Remixing inside a Virtual Machine???

Analog-X64 · Post by **Analog-X64** » 01/02/2007 - 0:07

I'm about to re-build my Music/Video Production Machine.

I got to thinking... I could have seperate and clean versions of both worlds if I run them in a Virtual machine using.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx <--- which is free now it used to cost $130.

Or VMWare WorkStation or Parallesl Workstation.

What do you guys think? I'm sure there would be a performance hit of sorts.

Romeo Knight · Post by **Romeo Knight** » 01/02/2007 - 9:09

I can't imagine anything but problems you're getting with this.

Post by **LMan** » 01/02/2007 - 9:14

Could well work with fully integrated virtual studios like Reason, but as soon as you employ any kind of MIDI application, you'll most likely run into severe timing and latency problems... I guess there's only one way to find out.

Tonka · Post by **Tonka** » 01/02/2007 - 9:30

I think you would see a bit of a performance drop and (knowing Microsoft) instability

Unless you really have the need to switch quickly from one OS to the other on the fly (which would be unlikely?), why not just set up a dual boot system?

Soppa · Post by **Soppa** » 01/02/2007 - 9:59

LMan / Remix64 wrote:Could well work with fully integrated virtual studios like Reason, but as soon as you employ any kind of MIDI application, you'll most likely run into severe timing and latency problems... I guess there's only one way to find out.

Having fiddled around a bit with the virtualization, I'd have to agree with this. I'd just setup a dual boot system like Tonka suggested, but having said that, I admit that I don't know for sure, but I would also consider the midi (and ASIO response) the main problem here. But hey, if you choose to try it anyway, please let us know how it worked out!

Analog-X64 · Post by **Analog-X64** » 01/02/2007 - 21:29

Thanks for all the suggestions. At the moment, I'm using two seperate PC's. One PC is just for e-mail / browsing etc... it is a Compaq Persario with AMD Athalon 64 3700+ Processor.

My other PC has a bare bones installation of XP. From Bootup to desktop there are only 17 Tasks running. I like keeping this one SLIM so I can run my Audio / Video software. It has a AMD Barton Processor OC'ed from 1.8 to 2.2 with 512MB Ram so its not anything super by todays standards but gets the job done.

I'd like to run Dual Monitors on the Audio/Video PC. So I may take another approach which is to Control the E-Mail/Web PC with RealVNC, from the Audio/Video PC.

Vosla · Post by **Vosla** » 01/02/2007 - 22:39

VMWare Player with a preconfigured emulated machine should run better even with midi.

To make audio output more stable you have to make some changes to your host machine, namely kill off all unnecessary processes.
You may disable some services permanently.
Avoid network activity while emulating.
Work in fullscreen modes only.
Don't use USB or firewire devices in emulation.

Worped · Post by **Worped** » 02/02/2007 - 15:29

I use VirtualPC and VMWare all of the time. VMWare is much better than VirtualPC, but unless you have a big honkin' machine (multiple CPUs, gigs and gigs of memory), you can kiss performance goodbye.

Markus Schneider · Post by **Markus Schneider** » 02/02/2007 - 23:44

For virtualization take care of this:

Workstation use just for testing scenarios, no application battle.
Server use for application deployment, which works more than fine in most cases since many servers in small and medium biz are oversized.

When running out of memory or CPU power, virtualization is no solution.
Sell your 2 PC's, buy an Intel Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, 2 SATA harddisks configured with RAID0, Acronis True Image for imaging your system to an USB harddisk with first setup image and everyday image. And live long and prosper for 5 years with this.

Analog-X64 · Post by **Analog-X64** » 03/02/2007 - 0:40

Markus Schneider wrote: When running out of memory or CPU power, virtualization is no solution.
Sell your 2 PC's, buy an Intel Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, 2 SATA harddisks configured with RAID0, Acronis True Image for imaging your system to an USB harddisk with first setup image and everyday image. And live long and prosper for 5 years with this.

That will be a future purchase....but yet still I do not want mix my production PC with my Web/E-Mail surfing. If anything....the Production PC shouldn't even be on the Internet.

2 SATA harddisks configured with RAID0? Why Raid 0 ?

Markus Schneider · Post by **Markus Schneider** » 03/02/2007 - 9:41

>> 2 SATA harddisks configured with RAID0? Why Raid 0 ?

Because harddisks are still THE bottleneck of a PC. RAID 0 (stripeset) gives nearly double performance of read/write access. Everyone who is dealing with steady multiple file access or large files needs to take care of a strong harddisk performance. While rendering an image needs CPU power and RAM, audio/video needs harddisk power at first. A 3ware 4port raid controller with RAID 0 and 4 standard SATA hdd performs at 200 mb/sec. Come and see XP starting not loading