Surface Pro 11

Does anyone know much about the Surface Pro 11 with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series of processors? I think ARM is involved here so GP I understand wont run. I was interested because of the 32gig ram available on the top machine.

I’m using a surface Pro 9 and it absolutely smokes…using the radial key largo as the interface I’m getting under 3 ms latency…but with it plugged directly into my montage i get about 1.5ms latency

Is your ram 32gig? Here in New Zealand we cannot get SP with that much ram as they are considered business machines. They are not available to ordinary citizens. Do you feel that the SP 9 will suit you for a while? I am loading gig files with 500 + song and it can take 4 minutes for my SP 8 / 16gig ram / predictive set to 1, to load. So I am looking at importing a used machine from the US.

Wow, that law does not make sense to me…

What do you mean? Does someone prohibits people to buy the 32 GB version?

1 Like

Here in New Zealand we cannot get SP with that much ram as they are considered business machines >

Really? That seems odd…yeah mine is 32GB…10 cores at 2.7Ghz BETTER suit me well LOLOL. I don’t have quite the song list you do, but mine is getting fairly complex with about 55 songs, but they are pretty complex and I am using a lot of the step sequencer now too so some of my racks have 9 VSTs running at once - it loads in about 20 seconds +/-. I have predictive set to 1 as well because of a bug happening with the OPx and GP5

The 32/64 gig machines are not available to ordinary consumers. MS requires a person to have a NZBN (New Zealand Business Number) that you must quote. Then you need a pseudo email that looks like a business one so that the invoice can be sent to it. So it’s all fakery really and the tech shop guy was helping me setting it all up. I was set to buy the SP 10 64gig ram/ 1 tb model, but the price is well over $NZ5,600, so to buy that one, I would have to withdraw some of my life saving as I am retired. I have reluctantly decided not buy the expensive version SP 10.

At present, I am looking at a used SP 9 on EBay. I can import one of those into NZ for about $3,500. We get socked hard living in NZ because we live in such an isolated spot on the planet. The freight to ship from the US and other places to here is huge. And I’m sure some US firms consider us too small to do business with.

Finally, are there any issues regarding buying an older Surface Pro 9 for EBay? I’m still thinking about what to do.

So would you say that upgrading to an SP 9 with 32 ram and a 1TB ssd would be a beneficial move for me?

BTW - the 500 + gig file is only used when I want to play by picking songs randomly. I have this big list broken up into smaller 1 hour sets of 20 rack spaces that I mostly use.

So would you say that upgrading to an SP 9 with 32 ram and a 1TB ssd would be a beneficial move for me?

The 32GB of ram definitely is an advantage…i have another machine that I don’t really care about load times, that’s just a laptop that is always int he same place. Has the same VSTs on it, GP5, and I use it to program, then copy over the gig file to the surface. This machine has a slightly faster processor and more cores (Intel Alder Lake i5 12 core at 2.8ghz) and the front side bus is a hint slower than the surface, but the surface absolutely smokes on load times…and my latency is under 2ms with the surface and this laptop is right abotu 4 - i know not much in either case…but using the surface live will definitely be an advantage with the extra ram so it seems…

Interesting having an identical setup on two different machines. A good recommendation for the SP 9. Cheers.

I bit the bullet and bought a new one on EBay.

3 Likes

Congratulations :slightly_smiling_face:

Thank you. I see some software about to transfer files from the old computer to the new one. I guess this saves re-installing everything on the new one. Does this work ok? Can anyone recommend which software to use?

I think you have to reinstall all applications.

If you are going to use both computers (or use the Gig file from the old laptop), you want to use the same file paths for samples in both laptops (either that or set up symbolic links).

2 Likes

If you are going to use both computers (or use the Gig file from the old laptop), you want to use the same file paths for samples in both laptops (either that or set up symbolic links).

With VST3 files GENERALLY installing to the same folder in Common Files anyway, it’s not much of a deal anymore…but for the few that I use on both that didn’t follow that, AND for some of the VST2’s that I converted to 64bit with jbridge, I created a dedicated folder called “VSTs” in a subfolder of my downloads folder.

Not even offered here in France. I just bought one with the Elite X Snapdragon chip and the highest end hardware configuration: 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD.

Any experiences with this new Surface Pro 11 since the last post on this thread 7 months ago? How well does GP run under the Prism emulator? Do any vendor’s plugins perform better than others? I do not want to install the over 900 plugins I have licenses for and check them 1 by 1, if I don’t have to. Cubase claims to have a native ARM (Snapdragon) version. I tend to avoid Steinberg like the plague, but I may have to bite the bullet. If all of the plugins Cubase includes are native ARM, that may be all I need. NOTE: I am not replacing my current home studio system. The Surface Pro is a portable enhancement for it.

[quote=“themaartian, post:16, topic:18063, full:true”]

  • It is the rule that Microsoft have made. People cannot buy a Surface Pro that MS
  • designate as a business machine here in NZ. I bought out of New Zealand from the UK.

Not even offered here in France. I just bought one with the Elite X Snapdragon chip and the highest end hardware configuration: 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD.

  • If I had been you, I would have stuck with the Intel version. I think that Robin Molten
  • (Molten Music - he tests Surface Pros for music making) found that the Snapdragon
  • wasn’t quite up to it. I used 16gig machines for a while, but 32gig ram is much better. I did
  • ask on the GP forum about GP on ARM, and the answer was that they didn’t have a build
  • for ARM powered Surfaces.

Any experiences with this new Surface Pro 11 since the last post on this thread 7.

  • I have an SP9 (32gig ram, Gen 12 CPU, 2 Tb SSD.)
  • Win 11 is going great on my machine.

Do any vendor’s plugins perform better than others?

  • I follow the guides others write up on the GP forums. All my plugins work well.

Can it run Gig Performer? Is there some kind of a compatibility layer for x64 apps?

1 Like

You will have to ask again on the GP Forum about ARM. And you should look up Molten Music run by Robin Molten. He has been testing Surface Pros for music making since the SP 3 I think.

It is arriving today. I’ll check GP on it soon. Windows 11 for Snapdragon ARM includes Prism, an Intel emulator, similar to Rosetta on Macs.

I had to order the keyboard separately from Amazon in the U.S. Here in France, all I could find were the French AZERTY versions. Non, merci. I’ve been using the QWERTY layout since I learned typing on a manual Underwood typewriter in the Army in '71. It’s arriving in a few days, so I’ll be able to do some reasonable testing then.