Subject:Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Posted by: dreamcitadel

Date:7/3/2006 3:55:10 PM

I know that this is a really odd question, especially because I'm a PC person......however....... Does anyone know or heard anything about if Acid Pro 6 would be compatible with the new Intel Macs with BootCamp?

I saw a write up in Computer Music about afew Windows music apps running on the new Intel Macs and was wondering if anyone has tried this yet with Acid Pro. I guess the better question is will it work and if so how well.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: merlyn

Date:7/4/2006 9:17:00 AM

Acid 6 works fine on the intel Macs, but it sounds like you think that Acid runs on the Mac operating system (OSX) and that's not the case. All the Bootcamp application allows you to do is to partition the hardrive so that an instance of Windows can be installed and run on the Mac hardware, which gives you a dual booting options(Windows or Mac) at startup. So, you're really running Acid in Windows like normal.

As far as performance, I'm yet to run into a problem with any Windows apps on my Macbook. Only problem I have is that Windows seems to drain the battery quicker. Hope that helps

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: dreamcitadel

Date:7/4/2006 10:21:14 AM

Hey Merlyn....

Oh no, please don't get that impression!! I know my software, and I'm sorry that I gave the impression that Acid Pro would run on OS X..... (looking around*) I know better than that.... I can't keep my credibility if I ran around saying things like that. LOL But seriously, I was actually curious to see if anyone has run Acid Pro 6 on an Intel Mac and if it worked ok. Thank you so much for helping me with this question and I'll let you know how it goes when I get everything set up next week.

Oh, do you have any recommendations on which file format to use when I set up BootCamp? Should I do FAT or NTFS (though honestly I prefer NTFS).

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: merlyn

Date:7/5/2006 7:57:35 AM

Cool....just wanted to make sure you got it. Glad that you do. I believe Bootcamp will tell you that FAT allows you to read and write files on the Windows drive from the Mac OS, but that NTFS provides better reliability and security. I chose FAT and have had no problems whatsoever, but it all boils down to whats more important to you I suppose.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: drew_

Date:7/6/2006 6:57:30 AM

So now the R$64,000 question!

Have you, or has anyone else, tried ACID or other Sony apps with the latest version of Parallels?

As I understand it the big restriction is USB1.0 and CD/DVD burning capabilities but I've not seen anything about Firewire support or Audio/MIDI in general.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: pwppch

Date:7/6/2006 8:40:59 AM

>>Have you, or has anyone else, tried ACID or other Sony apps with the latest version of Parallels?<<

While ACID may run, the lack of Native/ASIO driver support would probably hinder any kind of low latency operation. From the online docs, Parallels emulates an AC97 audio device. It does not look to be capable of supporting any native hardware directly in the virtual machine space. (That would be a trick indeed if they pulled that kind of WinOS functionality off!)

There is mention of USB support, but sharing between the main OS and the virtual machines would be a trick.

Peter

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: merlyn

Date:7/6/2006 11:44:28 AM

Thanks for that Peter. My friends and I were debating on whether or not one of us would be the guinea pig for Parallels. You gave us an issue that we hadn't considered. I'll keep you all updated if one of us attempts it.

For everyone else, there is one slight issue with headphone audio in Windows on an Intel Mac. When you plug in you headphones into the headphone jack, audio is output from BOTH the headphones and the onboard speakers. Kind of a drag if you want to work on some Acid projects on the plane without everyone hearing what your're doing, but hopefully an audio driver update for bootcamp will fix that.

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: drew_

Date:7/8/2006 2:31:43 PM

>sharing between the main OS and the virtual machines would be a trick

Absolutely! - and I do very much look forward to having ACID Rewire-slaved to Digital Performer with VSTis running on both Mac and Windows sides at 7ms latency. Thanks Peter!


Ah well.. at least now my wishlist in the other thread doesn't look so unreasonable :o)

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: pwppch

Date:7/9/2006 8:03:51 PM

>>look forward to having ACID Rewire-slaved to Digital Performer

ReWire across a Virtual Windows Machine with OSX?

You're kidding, right?

(Just incase you are not kidding...)

Incredibly unlikely this would ever happen - if even possible.

The DP would need an ACID ReWire Device written in Mac native code that it could load and communicate with. It would then have to communicate across the virtual machine and connect to the real ACID ReWire Device DLL, which then actually connects/controls ACID.

Ugh! The performance hit of the proxy layer between the Mac ACID Rewire device and the Native ACID ReWire code would be incredible, even if it was possible. Interprocess communication is own thing, but inter OS virtual machine communication, well that is a completely different beast.

Of course anything is possible with code and time. It would be a lot of work to do this for the 10-20 people that MIGHT find it useful. Even then, performance would be incredibly bad.

Peter

Subject:RE: Acid Pro 6 compatibility with BootCamp

Reply by: drew_

Date:7/16/2006 3:15:55 PM

My Goodness! Sorry Peter - just to confirm I WAS *totally* kidding!!!

I had hoped giving you a crazy suggestion like that would make my ACID PRO 7 wishlist on the other thread look more straight-forward!

(Quantizing selected notes on a single stroke keyboard shortcut, or making it clearer to see armed record tracks must now seem a breeze in comparison!!)

I had an interesting chat with a major music shop salesman about how the Boot Camp/Leopard door isn't just for Windows users getting Macs, but how there will be plenty of Mac users over the coming months who will want to satisfy curiosity about Sound Forge, Vegas and ACID.

Video guys may fall in love with Vegas and audio users may find Forge indispensible... warranting a reboot when they want to switch over to Windows and use it.

But in this scenario (as you've pointed out) the ability to use ACID as a Rewire Slave isn't realistic and that means for them to move across from Logic/Cubase/DP etc it'll need to do all the MIDI stuff they get from their existing host. Much like all those PC users including myself who feel the same thing already!

The sales guy put it to me that "at this rate it seems more likely that other sequencers will get full ACID-style loop functionality before ACID gets full MIDI sequencer functionality".

If that's true then those users may just come to the conclusion that they're not missing out on much.... but I guess a lot depends on Sony's drive to make sure MIDI sequencer users have no better option than ACID by the next major release!

drew