work and photoshop and stuff is fabulous. It can work well with Bitwig Studio and Reaktor and some other software with a bit of fiddling – it’s not a complete disaster by any means but obviously the issues do bring a certain amount of doubt to its competency as a reliable music making platform. However, I dearly hope I’ve shown that it still has an awesome amount of potential.

I will forge on – there may be a solution just round the corner, a firmware update that smoothes it all out. What I think I need to do now is start doing video of making music on the Surface – demonstrating what can be done on different bits of software within the limitations. That’s the only way to know for sure if the Surface Pro 4 is capable of music production.

What I don’t know is whether the Surface Book or the entry spec Core M Surface Pro 4 suffer from the same problems. I would love to find out if anyone could send me one.

Right, time for a stiff drink I think – dammit Microsoft this should have knocked it out of the park! It should be the greatest music making multi-touching mobile machine ever – it has everything going for it – come on, make it work!

Until then – go make some tunes.




52 thoughts on “Surface Pro 4 Mega Test for Music Production

  1. Great video -thanks for that, it covers practically all related audio problems.
    My results are very similar, I still hope that Microsoft will fix that in some near future firmware update and all our problems magically disappears.
    Than

  2. “What I don’t understand is how there doesn’t seem to be anyone at Microsoft who uses music software on the Surface”

    I think this is one of the core problems with Microsoft. Their focus on art and creative industries is sometimes only theoretical. I was running a succesful company in Scandinavia for more than 10 years, focusing on specialized audio computers – similar to what you did with Carillon.

    I’ll never forget when I had a meeting with the Scandinavian OEM boss at Microsoft and told him my wishes to get more support and co-operation from Microsoft to support the music industry, something that would be benefitial for them also, and his answer was “Oh, so you can make music on a PC? I thought everyone just used Mac’s”

    I use the Surface Pro 4 now also, and it’s an amazing machine, and I totally love the design, quality and concept. But it’s frustrating that something as important as music production is neglected. But I think this shows also in for instance Photoshop, where Microsoft has put significant resources as to make the Surface Pro a great tool. It is, but it good also be way better in how the interface works.

    1. Yep, i’ve been down that road 🙂 There are people who deal and develop on the audio side – Pete Brown gave a great keynote at NAMM last year – but they are stuck in their own audio engine which is just not good enough for anything outside the universal app. They love it when i’m spreading good news about using the Surface for audio but it is hard to find someone who understands what you’re talking about. I’ve had great access to technical people over these issues but it’s been over a month and they’ve not come up with anything as to what could be causing it. I’d love to help more if i could!

  3. I’ve been given a SurfacePro4 through work, they’re very flexible with how I use it so I jumped on the opportunity to get a decent audio recording setup going again. Thanks so much for doing this site – extremely useful and you have saved me a tonne of time. I’d gone to Reaper and have hit no problems but am grateful for the warning of what may play up when I get to installing. I’ll keep an eye on the site and try to chip in with any experiences/thoughts I have. I’ve a fair amount of software and a few devices so will try to report back once I’ve had more experience of them.

  4. I’ve been down the click and pops trail before – where an audio interface works on some laptops and not others. I haven’t studied your troubleshooting but what worked for me then (with an Alesis IO14) was to disable wireless and networking on the culprit computers. It didn’t totally alleviate the problem but it made it a lot better. When different software gives different results it does indicate the issue is probably to do with allocation of resources – video and audio and the way the software prioritises resources. It still may be possible to disable features of the surface in order to free up resources or remove the troublesome area. Otherwise this is a bit worrying – you really hope Microsoft can get this nailed, but sometimes it does seem that certain combinations of hardware are trouble, full stop. If anyone can get this fixed, it should be Microsoft though. Come on Microsoft – prioritise this!

    1. Yeah…. no 🙂
      If you have to disable something to get click free playback then the cause will be high DPC latency on a badly written driver – this is very common in laptop network controllers. It’s where a driver holds onto the CPU too long and prevents other processes from accessing it. Doesn’t matter in any other application other than DAW use – we’re special!
      The Surface Pro 4 lets you turn off networking, Bluetooth and the camera (common culprits) in the BIOS but none of that made any difference so it’s not likely to be anything to do with drivers.

      Cheers
      Robin

  5. Strange, with the possibilities that the pen and touch input gives, there should be more engagement in the music production software development for it, both from Microsoft and others.

    I have upgraded my music production laptop from a Surface Pro 3 to a Pro 4 and Ableton Live has worked quite ok so far (using asio4all 2.13).

    There is one thing that is bugging me though. I can’t figure out how to lower/disable the drag threshold for the pen. That is, the distance you have to move the pen from where you started to “drag” to where it’s actually registered. Now all parameter changes in Ableton with the pen is initially jumping a couple of steps, very frustrating. If anyone know how to fix this problem, please share :-).

      1. No, I already have that line added to the option file, and that problem you describing is gone.
        Now my problem is that there is a delay from when you start rotating a knob to when it’s actually changing, resulting in a jump. So I can’t do fine adjustments without getting a “jump” in the value. This only is an issue with the pen, not with the mouse .

  6. It’s a weird one, for sure. I’m using the Pro 3 and i’ve put countless hours into Ableton pretty successfully. It’s not perfect, and I was looking to upgrade to the Pro 4, but it looks like I’ll just wait for the 5 now. Thanks for taking the time to test all this, it’s really appreciated.

  7. Thanks so much for doing all this work – and the blog. I was seriously considering selling my iPad and going for my first windows machine for ages – and specifically a tablet type one – namely the surface Pro 4 – but thanks to finding your blog have been persuaded that its worth holding off for a bit.

    I’m currently a 100% Mac guy production wise but am researching ideas on what kind of beast to use that can span the LIVE performance AND production needs.

    The iPad seems to finally getting to a place where things get serious ………. but NO Ableton iOS !!!

  8. I was thinking of getting a surface to replace my analog stompboxes, maybe with guitar rig or some vst’s vía max/msp, currently I’m trying that setup on my home studio and work flawlessly but that’s a desktop i7 6700k / focusrite 18i20, so in order to improve mobility a surface looked promising… Your comments make me wonder a bit, cracks and pops are a big no and I’m not sure if I will be able to keep latency ultra low (currently I’m using just 16/32 samples)

    1. 32 samples is really low – it’s not often an option on audio interfaces and I’ve never seen 16 samples as an option – I don’t have anything that offers buffers that low but i’m happy working at 128 or 256 which most computers can handle without any trouble and feels like “real-time” to me. Could you do the same on a Surface? I’ve no idea – try it and see.

  9. Dear Robin, Love your blog! The Best! My surface pro 4 (i5 4gb ram)with a iconnectaudio4+ interface running cakewalk sonar had trouble with audible clicks. The guys at cantabile performer (great program for live playing of vst’s) made a glitchfree ebook available for free (https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/blog/) I followed the things they suggested, and when disabling the native audio drivers (I disabled the intel(R) SmartSound Technology (Intel(R) SST) audio controller) the clicks dissappeard. I loaded a telefunken demo 42 track demo song “immaculate”. Applied compression and eq to each track. to my relief the clicks stayed away! Maybe you could verify this with your setup?
    kind regards,

    Carl Vandoorne
    Music Teacher and life performer

    1. Hi Carl, Yes I’ve tried running it with all sorts of things disabled, including the onboard audio – you can even disable it in the BIOS – but that’s definitely worth re-visiting and having another go when I look at each thing a bit deeper over the next few weeks.

  10. Thanks a lot for all your work you’re putting into this, very appreciated! Any news from Microsoft? I’m especially interested in FL; any news from Image Line?

    1. Yes – the problem seems to be with the animations, if you disable them then the problems go away – Go to Options-General and then uncheck the “Ultrasmooth” option seems to sort that out.

  11. Hi, I have he SP4 M3. No extensive testing, but when playing the same vsts, I see cpu in the low end, along with spikes accompanied by dropouts and it’s sibling in Cubase and Studio One. Bitwig (which I sprung for) seems fine.

  12. Huge thanks for all the work you’ve done here. One thing I haven’t seen covered yet (sorry if I missed it) is the shortcomings of the Realtek audio codec ALC3269 employed by the Surface Pro 4.

    As far as I can see purely from testing the Surface Pro 4 in a shop environment with a pair of Audeze LCD-2 headphones, the ALC3269 is a cheap, low-grade chip which you can see bettered in any £299 notebook. Incredibly for the year 2016, its maximum sampling rate is only 48 kHz which may account for the problems you were having when trying to get 192 kHz out of ASIO4ALL. It does not do multichannel (stereo only) and its maximum output is too weak to drive the LCD-2 headphones to an adequate volume level. Another thing to watch is that it apparently has Dolby processing enabled by default and if you disable the Dolby processing to get unadulterated sound, the volume level drops even further! All this can be viewed in Control Panel – Sound.

    Of course, the answer is to use your own DAC attached via USB but that’s another box and it undermines the point of buying a lightweight all-in-one device such as this. My point is to echo what you said about Microsoft apparently having a blind spot for the needs of the audio and music community. It just doesn’t make any sense to put such a low-grade audio chip in such an up-market PC when for probably only a dollar more, they could have incorporated a high-grade audio chip that would have made this a dream machine for audio enthusiasts.

    1. Well yes and no. Traditionally PC users completely ignore the on-board sound. It’s only ever there for gamers and watching movies and so I would completely expect to be carrying a USB box to give me proper fast and wide audio in and out of the Surface. I have mentioned it a lot and used it with ASIO4ALL as you’ve seen but honestly it’s not a deal breaker because the drivers will be so poor anyway to make it a playback only device. But yes, get rid of the Dolby nonsense – who needs surround sound on a laptop? – and write a proper ASIO driver for it – that would be awesome.

  13. I know this is a Surface Pro blog, but have you worked with DAWs on other touch enabled devices? Surface glitches aside, which DAW(s) do you feel offers the best touch implementation or experience? I’ve read that Bitwig has a special profile for the Surface.

    1. No I haven’t used any other tablets. Bitwig is excellent yes, so is Stagelight and Fl Studio – you really should check out all the reviews and demonstrations I’ve done on this blog and yuotube channel 🙂

      1. I definitely will, and thank you for the info.

        Why didn’t Sonar make the cut for this mega test?

  14. I have been running Pro Tools 12.4 on SP4 successfully after increasing my Disk Playback – Cache Size to 1GB. This seems to increase memory use for my sessions but significantly drops CPU usage resulting in click/pop free playback. This option is found under Setup – Playback Engine. Hope this helps someone. Robin, thanks for all the videos and tips.

      1. Hi, Robin. I was wondering if there was any news on the SP4 audio issues you uncovered.

  15. Hello Robin,

    I am about to order an surface pro 4 for sketching out new songs on the way to work or so. Would you recommend to take the 4 GB Ram model or the 8 GB Ram model. There is a huge price gap between these both. Mainly because you get a bigger SSD with it.

    I planed to use Ableton Live 9 in combination with the ableton own orchestral libraries. These are more RAM saving than most of my other heavy load libraries, which I will apply in a later turn on my main workstation.

    I am just curious what you think about this decision. Also in terms of future prove for my surface pro.

    1. For me the larger drive and 8GB combination tipped the balance. 4GB is enough for many people but Windows is going to taking up a chunk of that so for me 8GB is a minimum assuming I want to run virtual instruments etc.

  16. Thanks for this! I’ve been using Bitwig Studio and Reaper on my SP4 without issues, which seems to be no surprise by your findings. I had no idea that other DAWs weren’t working well with this hardware. I use it in a live setting as part of my analog hardware, and software live rig.

  17. Hi Robin,

    First of all thanks for all of your work into investigating thoroughly the issues relating to music production software on the SP4. After viewing this resource I have needed to reconsider my position on a potential purchase after taking on board the results from your testing. However it appears as though I can at this point, either, buy a SP3 as a safer decision that I may end up regretting in the long term, whereas purchasing an SP4 now seems like i’ll definitely be experiencing some short term frustrations to say the least.

    When observing the market, there really doesn’t seem to be a 2-in-1 that can compete with the SP4 specifications, not taking into account the almost identical Asus Transformer 3 (as I cannot find any confirmation of release date currently online).

    My issue is that I would like to run Traktor by native instruments on the Surface Pro, which for obvious reasons can absolutely not have the introduction of artifacts during a set. That said, it appears I’m reassured by other resources that the SP3 i5 can handle the general demand of the software and that other NI products appear to behave on the SP4. Still feels like an expensive gamble at the moment though.

    Before doing so I wanted to ask if maybe any further information had been uncovered about the issue by your point of contact at Microsoft? Any extra insight you might have here would be very much appreciated.

    Judging by the fact that software like Bitwig behaves as expected, it seems as though a few future updates (maybe more so by software manufacturers) might at least ensure both cores can be utilised to their maximum potential, (once a clearer set of essential development protocols are communicated to software developers). Still trying to understand the issue as best I can before I make a decision next week, but external to this resource, it’s difficult to gain the insight on the problem where most discussions seem to link to an update made available in May.

    Cheers,

    1. Hey,
      Not really – Microsoft have sort of officially shrugged at me. There have been a lot of updates to both the Surface and to Windows so I really want to do some re-testing, it’s just finding the time to do it. I hope to do it in a few weeks. I don’t think there’s been any breakthroughs – I think the problem is inherent in the mobile processor technology and so it comes down to how individual DAWs are programmed to handle CPU fluctuations.

      I’ll keep at it.
      Cheers
      Robin

  18. Fair enough, just a heads up, it seems that processor intensive tasks across the board are causing an issue with the SP4. I found a gaming test online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpLLliWT5FM) that found a simple way to avoid so much throttling, which seems like it could be a contributing factor to the artifacts introduced on various music production software. In short this guy figured out that the throttling calculation was linked to a heat sensor on one of the top corners at the back of the SP4. He performed a CPU test on Minecraft and at some point introduced a small USB fan pointed at that location on the SP4 and managed to contribute to cooling which had quite an impressive reduction to throttling and consequently improved CPU performance and a consequent increase to average fps. His observations were that these measures were over protective, but maybe there is an arguement that the amount of throttling has been set as a necessary protective requirement of its core components where overriding could cause damage or reduce the longevity of the device. Either way, might be worth testing out (even though the introduction of fan noise during a production session is far from ideal. )

    Personally, for this reason alone am still considering alternative 2-in1’s. Currently the best alternative I can find is the HP Spectre i7 x360. Strange thing is, whilst SP4 clearly has it’s faults here, at this point in time, anything else currently in the market just doesn’t seem to have that same appeal. Sure the Spectre and Yoga 900 can fold completely round, but it still feels like I’m holding a laptop backwards (with a lower spec processor too!). Proving to not be an easy decision at all. Oh btw, for anyone else in the same position, Consider also the Active Pen factor here as whilst the SP4 is one of the best examples of Active Pen Integration, other alternatives sometimes do not offer a great equivilent (HP Spectre x360 apparently is not bad however.)

    If you wouldn’t mind Robin, I have a few final queries at this point which could be rather helpful before I go and purchase, could you confirm for the production software that is now functional on the SP4 i.e. Bitwig, Reaper, Fl Studio, what the general average number of tracks with basic processor chains (e.g. one EQ, Compressor, 1 Additional Effect/Filter etc) associated to them you were able to achieve before CPU limitations became an issue for the project? Just for an idea really on potential performance expectations.

    Furthermore, during long production sessions, did these average performance abilities notably worsen as the back of the SP4 became warmer and throttling potentially needed to increase. I’m considering the i7 which apparently can run even hotter than the SP4 i5 I tested in a store recently, which was very warm to touch during testing as it had been running a video demo for the most part of the day I imagine. With the demands music software places on computing devices, I’m concerned as production time increases and projects get more complicated, throttling demands will become quite frustrating. How have you found this consideration to be in your experience with the SP4?

    Thanks again,
    John

    1. Yeah, that’s not really it. Heat is an issue but it’s not the cause of the problems I’m seeing. With the SP3 you could match glitches with throttling in the Intel Tuning app that the guy uses in the video. You’d witness the GHz come down and the crackling starts and it’s all over until the unit cools down. That would be the same with the SP4 if you pushed it that far. The testing I’ve shown has been incredibly light on the CPU. The difficulty is with the processor responding to the real-time changes and demands of music software. I’ve run the SP4 with a fan on the back – no change to the tests I showed. I’ve also restricted the CPU to 10%, 20%, 50%, 90% and each time the issues with Pro Tools and Studio One were the same. It’s not heat related – it would be awesome if it was because that’s something easily dealt with. And so it makes no difference over time. I can run Reaktor all day without any problems. I can do the same with Bitwig and Ableton. Cubase and FL Studio can also work with a few tweaks. The i7 does run hotter and so from what I’ve seen you don’t really get the benefit as you hit throttling quicker than the i5 – but you could use a fan or restrict the CPU to counter that. The i5 runs cooler and quieter – for me it’s the better choice.

      I’ll get around to testing when I can. I’m a working person who uses the SP4 for all sorts of activities – live performance amongst other things so I don’t have it setup ready to go with umpteen bits of software installed waiting for someone to ask me to test something for them. The video shows you a great deal of what you want to see and I will get around to do some more testing as soon as I can find the time. At the moment that looks a lot like October 🙂

  19. Thanks for the video! Just to report that my Surface Book is working well with both Pro Tools and Studio One.

      1. I am getting your issue now on the surface book, large cpu spikes – perhaps I just wasn’t looking closely enough before. Frustrating.

        1. And I’ve just had a successful session on Pro Tools – so, it’s the inconsistency that keeps us interested 🙂
          Try a few restarts – replug your interface – check sample rate – that kind of thing.

  20. Having just bought a i7 16GB SP4, I was worried that it was not performing correctly for music production. However your advice, particularly the registry modification to access and alter the more advanced power settings has found the SP4 functioning beyond my expectation, quelled my initial worries, and I can sketch ideas. experiment and evolve tracks with no compromise to spontaneous creativity (live9, waves, NI)….unrestricted….wonderful…and thank you so much for your hard work and sharing ethic.

    1. No audio interface…just ASIO4ALL….I have an old ZoomH2 model whaich can be used for recording audio…I’ll give it a try (if I can find drivers for W10)

  21. Hi,

    What’s the latest info on the Surface Pro 3? I use the i5/8gb version with Reaper, and my use case is low-latency midi-driven VSTs for live performance. This article seems to indicate that SP3 should be fine, but I’m getting gliches. 🙁

    Here’re my observations:

    – If I use ASIO4ALL and the headphone jack (internal realtek), it (counter-intuitively) seems the most reliable.
    – If I use a USB audio interface, I get glitches (I’ve tried two interfaces, various buffer settings, with and without a USB hub.)
    – Using LatencyMon, it identified the WiFi driver and “ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery” to be problematic and I’ve disabled them. This improves this situation, but doesn’t completely eliminate glitches. It still identifies Wdf01000.sys as an occasional DPC offender.

    I’d really rather not keep switching those drivers off and on, especially wifi. It’s so irritating that these nice machines have these problems. And since there’re no 3rd party peripherals or bios options, seems like there’s very little to uninstall / tweak.

    Thanks for any advice!

    Best,
    -Jeff

    1. Hi Jeff,
      I don’t have any latest on the SP3 because it’s always worked fine. Check out my videos from last year on using ASIO4ALL and tweaking the SP3. I never had any issues with LatencyMon – it always said that the system would be fine for audio. Are you on Windows 8 or 10? Make sure you follow the tweaking guide videos that I’ve put online. At worst all you’d have to do is enabled Flight Mode – this disables the Wi-Fi for you. But, as I say the SP3 was completely well behaved all the time until you hit higher temperatures.

      It occurs to me that you posted this under a SP4 article – do you mean the SP4 or SP3?

      1. No, sorry, I have the SP3, Win10. I (sloppily) posted this here because the topic of what I was searching for (latency / glitches) hit this page. I’m pretty sure my problem isn’t thermal, but I’ll verify. Thanks for the info, I’ll check your older articles and videos and hopefully have some good news to follow-up with. Thanks for your efforts here, Robin!

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