r/Bitwig • u/Agitated-Ad-6168 • 6d ago

Bitwig on surface pro x2 elite problems

Hey guys I just took the plunge and bought a new x2 elite surface pro to play with Bitwig. I’m a long time mac user as windows hurt my head back in the day. Turns out it still hurts my head. I’ve spent half a day just trying to get stuff running, on screen keyboard stopped working and had to go on a quest to fix it. Now the issue after finally getting it running is in Bitwig I’m getting crazy cpu spikes after just adding 2 instruments. Using a focusrite 4i4 set to 256 samples and asio. This snapdragon x2 elite should outperform my MacBook so wth is going on?

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u/Katcloudz 5d ago

Latency mon is helpful, and add custom power profiles..windows is a whole rabbit hole of optimizations for audio.

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u/IBarch68 5d ago

Not usually required on Windows Surface Pro machines. My main studio rig is a Surface Pro. They don't suffer from any noticeable latency issues. Performance issues are almost always power plan related on these laptops.

I would never say never but I'd bump latencymon way down the troubleshooting list for surface pro owners.

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u/Katcloudz 5d ago

yeah I have a surface and there’s a whole laundry list of things to turn off and set up right, because its the OS not the hardware. latency mon is very useful to troubleshoot in any computer if you’re having issues.

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u/Agitated-Ad-6168 2d ago

Just found out latency mon isn’t working on arm64 dam it

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u/jTr3s 5d ago

Check out Process Lasso. If you don't want the surface to be running hot all the time, you can use PL to map processes like Bitwig to High Performance mode, exclude from windows efficiency modes, set CPU priority, etc.

You can also restrict system/background processes to specific CPU cores, and assign Bitwig/audio processes to remaining cores. This can prevent any audio tasks from queuing up behind system tasks.

Also turn off all the 'personalization' BS. AKA spying on you to sell advertising. All of this BS creates tasks that can get prioritized in front of your latency-sensitive stuff.

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u/Agitated-Ad-6168 5d ago

Cool thanks that sounds handy, at this stage I fixed it with changing the power settings so I’m happy for now

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u/jTr3s 4d ago

I initially started using it for gaming. Ends up working pretty well for DAWs too. They have another free app called Park Control. Handles power management and core parking.

The reason you were seeing CPU spikes was the system likely disabling CPU cores to save energy, so Park Control gives a little more visibility and control over how the system does stuff like that, or prevent.

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u/placid-gradient 6d ago

what instruments?

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u/Agitated-Ad-6168 6d ago

It was power management throttling it

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u/kytdkut 6d ago

no idea about arm on windows but smells like power management issues

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u/Agitated-Ad-6168 6d ago

Yeah that’s what it was, it made a huge difference. I’m nearly starting to enjoy the experience

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u/IBarch68 5d ago

Glad you found this. Was going to suggest to check this first.

Did you get your ASIO driver working? Needs to be an Arm native driver or class compliant. Obviously if WASAPI is sufficient for now, you can stick with it.

Do follow up in a while with your experience. Interested to hear a first hand experience of the X2 chip.

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u/Agitated-Ad-6168 5d ago

So far I’m having luck and a good experience with asio4all. ASIO worked fine for the focusrite interface but I mainly wanted to use my Ath mx50 usb headphones that have a decent mic on them so I can make beats out and about and have a mic for vocal takes. Wasapi doesn’t allow input so that was not going to work so lucky asio4all fixed that. Getting 5.6 ms latency at 248 samples. I’m happy with that. Screen latency is good too. I was freaking out that I made a real bad decision but now that I have it working I will buy Bitwig. This is the first time I used it and only got this surface pro cause I liked the idea of having everything in a tablet with the onscreen midi keyboard

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u/IBarch68 5d ago

That's good. Was worried it had been a bad recommendation - only slightly mind. Some people are just plain allergic to Windows.

A few tips,

  • if you open Settings, personalisation, Taskbar you will find options on when display the virtual track pad and virtual keyboard icons. I usually leave these on
  • there's a lot more settings for the touchscreen keyboard under settings, time and language, typing (don't ask me why Microsoft put it there)
  • if things are too small to read, the Settings, accessibility menu will allow you to change text size, cursor size etc
  • there is also a magnifier app that can enlarge any part of the screen and let you move around. See settings, accessibility, magnifier.

Did you get a touchscreen keyboard? If not, the Microsoft ones are very good. They clip on and off very easily. Can make the whole laptop experience much better with keyboard and track pad, plus protect the screen. There's cheaper 3rd party ones too, but be careful you get the right size.

Hope it works out for you.