Asus T100 is a beast of a tiny portable music computer

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Today I had a very productive day. I installed Native Instruments Maschine on this little beast and to my surprise it works BRILLIANTLY!!! :D

Using the windows 8.1 WASAPI driver I was able to get a total input->output latency of 30ms. This is enough to lay down some beats with the Maschine Mikro mk2 controller. It's not exactly what you'd call "tight" but it's low enough latency to lay down some ideas in real time. Frankly, I wasn't expecting this at all! I was going to use it more as a step sequencer but now it's suddenly much more valuable. (EDIT: I did also try Asio4All but it's not nearly as stable as the WASAPI driver. It basically performed worse, especially at moderate to high CPU usage it started crackling very easily, even at maximum buffers).

FL Studio runs extremely well on this little computer as well. The 10 inch touch screen is just barely enough to make it possible to compose on the go with just the tablet part of the hybrid computer but maschine of course requires the controller which means you need the keyboard dock for the full sized and powered USB port.

The awesome part is the relatively long battery life. Playing around with the demo projects of maschine and FL Studio I predict that you get upwards of 5 to 6 hours of battery life even when the CPU is almost always running close to maximum capacity.

The Atom Bay Trail processor seems to be fast enough to make the system viable as a very impressive "sketch pad" or even for creating complete songs on the thing.

Haven't had this much fun with a portable system in a long time. Maschine + this tiny computer is a real blast and so ridiculously portable that just for giggles I'll try to create a beat tomorrow while commuting to work. :hihi:

Extremely pleasantly surprised by all this! It's proven to be a better purchase than initially expected. Having said that.. I'm not sure how long this plasticky, badly built, little thing will last but as long as it does, it'll be a fun ride (and it has 24 months warranty so I'm not too worried).

Cheers!
bManic
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Interesting... I was wondering about those things. They made such a splash when they came out but then seemed to just disappear. Under produced in the beginning but still they seem hard to track down months later. Good to hear they are viable... I remember seeing them pretty ridiculously cheap too if I remember right.

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I have just got my Asus T100 as well, running EnergyXT.

Two notes:
1. Asio4All worked fine for my out of the box, but updating audio drivers resulted in noises and crackles. I have not solved this issue yet.

2. You DON'T need the keyboard dock to connect a controller. The charging port can be used as a normal USB port, you just need an adapter cable. I have not tried this yet, but others have reported successfully using USB drives with it.

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1) Have you tried rolling back the drivers (from the device manager)? I don't dare do this because Maschine works so well with the WASAPI driver. In fact, I'm not going to install any drivers at all any more. This computer will be "set in stone", except for the absolutely necessary security updates. :D

2) That's awesome news! I always thought that tiny mini usb port was non-powered.. aka useless. Good to hear that it's not the case!

Cheers!
bManic
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Update: I tried installing Realtek codecs from their website, although I am not sure if it had any effect. I closed all programs except for the DAW, and with Asio4All the following settings worked OK:

Output: Intell SST Adusio Wave for IHF - Out: 2x 48kHz, 16 bit
ASIO Buffer: 960 samples (or 480, depending on the load)
Allow Pull Mode (Wave RT)

Didn't really measure the latency, but it is good enough for me to jam with VMPK (an open-source on-screen MIDI keyboard which works with touch screens).

Speaking of the latter, it'd be good to know of other solutions - VMPK lacks many useful options (it only displays whole octaves on screen, 2 octave keyboard is missing the high C of the 3rd octave, pitch bend doesn't work with multitouch, etc.).

If I figure out how to get a lower latency with ASIO on T100, I'll post here.

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Great to hear!

I've been extremely happy with the WASAPI driver performance in Maschine. Works exceptionally well for a tiny portable system.

Cheers!
bManic
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Asus generally make good kit, asides from their all-in-one PC's, but that's all all-in-on PCs (trying to cram desktop components into a laptop-style no-airflow case not a good look in general).

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New update!

I have set up EnergyXT + ASIO4ALL for audio recording, and got a low enough latency with T100 to be used for audio effects processing (i.e. I can sing into the internal mike, hear myself in headphones with very little latency with effects applied).

The following settings work in Asio4ALL with no clicks in the recording:
ENABLED :Out: 2x 48kHz, 16 bits
ENABLED: Intel SST Audio Wave for DMIC (this is the mic input)

Disable the other I/O (Out: 6x, InL 2x under IntelSST Audio Wave for IHF)

ASIO Buffer: 240 samples
Allow Pull Mode (WaveR) : checked
Buffer offset : 20 ms

(Leave Always Resample 44.1<->48 and Force WDM to 16 bits unchecked)

Important! Update to the latest audio drivers. This gives you a Realtek audio icon in the system tray.
Go to "Voice recording" section and DISABLE NOISE SUPPRESSION (select "disable all").
This was a cause of clicks in my recordings, and will surely mess up yours unless you use
a dedicated audio interface.

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Its cool to see people using WIndows Tablets for audio. I know this thread is being watched by people as its a new area for Windows users. It opens doors to fully fledged DAWs with plugs. Its great that people are sorting out ASIO settings as well. Kudos.

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Romwell wrote:New update!

I have set up EnergyXT + ASIO4ALL for audio recording, and got a low enough latency with T100 to be used for audio effects processing (i.e. I can sing into the internal mike, hear myself in headphones with very little latency with effects applied).

The following settings work in Asio4ALL with no clicks in the recording:
ENABLED :Out: 2x 48kHz, 16 bits
ENABLED: Intel SST Audio Wave for DMIC (this is the mic input)

Disable the other I/O (Out: 6x, InL 2x under IntelSST Audio Wave for IHF)

ASIO Buffer: 240 samples
Allow Pull Mode (WaveR) : checked
Buffer offset : 20 ms

(Leave Always Resample 44.1<->48 and Force WDM to 16 bits unchecked)

Important! Update to the latest audio drivers. This gives you a Realtek audio icon in the system tray.
Go to "Voice recording" section and DISABLE NOISE SUPPRESSION (select "disable all").
This was a cause of clicks in my recordings, and will surely mess up yours unless you use
a dedicated audio interface.
That's excellent info! Awesome!

Cheers!
bManic
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Hi
Saw this and Im thinking of getting a Asus T100 as a music making tool when out and about. Wondering how well it ran Maschine and also if you tried to load massive or kontakt and how that worked?
How many instances can it take?

Thanks!

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Saw this thread and decided to pick up a t100 to give it a go. I haven't installed the asio4all drivers yet, but I've had success with running a few instruments in standalone mode. Sugar bytes unique and NI fm8 both run very well off the default wasapi drivers. Massive runs, but the cpu meter on it reads around 50%, and there is some audible cracking. My host on my main PC is sonar x3, but I imagine it would be too bloated to run well on this machine. I may look at a lighter daw like reaper or fl studio to host plugs. I'd really like to use a drum synth with a sequencer, but the ones I have (micro tonic, punch) don't run standalone, so I'm going to look at asio4all and something like savihost to run one of them. I'm discovering that touch can be pretty fiddly for these gui's, though.

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bmanic wrote:Today I had a very productive day. I installed Native Instruments Maschine on this little beast and to my surprise it works BRILLIANTLY!!! :D

Using the windows 8.1 WASAPI driver I was able to get a total input->output latency of 30ms. This is enough to lay down some beats with the Maschine Mikro mk2 controller. It's not exactly what you'd call "tight" but it's low enough latency to lay down some ideas in real time. Frankly, I wasn't expecting this at all! I was going to use it more as a step sequencer but now it's suddenly much more valuable. (EDIT: I did also try Asio4All but it's not nearly as stable as the WASAPI driver. It basically performed worse, especially at moderate to high CPU usage it started crackling very easily, even at maximum buffers).
bManic
Can you use a USB audio interface?

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There is a USB 3 port, but it's nice to not have to lug around peripherals.

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Just took delivery of a T100 today too after reading this thread and it is fantastic!

I'm also using a great program called XotoPad on it (in conjunction with LoopBe) which gives me a set of 16 pads to trigger kits in Maschine. Certainly makes it more portable than lugging around the Maschine controller :)

http://www.feelyoursound.com/xotopad/

This Knowledge Base article on the Native Instruments site explains how to trigger maschine sounds with MIDI notes:-

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/su ... sequencer/

Couldn't be happier and thanks for the original post

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