How well does music software run on a Surface Pro (2017) out of the box? Using the onboard sound I tested Reaktor, Cubase, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, Reason and Waveform to see if they can run glitch free. This is without any tweaking or setup – just install and go! I think you’ll find this very interesting. More detailed testing, benchmarking and music making to come….
6 thoughts on “Surface Sessions S3 02 – First run of music software on Surface Pro 2017”
Hi. Your tests and reviews are amazing. What a great service.
I’m an iPad Air 2 user for mobile work, but seriously considering SP 2017 i7 for editing video and audio while out of studio.
(My studio PC is a Dell T5500.)
Would you mind testing Magix Samplitude Pro X3 Suite? I know – easy to ask!
Thanks!
Hi – that seems unlikely at the moment but I don’t have any reason to think it wouldn’t work. What are your reservations?
Just lack of knowledge of the Surface’s power and drivers. My Dell T5500 is dual quad core. It’s old, but powerful. Not sure how the new Surface’s technology measures up against that.
Some great reviews here! Thanks!
Now, I’ve noticed that most of your reviews are geared towards the more professional music producers, but in case of a beginner like myself who is only interested in hooking a Midi Keyboard to the USB, playing with sound fonts and recording and composing music live from the Midi Keyboard, what software would I use with SP4 and would it avoid latency problems (Trying various software with a high end PC and all suffer from latency)
It’s not the software – it’s the audio interface. All software will give you the same latency, you have to sort out the audio engine. Check out my videos on setting up the SP4 for audio – using ASIO4ALL or using a USB audio interface. You are not going to get low latency out of it without adjusting the audio engine. If you want good entry level software then try out Open Labs StageLight, or Tracktion 7, Reaper, StudioOne free – there are plenty of options out there.
Thanks for your reply. Tried Tracktion and StudioOne but I couldn’t play live with neither although I could play live with other SW. Again this wasn’t with the SP4, so I will try to give all SW including the other 2 you mentioned a shot on SP4.