Topic: Decreasing latency and improving music on a Windows Surface Pro4

I have been having trouble getting low latencies with Pianoteq while avoiding snaps and crackles on my Windows Surface Pro 4, especially when I am running a web browser or some other program in the background. Up until this morning, I have been stuck at running at 29 KHz for sampling, and keeping a fairly large buffer, such as 384. Anything below this would cause pauses, pops, and crackles. Even just setting the battery to "high" did not make that much improvement.

This morning I watched sections of a video on a website called Surface Pro Audio, and made the changes that he suggests:

http://surfaceproaudio.com/surface-pro-...roduction/

This is a fairly long video, but thankfully, it comes with a table of contents. The heart of the matter starts at 7:37 under "tweaking windows". He gives some changes to the power settings, and other changes that are only possible after making a modification in the Windows registry.

After I did what he said, I found a significant improvement. I am now able to run Pianoteq at 48 kHz with a buffer of only 64. Even with the sustain pedal held down, and a five-microphone instrument preset, I rarely push past 40% of the processor as seen on the graph of the performance section of the Pianoteq options. For me, this is fantastic (and I am convinced that it even sounds better and more musical and realistic than what I was getting with the sampling frequency of only 29 kHz – whether it makes any difference to do 44 kHz or 48 kHz is debatable, as CD-quality audio sounds pretty darn good to me, but I was in fact able to push Pianoteq up to 48 kHz without any problems). So far, I have heard no snaps, no pops, and no crackles.

Furthermore, with this significant reduction in latency, I am now able to run an external velocity curve converter, and thus get a separate keyboard correction while leaving the velocity curve settings in Pianoteq open for those specific curves that are introduced by creators of presets who use the velocity curve for an artistic purpose.

Last edited by dklein (29-08-2017 11:16)
- David