I've not much experience with tablets and I trust some of you do
and I trust most of you with advice as this forum has been nothing but quality since I found it

I'm going to be buying a tablet to use some autodesk products on for sketches and rough animations while on the road.
I'd also like to use it with FL Studio, (FL Mobile or IL Remote for those of you that are familiar) and possibly find some other apps for music stuff.

Right now I've got a kindle, it's small and chokes up easy... even while browsing the net.
I'm looking for an upgrade that will future proof me for quite sometime.

Any suggestions?

I've looked at a few, the obvious; iPad, Samsung, Nexus and Sony...
but what's catching my eye is Microsoft's Surface Pro 4

I'm a complete noob on tablets, so if anyone has any experience or advice please feel free to express yourself

 

only surface pro 4 will run fl studio . ipad is a toy compared to it.

 

Surface Pro 4 hands down.

Glad we got that sorted.

 

I've owned a few tablets (Chinese no name products and a Samsung), and I'm in no way keeping up with advances in table tech, but for me, the iPad offers a few serious advantages:

- The lowest latency around (negligible)
- Apps designed to work their best the closed iOS arqutecrure
- Apps from the biggest-name companies
- Hardware that fully suports it from connectors to audio interfaces
- The longest-lasting battery

All of this is what I have experienced. I hope other manufacturers are catching up. Android offers a degree of flexibility unknown to the iOS world.

 

surface book.

 

If I were you, I'll check thoroughly if Autodesk products (the ones you want to run) will run with low performance graphics of a Windows tablet - which is your only option, considering you want to run FL.

 

Surface can run Bitwig:

https://www.bitwig.com/en/bitwig_1_3/surface.html

 

The Surface Pro 4 seems way too pricey. Especially if you're only looking for something to run apps on, not a full fledged workstation. There are plenty of tablets/2 in 1 laptops that offer similar specs for much less, there are also older generations of the surface that offer similar specs for half the cost of the newest generation of one.

 

@korte1975 I have not tried any tablet as yet, what advantage do they really have over say, a small laptop running FL studio?
I know they are touch screen, but I never imagined FL would be friendly to being used with a touch screen input?
Have you tried that particular set up?

@mercurysoto I am a little more on the same side as you, about the latency, and about apps for iOS that will not be available
for Winblows any time soon, and often I see them propped up on midi controllers etc, which I suppose you can do the same
with Surface. Again it's not about the touch screen, but more being able to try out apps and plugs that I wouldn't be able to
otherwise. Also.. If you want to start with a used Ipad which one(s) would be better for music production vs. reasonable
price you could pay. I'm not into dropping a Grand for anything for a while..
but I really wanna try that new m00g Model 15 that @Pinkman recently brought to our attention !

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 28, 2016

I'd say go for the iPad 2 mini. It sells for the price of any tablet and it outperforms any other contender in its price bracket. I bought mine for about $200 new, but I guess they are out of market by now. There's an upside: The smaller size means more portability and less weight to hold when laying down, for example. Now if you feel you want the bigger estate them I'd reach for the iPad Air. That's a good compromise of power and cost. Just consider storage capacity. iPads can't be expanded. I do ok with 16 gigs.

 

I use a 128GB iPad Air 2. Had to go for maximum storage capacity because I have Dropbox syncing my tablet and desktop. I added my Dropbox folder to Places in Live so I can render and send to my iPad instantly. Going the other way I can mess around with stuff on my iPad and if I create something I like I'll use Dropbox, Audiocopy or Audioshare (depending on the app) and instantly have access to it from Live.

iOS is generally pretty good about providing clients for Windows machines. I don't have a Mac but I can remember only one time I couldn't use an app to it's fullest functionality because there wasn't support for Windows (AirDisplay). Now it does but I use V-Control instead 'coz it's faster.

CoreMIDI is Apple's baby. They engineered it and it is the reason for their success with audio applications.
Windows users have rtpMIDI which gives all the functionality of IAC drivers in OS X and iOS apps can't even tell the difference.

Side-note: If you use rtpMIDI then use loopMIDI to create your virtual MIDI ports. I was using loopbe30 but it had far too many dropped MIDI notes and the Shortcut Detection was more of a hindrance than helpful. I switched to loopMIDI and have yet to experience a data drop.
Plus rtp/loop are free.

 

There is a number of things to consider before deciding between iPad, MS Surface Pro or a small laptop, or even a laptop that can also be used like a tablet.
First, if you need a "full-blown" desktop OS like Windows or MacOS, then yoi'd never go with an iPad.
I do like the MS Surface Pro 4, it's a fairly well-done Windows tablet that can run Windows applications with moderate performance requirements.
But that's not the point of an iPad. IMHO it's rather the smaller, simpler and iPad-optimized apps that don't even try to be like Windows apps, they're mostly less deep but nonetheless focused on a fun way of being productive.
Look at TouchDraw for vector drawing, the various Autodesk apps you mentioned (although make sure that the app you choose can actually *edit* the DWG), or the many great music apps.
I would never even consider FL Studio Mobile, it's a total joke compared to the desktop version.
Rather check Image Line's Groove Machine Mobile, UVI BeatHawk, Korg Gadget, Auria Pro, Cubasis, BeatMaker 2, Genome Midi, Auxy or Xewton Music Studio (which I would say is the better version of FL Studio Mobile, including a sampler that can actually sample and a more desktop-like, intuitive workflow)

 

QFT. That was p.much what i was gonna say.

FOR ART, you want a tablet that has many sensitivity levels & won't turn curves into polygons. Surface BRO and ipad BRO were made for this. Cheap tablets are not. Samchong may have some. Try them out at a store.

 

I agree, the iPad and the Surface are totally different beasts.
The iPad runs only applications optimized for the hardware to give all users a consistent experience.
The Surface runs basically anything you throw at it to the best of it's ability.

Also, this is not Autodesk but Procreate on iOS blows the Photoshop app out of the water.

 

It seems people have misconstrued what I mean, I don't want to run FL studio with the pad, I want to control it. That's what IL remote does, it interacts with the PC over a wireless connection. Perhaps I spoke without knowing that FL mobile is a different thing, lol. Makes it easier to tweak shit without leaving the comfort of the piano chair :P
Also, the Autodesk product is called Sketch, nothing like Maya or 3DS. :P
These two apps are actually pretty basic, I'm not trying to run a DAW on a tablet ya dig
just a pad to do some bitch work in the studio and to note ideas while on the train or in the plane
I appreciate all the input
but I'm still conflicted
Like some of you said, the surface pro is quite expensive for what I want it for, but if it future proofs me for atleast 5-10 years (lol, i still wear shoes from the early 2000s and play gameboy, ill take my stuff for a ride when i get it) and I know it wont have any problems running some of the simpler apps I've got. Perhaps I can get some sexy apps with a surface pro, but it's windows... I wonder if I could get IL remote to even run on it.

The real question is,
once again,
APPLE OR MICROSOFT? lol
or some cheaper knock off that actually works?!

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2016

IL Remote requires iOS5.1.1, so it would run on even the oldest iPad: iPad 1.
You can get it used for below $100 easily, try that with a Surface Pro :-P
Lemur runs on iOS 5.1.1 as well, by the way, and older versions of Cubasis, Beatmaker 2, Music Studio, NanoStudio, Genome, bs-16i too...

The hard thing is finding what's really the best match for your taste.
Check ot the iOS Appstore and the many online reviews of apps, then you may get an impression if that's really your thing.

If you like it, I'd say the iPad Mini is a good compromise between portability and size (not too small for remote control.).
The Mini 2 is good enough for almost all of today's apps and not too expensive.

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2016

FL Remote works just like the other MIDI/OSC controllers (without the OSC) like Lemur, TouchOSC and MIDIDesigner, except it has layouts already made specifically for FL tools. This will give you access to most of FL's controls (more because of the user configurable templates) but with a simplified interface.

With the Surface you could extend your desktop to the tablet, drag over your synth, piano roll, FX...whatever and have direct control of the actual software from there. How well this works really depends on the resources required vs Surface hardware.

The iPad runs simplified versions (not always) of programs to give you a smooth experience on a handheld kind of like a middle man remote.

The Surface will run full fledged programs but the experience will vary with what you are trying to do. It takes quite a lot to stress the Surface Pro 4.

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2016

going to have to stick in another vote for the ipad, you can get an ipad at 1/3 of the price of the surface

 

i use a wacom a4 tablet mainly as their gear is always top notch and i do a lot of visual art as well as music so it is perfect for me. it's amazingly cutomisable, yuo can program it to work differently in whatever application you are using. i'v heard the ipad does not have much 'touch sensitivity' so i will wait until that has developed until considering one...

 

For some reason I was thinking the Surface Pro would be cheaper than iPad, but I havent checked the price on iPads in awhile sooo lemme have a look see...

Wacom! I'm very curious, do these function like normal tablets but with extra sensitivity or what? I may go with one depending on your answer.