A word to the wise.

I was using this latency tester quite extensively recently.

I have got myself a Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (i5). It came with version 1909 of Windows 10 Home which I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. I am using Blue Cats Patchwork to host some VSTi 3 instruments and play via midi live. I was noticing dropouts in the audio periodically. I checked the CPU meters and there is plenty of oomph in the i5 processor and it is not even breaking a sweat. That's when I ran DPClat.exe to check what I was dealing with. Sure enough some red spikes which I think caused the dropouts.

I had been into the power and sleep settings and basically turned everything up to max. Still glitches.

Did some mooching on Google and found out that there is an undocumented Ultimate Mode for power settings which can be called up by running a command prompt. (If you're interested just do a google search on 'Ultimate Mode').

So far so good. Using this Ultimate Mode also alters some settings which are not accessible in the power settings but manage at a micro level some devices and software. Sure enough re-running dpclat now shows a series of yellow (which I now take to be green) bars. More importantly the glitches in the audio have now gone and I can play my instruments nicely.

Fast Forward 3 days ago, the Surface wanted to upgrade to 2004 version of Windows 10. So I let it. Then in due course I played the VSTi instruments and noticed the glitches are back. Sooo... back to Google. It turns out in Windows 10 2004 version the Ultimate Mode has been disabled by Microsoft with no way to re-enable it. I and others presume it is to let Microsoft make all portable devices operate the same with auto-power on/off, sleep mode and disabling unused USB devices (to name a few). So left with no choice I rolled back to Windows 10 version 1909. Glitches gone and Ultimate Mode is back.

So it looks like music generation is very low level on Microsofts sights and their software now limits otherwise perfectly capable hardware.

I wanted to use the Surface Pro with the Korg Triton, M1 and Wavestation VSTi's so as to provide the cheapest way of playing these old keyboards. I still can of course - but now I make sure there are no more updates until Microsoft changes things (if they will).


smile Kevin

Last edited by Kevin Woolley; 12/10/20 08:23 AM.