Built in audio… with asio4all installed, I hope
After some time with Surfaces, I have to say that it takes a bit of effort to get it to play nice with real-time audio. Here’s a good source of tweaks:
I would definitely recommend to get a decent USB audio interface - the on-board audio is not something to write home about; also you will get better low-latency performance from a decent audio interface. You can get a simple and sleek 2-port USB hub very cheap, so having only one USB port is not an issue. Also, there are a number of bus-powered interface options, so running on battery-power is not a problem per se.
But - and here comes is a huge BUT when it comes to running battery-powered: most laptops absolutely refuse to give optimum performance when they are battery-powered, even if you max out the power scheme. It’s just something that’s built in very deep inside. I’ve optimized the h*** out of my laptops, but I still get all kinds of issues when running them on battery only. I can’t really recommend running live audio on battery - you will not get the full performance out of it and will in all likelihood run into all kinds of issues. Just don’t do it…
Still, having a laptop with a battery is nice on any live gig, since it doesn’t crash when the power goes off…
There are some adventurers who have used car or truck batteries and power converter units to power audio equipment “in the wild”, so that might be an approach, but it’s a bit extreme 
Cheers,
Torsten
Hey thanks for your reply. we’ve started using Mobility scooter batteries with inverters to power the PA speakers. The problem I had with usb sound cards was the connectors which proved very unreliable maybe I need to spend a bit on professional ones. The WASAPI drivers are certainly better than the ASIO4ALL ones. I think I watched this video before, it helped get the Realtek drivers sussed. I’ll watch it again. Cheers.
Those sold out quick! Sorry! Screen is just a little on the dark side for sensitive color work, but otherwise, they’re pretty nice (we now have a four core and an eight core - side effects of online schooling).
Re laptops and batteries, there must be some type of UPS that one could use on a gig, that doesn’t screech when the power goes out, no? I know I wouldn’t recommend mine, though 
Just 30 minutes ago I remembered that I have an Intel NUC under my TV. It is used as Roon server for my hi-fi, with external DAC.
For home theater that little beast is quite performant, an i7 with 8 giga Ram and a very small SSD.
After another two nights fight with my bloody gaming notebook I tried to run LatencyMon on the NUC.
Surprise: it seems a perfect machine for ASIO and audio production!
So I am thinking to sell the notebook and build my Cantabile system on a new NUC.
It seems that no battery, pure Intel hardware and integrated graphics allow a serious system latency performance.
Any experience here?
There are several threads on NUC’s. Just do a search on the forum. Here is one:
Just note that at the heart of NUCs there is still laptop technology - the Intel NUC specification is based on laptop processors. I guess that (since they don’t have batteries) NUCs are less affected by funky battery-saving antics, but you should really check the specific device.
If you’re willing to go down the route of a small-form-factor PC with separate screen (I’d recommend a touch screen), take a look at an alternative: I built my live cube based on the ASRock DeskMini platform with a desktop i5 - it cost me (if I recall correctly) less than 800 EUR and performs great! The DeskMini platform is just a small box (1.92 liters, 155x155x80 mm), runs quietly and cool (typical CPU temperature when running Cantabile live around 56 °C) and costs around 150 EUR without CPU/RAM/SSD.
Best setup i’ve had so far.
Cheers,
Torsten
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I am checking this chance too.
I am now in favour of NUC because I got one for my home theater, and every test I am making gives extremely good results
I was in the same boat as you about 8 months ago, looking for a new music laptop. It needed to do double duty, be my primary gig rig, and my studio computer. I wanted to build a pretty robust machine with at least 32 gig RAM and a very fast single core performance of at least 3.6. and I knew I wanted to pair it with the new PreSonus Quantum 2626 interface, so I needed thunderbolt.
But I couldn’t find any pre-built laptops that would meet my criteria. Torsten’s posts were particularly helpful, and I started looking at NUC’s and small form options. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to build it, although it looks relatively easy, so I ended up having a rack PC built by one of the small audio PC boutique shops.
That solution certainly isn’t for everyone, but it’s worked out pretty well for me. I had far more choices in all the components… The exact processor I wanted, cooling, RAM, etc. Plus I was able to get native thunderbolt and firewire, along with USB. And when it comes time to upgrade components, it will be a breeze to swap them out and upgrade the unit. And more cost-effective than replacing the entire laptop.
Those three factors alone drove most of my decision. It definitely cost more in the end, and required a separate monitor (GeChic 11" touchscreen) but it was more than worth it for me. If I had built it myself I probably could have done it for around 1000- 1200… maybe less.
I’m a guitar player and sax player, so I really love the rack setup. It’s just a 6U rack, holding the PC, the quantum, my wireless receiver, and a clean power supply. It’s on the floor or a table out of the way, and I have a very clean gigging footprint with just a little touch screen monitor on my mic stand. Bring it home from a gig and set it on my studio table, plug it in and I’m good to go.
The one downside is that after I made this rig, I realized that it is not as good as a laptop if you are flying very often. To fly I’ll need to pull the PC and quantum from the rack and carry them on. A laptop would definitely be easier, but I don’t mind the extra hassle, given the benefits.
Anyway, food for thought. A rack may not be best for you, and after gigging with a laptop and Cantabile for several years I do also see the advantages of a laptop.
Best of luck in your search!
Tom
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True. Laptop “U” family processors are installed in NUC, but they are both power and frequency boosted. Typically, the 15W processor runs up to 30W, so it’s not really a laptop configuration. A very tricky, full of features BIOS, helps achievement of a very stable behavior.
Like Furio, my NUC is mainly used as video and audio center. I never though to use this NUC for VSTs work, 8GB DDR4-2400 RAM and 256GB M.2 SATA SSD are not bad, not enough powerful system for live audio.
Being curious, I’m running right now LatencyMon (v7.0) while watching a movie, sending an audio stream to another PC (via VLC), and writing this post. Audio interface is my old M-Audio Audiophile USB, bought in 2004 (with its not-very-stable windows 7 ASIO drivers, the latest released). And there is not any optimization, balanced power plan active. Only the WiFi adapter is currently disabled, due my preference for LAN connection. As you can see, result of LatencyMon is good.
I suppose that an i7-based NUC, or a mini-PC with a desktop processor might be a good solution.
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Sounds interesting - even though I’m not a huge fan of processors running above their specs - my doctrine is to prioritize on stability, not the last bit of performance. BTW: the i3 8109U is specced for a TDP of 28 W, so that wouldn’t be boosting, but performance to spec - and one less worry
Just out of interest: what temperature does a CPU that’s boosted this way run at?
My ASRock cube supports processors with up to 65 W, which is helpful
I fully confirm @cpaolo situation. I see exactly the same LatencyMon results on my home theater NUC. A new one that I could buy for Cantabile would be i7 10th release, with thunderbolt and usb c, perfect to drive a touchscreen monitor, one cable for graphics and power.
I am checking prices, Asus and Gechic seem expensive, some Chinese low cost alternatives…
I learnt recently that pure power is not the key, but true driver optimization: my MSI processor is i7 10750H…
I would prefer anyway to run LatencyMon before buying a new NUC, not easy. Amazon accept returns but it would be NUC plus RAM plus SSD…
More tests running on my home theater NUC. After usual tricks to improve audio performance.
Since one hour both LatencyMon and my audio board diagnostics show constant 50 microsecond total latency.
I never saw something like that on my notebooks (4 models in 15 years).
I am feeling excited…
I cannot play my keyboards on it because home theater is a too complex mechanical setup, I don’t want to take it out and install all my synths on it
But it looks very promising.
There is a later video which gives the answers for Windows 2004 and 20H2. He waffles for over an hour before giving the answers but its worth looking in the comments for what is needed. Basically he restores the power options that Microsoft has hidden progressively. Also because I have 16Gb RAM I discovered I don’t need paging or virtual memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv4IURsOsn0&t=5869s
That’s right. The i3-8109U running at 28W is not overclocked nor over powered. I don’t like the overclock, I had bad experiences with the Athlon-X2, BSOD and frozen Windows every five minutes.
I checked the CPU temperature during a stress test, it’s 81°C on package and 84 on cores.
Paging memory is a creepy thing coming from the dark ages 
. With 8 or more GB, no one needs that. It’s disabled on all my PCs.
Are you sure? On every LatencyMon test I see hard page faults. This should be sign that a system call was using virtual memory. Am I wrong?
Ok. But if it can happen than virtual memory must be kept on
In theory that is. I checked better, In both the music PCs, I have 1GB paging memory set. In work PC #1 (32GB RAM), PC #2 (8GB RAM) and multimedia PC (8GB RAM), virtual memory is disabled