SOLUTION: "This user cannot play this software" when launching Animal Crossing: New Horizons

My family was excited about the Couch Co-op Multiplayer feature of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but once the game finally downloaded we faced a couple days of frustration and disappointment due to the console announcing "This user cannot play this software" any time one of my kids attempted to play the game.

After a lot of web searching and poking through forum threads we're finally able to play this game as a family, and I wanted to describe how I fixed it in case other people out there experience the same problem.

We own two Switch consoles. The first one we got is the Nintendo Switch with Gray Joy-Cons, which belongs to the kids, and the second one is the Nintendo Switch with Neon Blue and Neon Red Joy-Cons, which belongs to me.

I purchased Animal Crossing: New Horizons on my Switch. After a very painful download process (it took three re-tries and some Internet settings tweaks before the game finally downloaded), I was able to play the game just fine. I reached the point where my character became the "resident representative," which is an apparent requirement before other users are able to visit your one-and-only island. However, after I quit my game and handed the console to my daughter, when she launched the game and selected her user profile, the switch said "This user cannot play this software," and that she would need to purchase a copy at the Nintendo e-Shop. My son had the same results when attempting to play using his profile.

The Cause: My Switch was not my "Primary Console"

Here are some quick details about our setup, so you can compare against your own situation to see if the solution that worked for me will work for you:

• My copy of New Horizons was a digital purchase (not a cartridge).
• My user profile on that console (the one with red and blue Joy-Cons) is a linked account, with full e-Shop privileges. My kids' profiles on that console are not linked; they're just local accounts.
• Although this was "my" Switch, it was not the first Switch I had created a linked profile on. When we first bought the other Switch for the kids, I created a profile on that device and linked it to my Nintendo account so I could purchase games for them to play on it. This is important: Since I had already created a linked profile on my kids' Switch, as far as Nintendo was concerned, their Switch was my "Primary Console."

So here's what was happening: Even though I was the user who purchased New Horizons, since my Switch was not registered as my primary console, I was the only user allowed to play e-Shop-purchased games on that device. If I had downloaded New Horizons onto my kids' Switch instead, we would all have been able to play the game.

The Solution: Registering my Switch as the Primary Console

In order to make it so we could all play the game on my console I had to de-register my kids' Switch from my Nintendo account, and then register my own Switch as the primary. Here's how I did that:

1. On a web browser I logged into my Nintendo Account.
2. Once logged into the main Nintendo Account page, I clicked the Shop Menu link.
3. On the Shop Menu page, I scrolled down and then clicked Deregister Primary Console.
4. Next, I got onto my Switch, and under my own user profile, I opened the Nintendo eShop app. Nothing obvious happened; I didn't get any message saying, "This device is now your primary console" or anything. But apparently this was enough, because according to Nintendo, after de-registering from one Switch console, simply launching the eShop on another Switch where you have a linked profile will automatically register that device as the new primary.

As I write this my son's Animal Crossing character is running around and pulling up weeds on my island. I do hope this helps others running into the same issue. It would be nice if the Switch's error messages were more clear about what the real problem was.

Update: I forgot to add when initially writing this that if your Switch frequently says, "Checking if software can be played" when you launch a title, that's an indication that you are not using your registered primary console. I used to see this all the time when launching my digital downloads, but did not realize it was a hint that something was wrong. Now that my personal Switch is my primary device, my downloaded titles launch instantly.

Comparing USB Audio Interface Latency on Windows 10

I may never fully understand my love for audio interfaces. At the end of the day they're just devices that do a better job of recording and playing back music than the built-in audio of most computers, but I almost spend more time experimenting with and writing about them than I do using them to make music. I have done interface performance tests several times before, but that was all on Windows 7 (and mostly on a now-10-year-old DAW PC), so I was recently curious how well some of today's USB audio interfaces perform on a newer computer with the latest version of Windows.

About Audio Interface Latency

Audio interfaces are audio streaming devices, and on modern operating systems all streaming is "buffered" or "packeted." Rather than truly sending a constant binary stream of audio data, your computer bundles up tiny chunks of audio into separate data buffers that are reassembled at the destination end of the stream. This buffering introduces some amount of latency; that is, the fact that the audio data is buffered means that there is a small amount of built-in delay between when the audio data is first transmitted by one device (an audio interface) and received by another (your computer).

There is some amount of latency in both an interface's input and output audio path, and round-trip latency (RTL) is the combination of both of those times. RTL is the metric I tested for: What is the total amount of time an interface takes to send and receive audio given certain settings?

A latency measurement is only meaningful if you know two other values: Sample Rate and Buffer Size. The sample rate is the number of samples per second the audio stream is encoded at, and the buffer size is the number of individual samples included in each streaming buffer.

When you record at high sample rates, your computer processes more audio data, which usually requires larger sample buffers in order to handle audio as reliably as at lower sample rates. The buffer provides protection against glitches (pops and drop-outs in the audio stream), and the harder your computer is working, generally the bigger the buffer you need for glitch-free audio.

The trade-off (and the reason we're studying this at all) is that too big of a buffer at a given sample rate can result in such a great delay that it can become difficult or impossible for a musician to keep in time with the rest of the music while attempting to sing or record. When shopping for audio interfaces, it's good to know which devices offer you the lowest reliable round-trip latencies at given sample rates and buffer sizes.

Not all interfaces perform alike. There are many factors that contribute to interface performance, but the most important appears to be driver quality. A driver written for a specific device with efficiency and optimization in mind can significantly outperform a less optimized driver on similar hardware.

For my tests, I used a free tool called RTL Utility, by Oblique Audio. With this tool, you patch your audio interface's outputs to its own inputs, forming an audio loop, and measure the time it takes for a full output->input round trip at a given sample rate/buffer size.

The Devices Under Test

I have bought and sold many interfaces over the years. These are the ones that I still own and used for these tests.

Behringer U-Control UCA222

The U-Control UCA222 is a very low-cost interface with unbalanced RCA-style analog connectors that's designed more for consumer audio applications than for music production. I bought one so my wife could create digital recordings of her old cassette tapes.

• Like most Behringer interfaces, the UCA222 does not require any special drivers or software; all modern versions of Windows recognize it as an audio recording/playback device. This also means, however, that there is no native ASIO driver for the interface, so I conducted my tests in "Windows Audio" mode for this device only.
• The default Windows audio drivers also didn't export all of the traditional "powers of two" sample buffer sizes, so for some tests I had to pick the closest available buffer size for comparison.
• Despite its low cost, this little interface includes a couple nice features like a physical direct monitor switch and an optical S/PDIF port for digital output.

Focusrite Clarett 2Pre USB

The Clarett 2Pre USB is a desktop interface with high-quality preamps and sophisticated routing/mixing technology. Mine serves as an external DAC for a computer I mostly use for multimedia purposes.

• While the original Clarett 2Pre was a Thunderbolt-only device. The Clarett 2Pre USB is USB 2.0-only, although its connector is the small USB-C type, normally associated with newer standards. It includes the required USB cables, which is good, considering I did not already own any USB-C cables.
• From what I've read, this device's USB implementation is the same as what's used in Focusrite's "2nd Generation" Scarlett line of interfaces.
• While most ASIO Windows drivers offer sample buffer sizes in powers of 2 (64 samples, 128 samples, 256 samples, etc), the Focusrite drivers strangely offer dozens and dozens of selectable sample buffers. Luckily, the common power-of-2 values are among the offered values.

MOTU Track16

The Track16 is a small desktop interface that pushes most of its I/O connections out to a giant proprietary octopus of a breakout cable. On hot summer days, I choose to use this device with headphones rather than powering up my full production rig, which generates a ton of heat.

• With ADAT, MIDI, and complex mixing/routing software, this device is a strong competitor with the Clarett 2Pre in terms of flexibility and feature set.

Novation Audio Hub 2x4

The Audio Hub 2x4 is a 3-port powered USB hub with Focusrite Scarlett audio interface technology inside. I frequently use this device for recording/sampling audio sound sources, and I use its USB ports to host eLicenser/iLok dongles.

• The audio interface portion of this device is based on Focusrite's "1st Generation" USB interface technology, which gives us a chance to compare the improvements Focusrite has made with the 2nd generation drivers.
• While the Audio Hub sports a pair of balanced main outputs, it only has unbalanced RCA-style inputs, so I had to use different audio cables when testing it from the ones I used with the other interfaces.
• This device is also a little unusual in that it only offers a low/high-gain toggle switch on the inputs rather than adjustable gain pots. 

RME Fireface UFX (1st generation)

The Fireface UFX is a prosumer legend, offering tons of analog and digital I/O with top-tier performance, reliability, and flexibility in a single rack space form factor. This is my primary interface for writing and recording.

• I own the first generation UFX, which has both USB 2 and Firewire support. I typically use it as a Firewire device, just to avoid possible USB contention in my studio.
• In recent years, RME has released an updated model, called the Fireface UFX+, which includes USB 3 and Thunderbolt support, and the Fireface UFX II, which is USB 2 only.
• RME's drivers are a little bit odd in that they don't appear to advertise more than one sample buffer size at a time like most others do. In order to perform the latency tests at different buffer sizes I had to use the RME control panel to choose the new buffer size then "reload" the driver in the test tool before performing each round of tests.
• Since this is the only interface I currently own that supports two different data buses, I tested it both as a Firewire and as a USB device. 

Roland Duo-Capture EX

The Duo-Capture EX is one of my favorite entry-level interfaces, just because it packs a lot of features into a small, reliable and affordable package. I don't actively use my Duo-Capture these days, but I keep it around for testing and ad-hoc stuff.

• The Roland drivers are kind of weird in that they do not use powers-of-two buffer sizes, and their configuration control panel also has a number of non-standard options and metrics. I had to choose the nearest approximate buffer size for the comparative tests. Also, for all control panel settings other than buffer size, I just left them at their factory defaults.
• On Windows 10, the Duo-Capture driver installs automatically (no separate discs or downloads from Roland required), however I experienced a lot of driver instability on my first round of latency tests with this interface after the drivers installed (some tests straight-up failed while others took significantly longer or shorter to complete than expected). I rebooted my computer and re-tested the interface and didn't experience any instability at all, so that appeared to be a temporary issue.

Roland Tri-Capture

The Tri-Capture is an odd little device with an interesting combination of features at a low price. I have used this for recording/sampling from consumer audio devices.

• Like with the Duo-Capture EX, the Tri-Capture's driver has some unusual options and non-standard sample buffer sizes. I note the differences in the test results.
 

Test Setup and Method

For this round of tests I used my current DAW PC on the most recent build of 64-bit Windows 10. The current specs of this system:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.5GHz
• Motherboard: ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1 ATX
• RAM: 32GB of DDR4 2133 MT/s

In order to keep the playing field level, I used the same USB and audio cables for all tests, where possible. (Some devices had special I/O connectors that required different cables.) I ran multiple tests at each sample buffer size for each device and selected the best/lowest test results from each device/buffer size combination.

In cases where the test results seemed surprising or unexpected, I re-ran all tests on the device in question to ensure results were consistent and reproducible.

The purpose of these tests was only to determine the measurable RTL of each device at each sample buffer size; not to establish the most reliable low-latency sample rate/buffer size combo under heavy DSP loads. (See the official DAW Bench tests for that sort of thing.)

Test Results 

I ran latency tests at four of the most common buffer sizes, all at a sample rate of 44.1kHz. Some quick notes before we get to the raw data:

• Not all interface drivers support powers-of-two sample buffer scaling. In those cases I've added a * by the name of the device in the tables and graphs. Here are the exceptions:
• For the Duo-Capture EX I had to use 144, 288, and 576 samples in the 128, 256, and 512 samples tests, respectively. This put that interface at a slight disadvantage for each test.
• For the Tri-Capture I had to use 288 and 576 samples in the 256 and 512 samples tests, respectively. This also put that interface at a slight disadvantage for each test.
• For the U-Control UCA222, I had to pick 132 samples for the 128 samples test. (The other common sample rates were available.)
• The drivers of some of the devices did not offer as many buffer size options as others. This is why the 64-samples and 128-samples tests don't include scores for all eight interfaces. The interfaces that didn't support all testable sample rates were the Duo Capture EX, the Tri-Capture, and the UCA222.
• Each test lists two scores for the RME Fireface UFX: One as a USB device, and one as a Firewire device.
• The U-Control UCA222 was the only interface that didn't have ASIO drivers, so I tested it as a Windows Audio device.
• All test results are reported as round-trip time in milliseconds. Lower scores/shorter bars are better.

64 Samples @ 44.1kHz

128 Samples @ 44.1kHz

256 Samples @ 44.1kHz

512 Samples @ 44.1kHz

Observations/Summary

• True to its reputation, the Fireface UFX performed the best in all tests, with its USB mode slightly scoring better than its FW mode every time. (The USB and FW scores were always within 1ms of each other.)
• Even though its larger-than-average sample buffer sizes put it at a slight disadvantage in every test, the Roland Duo-Capture EX fared rather well, capturing the third-best score in every round of tests where it competed.
• Despite having very similar-seeming driver and control panel to the Duo-Capture EX, the Tri-Capture lagged behind the other Roland interface in both tests where it competed.
• Considering that the Audio Hub 2x4 is really a Focusrite Scarlett interface in a Novation-branded box, its scores clearly demonstrate the poor performance of that generation of Scarlett interfaces on Windows. It scored significantly worse than most other interfaces on all tests but the last- and that one was a surprise...
• ...which was the odd performance results of the Clarett 2Pre USB. In the 64-samples and 128-samples tests the Clarett performs reasonably well, at least when compared to the Audio Hub. (In the 64-sample test the Clarett's round-trip latency is almost one third of the Audio Hub's score.) However as the sample buffer sizes increased, so did the Clarett's relative latency, gradually closing- AND THEN PASSING- the gap with the Audio Hub, making the Clarett the worst-performing interface in the 512-samples tests.
• When I was reviewing the test results before I began writing this article, I was so surprised by the Clarett's scores that I re-connected it to my test system and ran all of the tests on the Clarett again- only to find that they were the same. In both rounds of tests on this device, its round-trip latency grew progressively worse (relative to other interfaces) as the sample buffer size increased. This may point to some inefficient code in the current driver that is exacerbated as sample buffers grow.

Porting DAW Bench Projects to Ableton Live

Vin Curigliano's DAW Bench is the standard toolset for measuring digital audio workstation hardware and software performance. While the current DAW Bench suite includes projects for several different DAWs, Ableton Live isn't one of them- which was a problem for me, since I was planning to investigate the performance differences between Live and Cubase for an upcoming post. Rather than ditch DAW Bench and go to the effort of developing my own test suite from the ground up, I chose to port the DAW Bench Cubase sessions to Ableton Live. What follows is a detailed analysis of the original DAW Bench projects, and my account of the surprises and challenges I encountered when porting those projects to Live.

When I first began this effort I thought I was the first person to do such a thing, but I eventually discovered user on a music forum who did his own attempt at a Live port a few months back. His goal was different from mine, and his projects weren't direct ports (he only replicated DAW Bench's "DSP" tests, and he chose a different set of plugins for his projects from the ones used in the official tests), so I continued with my own effort.

It is October 2017 as I'm writing this, so my observations here are based on the 2017 edition of the DAW Bench DSP and VI projects.

Analyzing the DSP Projects

Each DAW Bench DSP project contains hundreds of instances of a given CPU-intensive effects plugin, simulating a very complex mix. The "score" of a DSP test is the number of plugin instances you can enable without encountering any glitches in the audible audio.

• There are four audible tracks of pre-recorded audio, comprising the loop that plays while you enable FX plugins, listening for pops and drops. There are no effects plugins on these tracks.
• There is another "monitor" track which is just a recording of a sine wave. I don't know its purpose, but its track volume is turned all the way down.
• Next there are 40 more tracks of sine wave recordings, each with eight instances of the plugin under test filling the track's insert slots. Each instance is disabled when you first load the project. Track volume for each of these tracks is also turned down all the way.
• All tracks are routed to the main stereo outs, but only the first four audio tracks are audible due to their volume settings.
• There are three different DSP projects, one for each of these free-to-use effects plug-ins: SGA1566 (Shattered Glass Audio), MJUC jr. (Klanghelm), and a special version of ReaXcomp (Cockos) which is actually included with the DSP project download.

The DSP-1566 project on Cubase 9.

Analyzing the VI Projects

While the DSP projects are all about effects plugins, the VI tests only use instances of a virtual instrument plugin: Native Instruments Kontakt 5. The "score" of a VI test is the number of individual Kontakt "voices" you can have playing simultaneously before encountering audio glitches.

• The project contains one "Multi1Orchband" instance of the Kontakt plugin that contains a 16-part multi (one part per MIDI channel) of different Kontakt instruments that comprise most of the audible content in the project.
• Next there are ten "Multi2Poly" instances of Kontakt, each with 16 instances of the same instrument: A layered pad patch named "Light Breaks Through." Due to the patch's two sample layers, a single MIDI note played with this patch uses two Kontakt voices/oscillators. As with the sine tracks in the DSP projects, each instrument part in the Multi2Poly multis is turned down all the way. More on this later.
• The project also contains 16 MIDI tracks, each routed to a different MIDI channel in the Multi1Orchband Kontakt instance.
• Finally there are ten folders containing 16 MIDI tracks each, each one routed to its respective MIDI channel in one of the ten Multi2Poly instances. The MIDI tracks are simple clips that play a 16-bar sustained 10-note chord. So at play time, a single Multi2Poly instance can have up to 320 voices going at a time (16 parts of a 2-voice patch playing 10 notes each).
• There are two flavors of VI projects, "CV" and "NCV." In the CV project. many of the instruments in the "Multi1Orchband" multi have convolution reverb enabled as an insert effect, while that effect is bypassed in the NCV project. Both projects use convolution reverb as a send effect on a few channels. Importantly, the Multi2Poly multi is identical between the CV and NCV versions of the project (no reverb effect actively enabled as an insert or a send), so the results between CV and NCV tests are generally not very significant.
• The VI projects in DAW Bench were initially developed using Kontakt 4, whose factory library had a different layout from the library in Kontakt 5. While the current generation of the DAW Bench projects uses the Kontakt 5 plugin, the multis still use samples from the Kontakt 4 library. I am a licensed owner of Kontakt 4 but I do not currently have that version of the plugin installed anywhere, so I keep a folder containing all the necessary samples on my hard drive for when I need to do tests.

The VI CV project on Cubase 9.

Porting the DSP Projects

• Session view vs Arrangement view: Cubase is a traditional "piano roll" DAW while Live offers both a piano-roll style Arrangement view and the clip/loop-based Session view. I chose to build my projects in Session view because of the looping nature of the tests (it's just a few measures of repeating audio, after all), and because this view offers better access to the plugin slots for every track (after some UI resizing, at least).
• Audio tracks: The DAWBench DSP 2017 folder includes an "Audio" folder that contains the pre-recorded audio content (including sampled sine waves) used by these projects, which I easily imported into Live as stems. I grouped the tracks in the same order as the folders used in the Cubase projects.
• Plugin presets: All instances of the effects plugins in these projects use identical settings, which is important, because some plugin presets can be more CPU-intensive than others. Since plugin settings are embedded in the DAW project, I didn't have preset files I could import into Live, so I noted all of the plugin values used in the Cubase projects and created presets matching those settings for each of the plugins in Live.
• Plugin inserts: Just like with the Cubase projects, I inserted 8 instances of the desired effects plugin on each of the sine tracks. I enabled display of the insert slots in Session view and resized it so all 8 slots were visible at all times.
• Levels and routing: All tracks are routed to Live's Master outs, but all of the "Sine" tracks are set at -inf volume.

The DSP-1566 project on Live 9.

Porting the VI Projects

• MIDI tracks: For the MIDI parts that play into the "Multi1Orchband" instance of Kontakt, I dragged all of the MIDI clips out of Cubase and imported them into Live as MIDI clips. There were 16 MIDI clips for the Orchband multi, and another 16-bar MIDI clip for the polyphonic Sine tracks. This clip simply played a 10-note chord for a full 16 measures. Note: Due to an issue I discovered while performing benchmark testing, I discovered that the original 16-bar Poly tracks could not be used for reliable testing. (I will go into more detail on this in my next post.) Because of this I also created a 1-bar version of the Poly track that plays a sustained chord for the first seven 8ths of the measure. Session view allows me to add both the 1-bar clip and the 16-bar clip to every poly track and switch between them at will. Because of this I also edited separate copies of the original Cubase VI projects to use the same 1-bar loop.
• Audio tracks: The VI projects include one audible pre-recorded audio track (a 2-bar drum loop to accompany the Orchband parts), and 16 sine wave tracks whose volume is turned to -inf/silent. I presume these additional tracks are to help simulate a real music project that is handling both virtual instruments and audio tracks.
• EQ: In Cubase, each of the Sine audio tracks had channel EQ enabled, although it wasn't applying any boosts or cuts. This is not a default track setting, however, so I figured it was intentional. Since Live doesn't have built-in track effects, I instantiated an EQ Eight effect on each of the Sine tracks in Live, and only enabled the first four filter activators, setting them to the same frequencies as those in the Cubase projects, to simulate an equivalent processing load.
• Levels and routing: All audio outputs are routed to the Master outs. The Cubase VI projects use the MIDI volume fader in the inspector to set the volume of each part in the Orchband multi. Live uses envelopes for this sort of thing, so I used the pink noise mixing method to set the MIDI levels of each of the audible MIDI parts. As mentioned before, all Sine audio tracks were set to -inf, and most importantly, all parts in the Multi2Poly instances of Kontakt were also turned down to -inf- which proved to be a problem during testing.
• Kontakt multis:
• I didn't want to have to go through the laborious process of browsing for the correct samples for each of the VI projects when loading them into Live, so in Cubase, I opened both the CV and NCV versions of the DAW Bench projects and saved the Kontakt multis as "monoliths," which include samples. I saved only one copy of the Multi2Poly multi (since it is identical in both flavors of the DAW Bench VI projects), and separate CV/NCV versions of the Multi1Orchband multi. To ensure that my choice of monolith vs. traditional NKI did not adversely affect my tests, I did do a project built that used the traditional sample loading method. I found that RAM consumption was identical whether you used a monolith or not (Kontakt appears to load all samples for all parts when it is able to do so).
• Upon my first playback of my imported MIDI clips and multis, I discovered something very strange. One of the parts in the audible potion of the project was clearly out of tune, and not playing in the same way that it sounded when playing under Cubase. It took a while to debug, but I determined that the problem was ocurring in part 13 of the Orchband multi. It was a patch named "Mini Lead 2." This Kontakt patch is explicitly designed to be monophonic (to only play one note at a time). Strangely, the original Cubase DAW Bench projects play chords into this track and they are audible as chords. I don't know why this works under Cubase (because it's not supposed to). But basically, the patch's monophonic design was affecting how it interpreted the chords being sent to it under Live, resulting in strange and unexpected behavior. In order to make the project sound the same in Live as it does in Cubase, I had to bypass the Unisono behavior on Mini Lead 2.
  
  Here's a demonstration of the Unisono issue with the Mini Lead 2 part. It's a 16-bar track divided into four 4-bar sections: 1) The track as it's supposed to sound, 2) The Mini Lead 2 part correctly playing, soloed, 3) The track when the Mini Lead 2 part is not working correctly, and 4) The out-of-tune Mini Lead 2 part, soloed.
  
  

The VI CV project on Live 9.

The results

See my upcoming post about the DAW Bench results when I compared Live 9 to Cubase 9. I may also publish these project files at some point so others can do their own tests in Live.

SOLUTION: Disabling Tap-to-Click on Alienware 13 Touchpad - Windows 10 Update

Back in early 2015 I bought my first Alienware 13 gaming laptop and struggled to figure out how to disable the tap-to-click feature of that computer's touchpad under Windows 8. Well that was a different Alienware 13 (it was the "R1" model) and a different Windows. I now own an Alienware 13 R2, and this weekend I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 on it- only to discover that I was no longer able to disable tapping on this computer under Windows 10. So I was back to square one...

The first time I logged into Windows 10 on my laptop, I opened the Start menu and searched for Touchpad settings, expecting to see the same set of options available under Windows 8.1. Sadly, I was met with this confusing and anemic list of changeable settings:

Literally the only option I was able to configure was Touchpad sensitivity. Even though there was text saying, "Taps: Use taps to click, right-click, and select" there was no way to disable them. Clicking Additional settings just brought up the generic Windows Mouse Properties dialog, with no options at all for the touchpad.

I went to the Dell support page for the Alienware 13 R2 and located the Synaptics Touchpad Driver under Mouse, Keyboard & Input Devices. After installing this driver and rebooting, I checked the Windows 10 touchpad settings again and still only saw the single option to adjust Touchpad sensitivity. Nothing for taps. However, this time when I clicked Additional settings, something new appeared:

While none of the tabs in this dialog had any useful settings, clicking the "Click to change Touchpad settings" link on the Touchpad tab brought me here:

Now, on this Pointing Devices screen if you have the touchpad icon selected at the top and Sensitivity selected on the left, you should see a "Tapping >" link on the right side of the dialog. When you click that link, you then see this page:

Finally, you can uncheck the box next to Tap to click and then click Save. I did this and restarted Windows just to make sure the setting "stuck." And it did!

If these steps didn't work for you, or if you're having trouble finding the correct settings on Windows 8.1, please check out my original post about disabling tapping on Alienware laptops.

How to Install Windows 10 on the Dell Venue 8 Pro Tablet

I stopped using my Dell Venue 8 Pro a couple years ago because Windows 8.1 just didn't deliver as reliable and satisfying a tablet experience as iOS did on my iPads. I recently decided to install Windows 10 on my Venue 8 to see if the new operating system would make the Venue a better tablet- but I was surprised by how complicated this process turned out to be. It took a lot of research and experimentation to upgrade my tablet, so I decided to compile all my notes and observations in one place to save other Venue 8 owners the trouble.

Pros and Cons of the Venue 8 Pro

I originally got my tablet, the Venue 5830 Pro model, at a huge discount when buying a laptop from Dell a few years ago. I used the thing almost daily for at least a full year before relegating it to a bookshelf when I won an iPad mini at a company picnic.

What I liked about the Venue 8 Pro:

• It's got a bright, good-looking screen.
• It's got a sturdy, solid build.
• I like the simple, elegant vinyl folio case I bought with it.

What I didn't like about it:

• The "Windows Store" version of Internet Explorer 11 that came with Windows 8.1 was really slow and unbearable to use. At the time, it was also the only browser available on the Windows Store, so I had to use the tablet in Desktop mode in order to run more responsive browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
• At the time there were also no Reddit Enhancement Suite versions available for Windows Store-compatible browsers, and I find Reddit basically unusable without it, so that was another thing keeping me in Desktop mode on my tablet. (There is now a version available for Microsoft Edge.)
• Windows 8.1 desktop mode sucks on a tablet (no mouse, tiny text, links hard to click, etc).
• Every few weeks the tablet would refuse to wake from sleep mode and I'd have to go through an elaborate set of steps to force the thing to do a hard shutdown and power-on.

Before You Start

My Venue 8 only has 32GB of storage (and of that, only around 25GB is actually available to Windows with the default partitioning scheme), which means that there isn't enough room to do an OS upgrade; only a fresh install on a newly-formatted partition. In order to be sure you don't lose anything before doing a fresh OS install, make sure to do the following:

• Back up your data. If you keep any unique files on your tablet, be sure to store copies of them. If your Windows 8.1 user account on the tablet is linked to a Microsoft account, the simplest way to back up those files would be to place them all into OneDrive folders, so they'll be waiting for you once you log into Windows 10 with your Microsoft account.
• Back up your product keys. Even though the Windows 10 free upgrade offer officially ended in 2016, Microsoft quietly still lets licensed Windows 7 and Windows 8 owners upgrade for free with product keys for eligible editions. I used the free program Belarc Advisor to examine my tablet and saved the resulting profile as an HTML profile to my OneDrive account. The Software Licenses section of the profile included the product key for my OEM version of Windows 8.1, which is what I used to activate my copy of Windows 10. Note: While I think my tablet came with a license for Microsoft Office 2013 (version 15.0), I didn't see a product key for it listed in the Belarc report, and I don't know if this is because I never used/activated Office on the tablet or if Belarc Adviser doesn't pick it up. I do not use Office on the tablet anyway, though, so I didn't really care.
• Charge your tablet. This is really important- you won't be able to power your Venue 8 while installing Windows 10, because you'll need to use your USB port for other things during that time. You do not want to run out of battery while installing an operating system, so make sure you're fully charged before proceeding.

Required Hardware

Once Windows 10 is fully installed and updated, you don't need any peripherals to use the tablet, but for several reasons, you will need several devices in order to install the operating system and some drivers.

• A powered USB hub with at least three ports for connecting a mouse, keyboard, and thumb drive to your tablet. It must be a powered hub since the tablet's USB port doesn't provide enough juice for multiple devices. I can vouch for this D-Link 7-port hub but any solid powered hub should do.
• A USB Type A female to USB Micro male adapter for connecting your USB hub to the tablet. I used a StarTech 5-inch Micro USB to USB A On-the-Go Host Cable Adapter.
• A USB keyboard, since there will be no soft keyboard support during the Windows 10 install process.
• A USB mouse, since there will be no touch screen support until after Windows 10 is installed and updated.
• A USB thumb drive big enough to serve as a Windows 10 boot drive, and also for copying some necessary driver files to the tablet before it has access to the internet. The drive must be at least 5GB in size, and any data currently on the drive will be wiped out because the process of making it a bootable Windows installer involves formatting it. I get these 5-packs of Topsell 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drives, and use them for this sort of thing all the time.
• A separate internet-connected computer for downloading drivers and Windows installer files. 

Updating the BIOS

In order to fully support Windows 10, you should make sure you're running the most recent BIOS version for your Dell Venue model. In my case, I still had the BIOS version that my tablet shipped with (A04), but the most recent version available for my model (the 5830) was A14. I downloaded the Dell Venue 8 Pro 5830 System BIOS file from this Dell support page.

Installation is painless; just have your tablet plugged in, launch the downloaded file (in my case that was 5830A14.exe), and allow the tablet to reboot if/when prompted.

Preparing the Bootable Windows 10 Installer

There are a couple of easy ways to prepare your USB thumb drive for installing Windows 10. Regardless of which method you choose, keep these things in mind:

1. The Venue 8 Pro can only run 32-bit (x86) versions of Windows, so you need to be careful which version you download from Microsoft.
2. The Venue 8 Pro can only detect UEFI-capable boot devices. (Both of the following methods should account for this if you follow the instructions closely.)

Using the Windows 10 Download Tool

If you don't already have an ISO image for a Windows 10 setup disc, use Microsoft's Windows 10 Download tool to get the necessary files and prepare your USB drive. Go to the Download Windows 10 page and click the "Using the tool to create installation media" link to see detailed instructions. The quick steps are here:

1. Plug in the USB thumb drive you plan to use as your Windows 10 installer.
2. Click the Download tool now button to download the file MediaCreationTool.exe.
3. Locate the downloaded program and launch it.
4. On the first screen, select Create installation media and click Next.
5. On the second screen, uncheck the Use the recommended options for this PC box and make sure to pick 32-bit (x86) for Architecture, and then click Next.
6. On the next screen, select USB flash drive and click Next.
7. On the next screen, select your desired target thumb drive from the list of devices and then click Next. The tool will download the necessary files and prepare your thumb drive.
8. The Windows 10 Download Tool creates those infamous $WINDOWS.~BT and $Windows.~WS folders on the computer where you run it, and after your boot media is created there will still be hundreds of megabytes of content left in them. You can use the Delete Windows 10 Download Folders function of my free program, GWX Control Panel, to delete those folders when you're all done.

Using Rufus

As a Microsoft Developer Network subscriber I have access to ISO images of Windows setup discs, so I downloaded the x86/32-bit version of the latest "Windows 10 (Multiple Editions)" DVD image. Here's how to create a bootable USB drive from a downloaded Windows 10 ISO image:

1. On the computer where you downloaded the ISO file, plug in the USB thumb drive that you intend to use as your Windows 10 boot drive.
2. Download and run the latest version of the free tool Rufus.
3. On the row that says "Create a bootable disc using," click the button that has a picture of a disc on it and browse to/select your downloaded ISO file.
4. Select your target USB thumb drive from the Device list.
5. For Partition scheme and target system type, select GPT partition scheme for UEFI.
6. For File system, select FAT32.
7. Make sure Quick format, Create a bootable disk using, and Create extended label and icon files are all checked, and "ISO image" is selected as the source format.
8. Click Start to prepare your thumb drive. This process can take several minutes.

Booting the Venue Pro from the USB Thumb Drive (hardware and software setup)

Since the Venue 8 Pro comes with a UEFI Secure Boot configuration there is no "Press F12 for boot options" prompt when you power up the device. Instead you have two different ways to boot from a properly-formatted USB flash drive:

Booting to flash drive from Windows 8.1

1. While logged in to Windows 8.1, connect your mouse, keyboard, and flash drive to your USB hub, and then connect the powered hub to your fully-charged Dell Venue Pro.
2. Move your mouse to the upper-right corner of the screen to display the Windows 8 charms menu.
3. Click the Settings gear at the bottom of the charms menu.
4. Click Change PC Settings.
5. Click Update and Recovery.
6. Click Recovery, and then click Restart now under Advanced Startup. The tablet will boot into advanced startup mode.
7. On the Choose an option screen, click Use a device.
8. Your USB Flash drive will probably be labeled: "UEFI:Removable Device." If you see such an option, select it to boot from that device. If you do not see an option that looks like it might be your thumb drive, it might not be formatted properly.

Booting to flash drive from power-on

If your tablet's already powered off, there's no need to launch Windows 8 just to reboot it into advanced mode. These instructions are correct as of the latest available BIOS for my Venue Pro model (the 5830). I have seen a lot of alleged instructions posted around the internet for doing this and none of them worked for me. This is the only boot-to-USB-from-power-on procedure that I've managed to get working.

1. With the tablet powered off, connect your mouse, keyboard, and flash drive to your USB hub, and then connect the powered hub to your fully-charged Dell Venue Pro.
2. This part is tricky. You need to hold down the power button just long enough for the device to begin powering on, but let go before the Dell logo appears on-screen. On my tablet 3-and-a-half seconds seems to be the perfect amount of time. You might see lights on your connected keyboard/mouse flash right when you need to let go.
3. While the screen is still black (and before the white Dell logo appears), release the power button and then hold down the tablet's Volume Up button until the Dell logo appears on-screen.
   
   Note
   If you see the spinning circle of dots that indicates Windows is loading, you missed your window. You might as well just follow the Windows method mentioned above if that happens.
    
4. Once you see the white Dell logo for a couple of seconds, release the Volume Up button. The UEFI boot menu should appear:
   
5. If your USB drive is properly formatted with a 32-bit version of the Windows 10 installer as described in the above sections about Rufus and the Windows 10 Download Tool, you should see an option for your thumb drive on this screen (mine is selected in the picture above). If you only see Windows Boot Manager, it means your tablet doesn't recognize your thumb drive. Use the Volume Up button to navigate to your thumb drive's entry on this screen and press Volume Down to boot from the selected device.
6. After a short while, the Windows 10 Setup wizard should begin.

Installing Windows 10

After using one of the above methods for booting to your USB flash drive, you should now see the Windows 10 setup wizard:

 

Some quick notes to guide you during setup:

• These steps assume you have already upgraded your tablet to the latest available BIOS.
• During Windows installation, the tablet's accelerometer isn't available, so you can only work in portrait/vertical mode.
• The touch screen doesn't work during Windows setup, so you'll be glad to have your USB mouse and keyboard here.
• When you get to the "Which type of installation do you want?" screen, pick the Custom: Install Windows only option.
  
  
• Choosing how to partition your tablet: On the Where do you want to install Windows screen you will probably find a bunch of partitions listed. Most of these are Dell-created partitions for backup/restore purposes and to store Dell's diagnostic tools. These additional partitions take up 6 gigabytes of the tablet's storage (and my model only has 32GB total). If you would like to keep the existing partition scheme, then you'll want to choose the largest "Primary" partition available (the one selected in my screenshot). The next bullet item in this section has some details on using that partition. If you don't think you'll need those other partitions and would like to reclaim that extra space, I have read that some folks have had success simply using the Delete button here to remove all of the pre-existing partitions and then letting Windows 10 partition the storage with its default settings. I have not tried this personally, so I don't know what you lose by going this route. (If anyone out there tries it, please let me know how it works out!)
  
• If, like me, you choose to keep Dell's existing partition scheme, you might notice something like the below screenshot, where the Format and New commands are grayed out and there's a warning saying "Windows can't be installed on drive 0 partition 5." This is because the Dell Windows 10 configuration uses BitLocker drive encryption to protect your files. In order to use this space to install Windows 10, you need to select the partition, and then click Delete. After you delete the partition, it will appear as unpartitioned space, which you can then select as your install partition.
  
• Since the Windows 10 installer doesn't include drivers for the Venue Pro's WiFi, you won't be able to connect to your network or create an online-connected user account during Windows Setup. After setup is complete and you install your WiFi drivers, you'll be able to connect your local user account to your Microsoft account for full Windows 10 functionality.
• When/if prompted for a product key, use the key that you archived with Belarc Adviser (or other methods) in the "Before you start" section of this guide. If you choose the "I don't have a product key" option, the setup wizard will let you proceed, but it will ask you which edition of Windows you wish to install. You must be careful to choose an edition that is a valid upgrade path from your old Windows 8 install. The "Using the tool to create installation media" section of the Download Windows 10 page lists which Windows 7/8 versions map to specific Windows 10 editions.
• Follow the rest of the prompts to allow Windows 10 setup to complete.

Installing drivers and finalizing setup

Once the initial Windows 10 setup procedure is complete, there are a few important things you'll have to do get things working normally, because right now you'll probably notice that:

• There is no audio.
• There is no WiFi or Bluetooth connectivity.
• The accelerometers aren't working, so you have to work in portrait mode.
• The touchscreen doesn't work.
• You can only create/use "local" user accounts.

Install required drivers

First off, on an internet-connected computer, go to the Dell drivers page for the Venue 8 Pro and download the following drivers to a USB flash drive. (I created a "downloads" folder on my Windows 10 setup drive for this.)

• Network > Dell Wireless 1538 WiFi/Bluetooth Driver
• Chipset > Intel Atom Z3000 Series Driver

Connect your flash drive to your powered USB hub and install both drivers. Restart Windows when and if prompted.

After both drivers are installed, you should find that you can now do the following:

• Pair Bluetooth devices.
• Connect to WiFi networks.
• Rotate the device to switch between portrait and landscape modes.
• Use the touch screen.

Update the audio driver

The Z3000 Series chipset drivers actually include the correct driver for your on-board audio, but Windows seems to pick a different sound driver during Windows setup that doesn't work. Here's how to get the audio working (assuming you've already installed the chipset driver). You will want to have a mouse connected for this step.

1. In Windows 10, open up the Device Manager control panel and expand the Sound, video and game controllers node.
2. Right-click Intel SST Audio Device (WDM) and then click Update driver.
3. Use the "Search automatically for updated driver software" option and Windows should locate your newly-installed driver.
4. Repeat these steps for the Realtek I2S Audio Codec device. In my case, Windows reported that I already had the correct driver.
5. Restart Windows. Once you log in you should be able to play and hear audio.

Connect to your Microsoft account

Since you probably had to create a local account during Windows setup, now that you have network connectivity, you should connect to your Microsoft account so that you can use OneDrive and the Windows Store.

After logging into Windows 10, bring up the account settings page by pressing the Windows key, clicking your user portrait, and then clicking Change account settings. (You can also open up the search box and type "Manage your account.")

On your account settings page there should be a link that says "Connect to a Microsoft account" or "Sign in with Microsoft." Click this link and enter your Microsoft credentials. From this point on you can log in with your Microsoft credentials.

Where did my desktop and taskbar icons go?

Once my tablet was connected to the internet it began downloading Windows updates, and I let it restart a few times to let all the updates install. At one point, though, when I logged into the tablet, something was very different!

Instead of being greeted with my desktop upon logging in:

I instead logged into what was essentially a full-screen Start menu:

There was no Desktop tile, and when I launched any apps their icons wouldn't appear in the taskbar, so I could only switch between them using hotkeys. What the heck happened?

Well it seems that after one of the Windows updates I had downloaded, Windows 10 realized my device was actually a tablet and "helpfully" forced it into "tablet mode" for me. This is a mode that's meant to make desktop windows feel more like a mobile/tablet operating system. It's fine for what it is, but there were still some things I wanted to do in desktop mode before I felt ready using the Venue Pro as a tablet again. Here's how to switch between modes:

1. If you're in tablet mode, click the Settings gear on the left side of the screen. If you're in desktop mode, press the Windows key to bring up the Start menu, and search for "Tablet mode settings."
2. On the Tablet mode screen, change the "When I sign in" setting to force desktop or tablet mode, or to let Windows decide which is best for your device.
3. If you use Tablet mode, you can also decide whether or not to show taskbar buttons by changing the "Hide app icons on the taskbar in tablet mode" option.

Comparing DAW Performance of Recent Cubase Versions on Windows

I recently had to increase the buffer size setting on my audio interface to eliminate audio glitches in a music project on Cubase Pro 9. Since I almost never have to adjust my interface settings while producing a track, I wondered if perhaps Cubase 9 wasn't performing as well as previous Cubase versions I'd worked with. I searched around for some performance information, but I couldn't find any detailed, up-to-date comparisons of recent Cubase versions- so I decided to do my own.

Cubase versions under test

I decided to test the most recent available 64-bit versions of the last four major Cubase releases:

• Cubase 6.5 - Originally released February 2012, the latest version is 6.5.5 from June 24, 2013.
• Cubase 7.5 - Originally released December 2013, the latest version is 7.5.40 from Jan 19, 2015.
• Cubase Pro 8.5 - Originally released December 2015, the latest version is 8.5.30 from Feb 22, 2017.
• Cubase Pro 9.0 - Originally released December 2016, the latest version is 9.0.30 from July 20, 2017.

In addition to comparing basic performance of individual Cubase releases, I also wanted to examine the effects of ASIO-Guard, a feature Steinberg introduced with Cubase 7. By using smart management of CPU time and audio buffers, ASIO-Guard claims to increase the amount of plugins you can run without encountering audio glitches. Steinberg claims to have made improvements to ASIO-Guard over time, so I wanted to see how the feature had changed.

DAW Bench and Test Preparation

I installed each version side-by-side on my PC, patched them with the latest updates, and then downloaded the 2017 versions of the DAW Bench test projects. In case you're not familiar with DAW Bench, it's a collection of DAW projects assembled by audio professional Vin Curigliano to assess a digital audio workstation's ability to reliably produce audio while operating under heavy DSP workloads. When a computer's DSP resources are exhausted, audio suffers, with pops, drop-outs, and strange digital artifacts. Many factors contribute to a DAW system's ability to perform well: CPU, chipsets, drivers, operating system, DAW software, and audio interfaces all play a role.

The current iteration of DAW Bench includes five different Cubase test projects, broken into two categories.

• The DSP projects contain some basic audio tracks with literally hundreds of instances of a specific effect loaded up on various tracks. These push your computer's computational digital signal processing capabilities to its limits. The "score" for a DSP test is the number of plugin instances that can be activated without glitching the audio.
• The VI projects use instances of Native Instruments Kontakt to test your computer's virtual instrument oscillation/voice generation abilities by playing from hundreds to thousands of simultaneous notes of polyphony. The "score" for a VI test is the number of musical notes that can play simultaneously without glitching the audio.

Each of the DSP projects uses a different freely-available effects plugin:

• DSP-1566 uses Shattered Glass Audio's SGA1566, which is a CPU-intensive emulation of a vintage tube amplifier.
• DSP-MJUC uses Klanghelm's MJUC jr., a "variable-mu" compressor plugin.
• DSP-REAX uses a specially-compiled version of Cockos ReaXcomp, a multi-band compressor. (Note: The correct version is included in the DAW Bench download, don't use the one from the Reaper site.)

There are also two flavors of the VI tests: The "VI-CV" tests use Kontakt's internal convolution reverb effect (using more DSP power), while the "VI-NCV" tests have no reverb enabled.

I performed the tests on my primary DAW PC. The full specs of the system are published elsewhere, but here's the pertinent information:

• Processor: Intel i7 5930K @ 3.50GHz (6 physical cores)
• RAM: 32GB
• Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional SP-1, 64-bit
• Audio Interface: RME FireFace UFX, in FireWire mode
• Interface Settings: 44.1kHz, 256 samples.
• Windows Optimization: The only Windows performance tweak I made was to select the High Performance power scheme in the Power Options control panel and to disable some unneeded startup processes and services. I have not adjusted any of the more arcane Windows settings such as the MMCSS options.
• Cubase Optimization: In all of my tests I use the default Cubase performance settings, with the obvious exception of disabling/enabling ASIO-Guard for a specific round of tests. So this means I'm leaving Audio Priority to Normal, Activate Multi Processing is checked, Activate Steinberg Audio Power Scheme is unchecked (I'm using the built-in Windows High Performance scheme), and on versions of Cubase that offer various "ASIO-Guard Level" settings, I'm using the normal level.

DSP Test Results

The results of the DSP tests are below. For versions of Cubase with the ASIO-Guard features, separate scores are shown with the feature disabled ("no AG") or enabled ("AG"). Cubase 6.5 is the only tested version which lacks that feature.

DSP Test Raw Data (44.1kHz, 256 samples)

DSP Test Chart

The results weren't very dramatic, however they did show modest gains for the ASIO-Guard feature- particularly for versions 7.5 and 9.0. Cubase 8.5 with ASIO-Guard enabled scored the best for 2 out of 3 tests while Cubase 9.0 with ASIO-Guard disabled scored lowest in all three tests.

VI Test Results

The virtual instrument tests were a little more interesting. In the tests below, "VI-CV" are with Kontakt's convolution reverb effect enabled, while reverb is disabled in the "VI-NCV" tests.

VI Test Raw Data (44.1kHz, 256 samples)

VI Test chart

A few things stand out in these tests:

• First, ASIO-Guard made dramatic improvements in both Cubase 8.5 and Cubase 9.0, while their ASIO-Guard gains weren't quite as impressive in the DSP tests. The feature shows a clear and demonstrable benefit, at least for some plugin duties.
• The improvement ASIO-Guard made on Cubase 7.5 was much less impressive, and I am guessing it's because the Cubase 7.x implementation of ASIO-Guard did not fully support multi-timbral plugins such as Kontakt.
• It was also interesting that while Cubase 9.0-with-ASIO-Guard gained the second-highest score in the test, without ASIO-Guard, Cubase 9.0 scored the lowest on these tests. Cubase 8.5 scored significantly higher, in both the ASIO-Guard enabled and disabled tests.

Final scores

I wanted to be able to rank individual Cubase versions in terms of performance, but I didn't want the VI tests to skew the numbers (since the VI scores reach up to the thousands while the DSP scores are all down in the low hundreds). In order to give each test equal weight, I divided the VI test scores by 10, and then I summed all 5 test scores for each DAW and ASIO-Guard setting.

Final Scores (raw)

Final Scores (chart)

With these adjusted performance scores, it appears that Cubase 8.5 with ASIO-Guard is the best-performing version of Cubase in recent years, although Cubase 9.0 still performs very well in second place so long as ASIO-Guard is enabled. However with ASIO-Guard disabled, Cubase 9.0 is the worst-performing version of Cubase of the versions tested.

Conclusions

• Cubase 9 performs slightly worse than Cubase 8.5, given the same content and settings on the same system. Without ASIO-Guard, Cubase 9 performed about 4 percent worse than 8.5. With ASIO-Guard there was only around a 2 percent difference.
  
• Core Cubase performance (without ASIO-Guard) has not changed significantly over time. With Cubase 7.5 and 8.5 performing around 1 percent better than Cubase 6.5 and Cubase 9.0 performing nearly 3% worse, Cubase has delivered more or less consistent performance across major releases.
• ASIO-Guard can make a big difference, but it depends on the specific plugins and workload. Both Cubase 8.x and 9.x saw huge gains in the VI tests with ASIO-Guard enabled, but the gains were less impressive in the DSP tests.
• Cubase makes very good use of multi-core processors and hyper-threading (*). Not all Windows DAWs handle modern CPUs the same, but Cubase has, for some time, been quite good at making use of both physical and logical CPU resources to deliver reliable audio under heavy DSP loads. Here's a screenshot of Windows Task Manager while Cubase is performing one of the DSP tests covered earlier. Every logical core of my i7 5930K is working at the maximum allowed by the Windows MMCSS settings (which reserve 20% of CPU power for background tasks). I plan to explore this stuff a little more in future posts.
  
  

(*) As of the time of this writing there is a known issue with Cubase on Windows 10 where Windows imposes a thread limit that can result in audio instability on CPUs with more than 14 logical cores (or more than 7 physical cores). For now, Steinberg recommends using Windows 8.1 or earlier for top Cubase performance on CPUs that exceed 14 logical cores, or using workarounds on Windows 10 which are documented at the above link to at least avoid the audio glitches resulting from this limitation.