KVR Audio

olikana · Post by **olikana** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:22 pm

the first phones with windows8 have been released.
how easily ported are windows8 desktop apps to the windows8 mobile phone?
my dream is to have my desktop sequencer and synths also running on my mobiles and pads but obviously with a reworked GUI to accomodate smaller screens and touch interaction.
i wish developers from now on would release a desktop and mobile version of their apps, am i dreaming?

zendorf · Post by **zendorf** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 10:38 am

Yeah, I think it is going to be a real game changer when then Win8 hybrid devices start appearing. I currently have the old tech...ie a Asus Ep101 running Win7. It is great for running pretty much anything I have thrown at it from Reaper to Zbrush. The touchscreen accuracy and weight are its weakest points, but the new batch of devices will be much better.

Orion Pro is probably the best DAW that works nicely out of the box on a touch device. Because of it's straightforward and fast workflow it feels quite natural with a touch device. When I say touch, I really mean stylus, since I don't really find a finger can ever compete with the accuracy of a stylus. Unless you need multitouch gestures I can't really see the advantage of finger touch

The main problem these devices have are screen real estate and most Windows applications have being optimised to work on a 15-24" screen at full HD.

Reaper also works quite well on a small screen, especially as you can customise the interface heavily.The U-he plugins currently have issues but there is a fix in the works. Even though I also have Studio One and Sonar licenses, I wouldn't even try to use these on small screen because of their rigid interfaces.

As to your original question...Yes, I think that as time goes on we will see most DAWS having a custom interface for smaller screens. The separation between desktop and mobile apps will shrink. Of course you would ideally like to finish off the song sketch you made on your phone/tablet on you desktop with the same DAW. The difference will be in the gui and user interaction, not the underlying audio engine and features.

The whole ios/osx market is fragmented in this way compared to what win8 brings. You can probably guess my preference

UltraJv · Post by **UltraJv** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 10:57 am

I dont think youll see many DAWs converted to W8 for ARM/phones. The CPU and display are too weak to warrant it. X86 tablets are another matter, proper CPU and screen size.

polaris20 · Post by **polaris20** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:32 pm

UltraJv wrote:I dont think youll see many DAWs converted to W8 for ARM/phones. The CPU and display are too weak to warrant it. X86 tablets are another matter, proper CPU and screen size.

There's also the issue of latency with Phone and/or ARM version of Win8. It's still an unknown as to what the actual audio latency will be, and as far as I know, you can't simply install an ASIO driver for it; there's no such thing for the ARM platform as there is with x86.

olikana · Post by **olikana** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 9:32 pm

UltraJv wrote:I dont think youll see many DAWs converted to W8 for ARM/phones. The CPU and display are too weak to warrant it. X86 tablets are another matter, proper CPU and screen size.

any good DAW doesn't cosume much at all. infact next to 0% here.
it's the vst instruments and effects which take up cpu. simply lots of bouncing when moving from one platform to the other.
but the mobile devices allready have more powerful processors than what we had on desktop/laptops only 10 years ago. that's surely no issue.

polaris20 wrote: There's also the issue of latency with Phone and/or ARM version of Win8. It's still an unknown as to what the actual audio latency will be, and as far as I know, you can't simply install an ASIO driver for it; there's no such thing for the ARM platform as there is with x86.

this might be a problem. but at the moment.. who knows?

cytone · Post by **cytone** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 9:45 pm

Unfortunately Microsoft does not seem to have any interest in music apps as Windows 8 Metro/Modern or whatever its called now does not even support MIDI. The other issue is that all the apps are sandboxed from each other so you can't have the equivalent of installing a DAW and separate plugins.

zendorf · Post by **zendorf** » Tue Sep 11, 2012 2:47 am

Anyone interested in doing any serious creative work is going to give Win8 RT devices a miss. I am only interested in portable devices that run the full version of Win8, so that I can use the same apps/plugins that are on my desktop/laptop.

Not sure what will be the physical size limit for i5/i7 chipset based devices. Will be interesting to see if they can get down below 10". I have a 7" Android device and it is nice for Caustic but it would probably be too small for a full Windows app. Sunvox alone I find fairly unusable on a screen that size.

olikana · Post by **olikana** » Tue Sep 11, 2012 9:56 pm

zendorf wrote: Anyone interested in doing any serious creative work is going to give Win8 RT devices a miss. I am only interested in portable devices that run the full version of Win8, so that I can use the same apps/plugins that are on my desktop/laptop.

.you make a good point there, cos there are plans by some manufacturers (asus etc) to release premium pads/surfaces with the full version of windows8 .and i read there was even a couple of phones that would have that option.
if windows8 mobile will integrate with the desktop world it 'll be a winner...if not i don't see many switching to a windows mobile device and it's shitty metro interface.

polaris20 · Post by **polaris20** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 12:34 pm

olikana wrote: this might be a problem. but at the moment.. who knows?

Nobody here, most likely. Maybe some devs? I dunno, like I've said before in other threads, it's a bit of an unknown right now. One thing's for sure: the x86 version of Win8 is doing a bangup job in terms of latency. So if you want a tablet for audio on Windows, that's the route to go right now for sure. Not only is the latency great, but the obvious app selection is already there.

I'm looking forward to the Thinkpad tablet. My office is getting a couple in for testing as soon as their out, because with a proper docking setup, it could replace a desktop, laptop, and tablet.

mbncp · Post by **mbncp** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 3:42 pm

Win8/x86 sounds good. ios is bringing us nowhere, some interestings apps but it's a nightmare when you have 2-3 devices to get them to sync together,no sense of project, no total recall.

I hope that vst devs will make their plugs tablet friendly and a few daw being able to sync and work nicely over a few devices.
Would love to have a big tablet for mixing/recording and a few smaller ones that would just handle a single vsti and a few fx, slowly replacing some of my hardware.

olikana · Post by **olikana** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:10 pm

there are allready loads of pads/tablets/surfaces (or whateever u wanna call them) being released with windows 8 full edition (which can run asio4all)
even microsoft is releasing a pro version of his "surface" with full windows 8 (it will sell 2 versions...the cheaper one with w8 RT and one with w8 full)
so why developers are not releasing tablet freindly version of their apps?
i'm particularly looking for a tablet freindly sequencer (energy xt could have been it but doesn't have multicore support

)
and a couple of vst synth/samplers/effects good to poke around

http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-co ... ces-916134

Gonga · Post by **Gonga** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:26 pm

A Windows tablet is the only tablet I'll ever be interested in. I'll wait until the bugs are worked out and the cost is down. The reason: I've been using Windows for many years and have a lot invested in it, and Microsoft respects your privacy much more than Google. I have no interest in Google, Facebook, etc. It's very scary how we have come to accept the theft of our obviously very valuable personal data.