Hi Guys, I'm interested in purchasing Parallels primarily for use in my music studio. My macbook pro connects to a firewire midi keyboard/controller. Is there anyway to get this working in guest vm (win xp)? If not, is this support planned, and would bootcamp solve my problems? Thanks, Mike.
I think the preview info is that Firewire will be available in version 3.x. It is not now available. Bootcamp makes all the hardware available to Windows, so if the Firewire device has drivers for windows it should work. Bootcamp and Parallels are better integrated now, but the Parallels hypervisor is still a hardware emulation where as bootcamp is a boot manager. Night/day as to what that means. I presume there is not equivalent or desireable midi software for OS X? I used to use Midisoft for Windows years ago for my Yamaha Clavinova keyboard and it was pretty nice. Damn - that was a long time ago. I just realized I used to run that in another VM - Windows 3.0 in OS/2! I've wondered of late if there was any suitable Mac midi software out there.
Bootcamp does not work with a lot of firewire external soundcards, mine included (MAUDIO 410). Parallels also, is not yet firewire enabled. BUT, i can use my USB midi controller (KORG microkontrol) with no problems - in fact i have yet to see a midi controller that even has firwire? You should be aware though that even when firewire support is available, running apps from parallels is going to eat into your RAM, a resource which is precious when working with audio - I have 2gb, yet i still want more. Although it is a nice idea to run windoze/mac apps side-by-side for audio work - you have to consider at what cost? I think in the vast majority of cases, it would be a better idea to find a mac alternitive for the windoze app you want to use. - exmple: using PEAK PRO 5.2 instaed of SONY SOUNDFORGE.... cheers, chrisj303
Hi Chris, Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I have to use windows as I'm taking projects home from the other studio which is already a well established windows setup. In an audio environment, will Bootcamp be better with memory/resources etc. as it runs it natively? As you know, I need to maximise what's available. Working on Macbook Pro 17/2.33/2gig. Thanks, Mike
Bootcamp is much better than using parallels in regards to resource usage (which is understandable!) However, bootcamp is still a Beta, and still suffers from serious bugs. Firewire support - particulary external soundcards - seem to be a real issue. You'd be better off checking for compatibility. TBH, i'm not going to bother looking at either bootcamp or parallels for 'proper' audio work until they come out of beta, and firewire issues have been sorted. Bootcamp(full release,not beta) will be an integeral part of OSX leopard when it is released in spring. And NO, bootcamp found present of even the last release (..321) of leopard, is still beta, so just have to wait! Cheers, chrisj303
Parallels has never to my knowledge stated that they are working on Firewire support. All references I've seen for a feature list for version 3 do not include Firewire. Sorry.
I don't define the absence of a feature I'd like to see as a bug. Apple calls bootcamp beta so they don't have to support it. I haven't encountered any bugs where a bug is defined as something they say the software will do but it won't. Apple has provided Windows drivers for SOME of the apple hardware. For me, it works fine. If a piece of hardware doesn't work properly in bootcamp, it just means no Windows driver is available for it. There is lots of hardware out there with no Windows driver or no Mac driver or no LINUX driver, etc. That's just life, not a bug. The expectation that if you have a Mac, EVERYTHING will just work is, IMNSHO, unreasonable.
No-one was saying they expect everything to work with bootcamp, the OP just wanted to know the score regarding firewire support, the intention being music production. Not the definition of the word beta. At the moment, some firewire soundcards work, some do but badly,others are shot to pieces. Some work on certain types of macs, but on others they won't. For all intents and purposes, it's buggy. And now the OP is aware of that.
