Just got ableton running on surface pro

[skatr2]

sent em a message yesterday. Awaiting a response. Just throwing my personal observations here so others can be more informed on my experiences

[skatr2]

Same problems with the live 9 trial version.

[hps909]

AFAIK, when we use multitouch the software need to support multitouch.

yeah the touch interface on win 8 tablets is rubbish for ableton .. actually win 8 in general is rubbish on something the size of a tablet .. it's a desktop OS as much as they say it's touch optimised.. opening an app designed to use with a full scale interface on a 10" screen is like masturbating with a cheese grater ...slightly amusing but mostly painful

Yea but sadly it's still 10x better than shit OSX10.8.

:rolls eyes: :yawn:



i have the new lenovo tablet with win 8 pro .. the problem is interfaces that are best viewed on 15"+ screens are shown on a 10" screen shit is too small ..metro is fine and dandy for seeing whats on the computer when you actually open anything it goes to the standard windows view... when i put live 8 on it i could hardly read anything i could fit all of 4 tracks with the browser open constantly scrolling the edit windows back and forth .. you open outlook for example the contextual menus are tiny you need a surgeons steady hand just to hit the right menu item with a stylus let alone your finger .. and OSX would be the same and thats probably the reason apple dont use it on the ipad because it's next to useless

now i personally think the ipad is crap... but the IOS GUI is brilliant for tablet sized screens

[Guillermo Barrancos]

I personally think it will go much better on the new Windows 8 All in One PC's with 27inch touchscreens.
The touch experience will then be a lot better, because of the larger screen.

[skatr2]

So I've been communicating with support over the past couple days and they confirmed that windows 8 has not been optimized for Surface Pro and they were unsure if its even been evaluated in Live 9. I did send them a support report from my system though so they can hopefully dissect the problems.

I know for a fact the 32bit live 9 trial has the same probs as Live 8.4. But as I won't upgrade live until my push unit comes in, I won't be able to evaluate the 64bit version. I am hoping the new growth in touch screen environments by windows will key Ableton to start focus on the incorporation of at least bug-less on screen dragging. Even if they don't incorporate immediate multitouch support, basic touch support in this arena is a necessity. The hardware is moving that direction and these companies are really pushing the benefits to music artists of these hardware movements. Even Serato works with Surface Pro right out of the box (though I admit its a whole different ballgame).

Here's to hoping!

[skatr2]

fixed the problems I was having courtesy of Ableton support. In windows 8, display zoom needs to be at 100%...which on these smaller screens defaults to 150. That's why everytime I tried to drag something, my mouse seemed to jump halfway across the screen and would max out any parameter. Downside is windows 8 desktop on 100% on this small screen is a little tough on the eyes. On a positive note, abes can zoom and you can still fill it in nicely.

Point: It works perfectly on a surface pro. Its not YET ideal for touch dragging if you want accurate numbers, but they get you into a range and it works pretty well overall. I would probably recommend a larger touch screen for most people though. I just added a dedicated 64gig microsd card to this for music oriented stuff...think I will be sticking this little surface out for a while. May not be good for task intensive processes though. If you heavily use other VSTs...especially resource hog ones, this probably won't be an ideal interface for you.

[TaoEntropy]

Hi,

I want to use my Surface Pro 2 with Ableton, but I'm getting weird knob behavior.

If I click on a knob with the mouse and push up the parameter moves fine, however if i move the mouse down to decrement the parameter, the dial moves backward at an extremely fast rate that makes setting the parameter impossible.

Skatr2, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by setting "display zoom... at 100%". Do you mean Ableton's zoom settings in Live's control panel or some other setting on the surface pro somewhere? If you mean surface pro settings, where do I have to go to change them?

Thanks!

[skatr2]

Hi there,

The zoom settings I refer to are part of the display settings for Windows. To keep high resolution viewable on such a small screen, it magnifies it by default to I believe 150 or 200 percent. What this does is make ableton misinterpret where your mouse is and a left click drag acts as if the most instantly jump across the screen (hence why the knob zeros).

If you adjust the zoom, you will also need to do the resolution so you are able to actually read anything. I can check in the am and let you know my settings if you need them.

[yur2die4]

Now that I've acquired a touch computer, I have a better understanding of how Live functions for touch.

First thing you should so is search for the 'absolutemousemode' options.txt. When you sort that out, everything controls as expected.

The next thing I did was zoom Live in preferences to about 150%. This is only when I actually plan to be doing touching.

Launching clips is kind of a pain, but knobs and faders are great.

Oh, and I turned off the hold for right click in touch settings in the Win Control panel.

Keep in mind that a lot of 'triggery' things do not actually trigger until you've let Up from the screen, or in the case of keys, dragged beyond it.

Good luck! Hopefully Live will be more and more user friendly in this department. (There is another thread on here about Live with Touchscreens)