Boot Camp?

[Brandon E.]

I'm about to finally pull the trigger on a Macbook Pro but I absolutely can not live without my windows amp sims (thanks lepou, nick c, onqel, etc!), so my question is: Will Boot Camp enable me to run Windows (XP or 7) just like on a PC, stable enough for audio production/whatever? What exactly is Boot Camp? Is it the same thing as dual booting 2 operating systems like I've done on a PC or is it something more?

Thanks!

 

[updog]

yeah, it installs windows on a partition that you install and choose the harddrive capacity for. Then when booting, pressing Option allows you to select which OS you want to use.

It basically just installs windows, and some drivers and stuff that make the Mac hardware work well with windows. I had an XP on Bootcamp, but I never used it and soon wanted my 20 gigabytes back.

 

[Brandon E.]

Ok thanks, pretty much what I needed to know. I see in you're sig that you use TH1 on your macbook, do you think its up to par with all the free amp sims we have around here? Maybe it would be worth just buying a good mac supported amp suite instead of running 2 OSes

 

[006]

Honestly, I would avoid putting Windows on your machine, just buy Crossover (~$40) and you can install and run EXEs on OSX without having Windows installed at all. You can install Windows Reaper and run/record the ampsim tracks with that. Or if you have a DAW that has a Win version then install that instead, maybe Cubase or PTLE... whatever.

This way you avoid having to partition your drive, you avoid Windows security issues, you avoid having to dual boot. Seems worth it to me

 

[Metaltastic]

I've never heard of that program or functionality Mike; is it basically like an emulator for .exe's? (and thus does it increase CPU use since it has to convert in real-time, like parallels)

 

[006]

It's no different on the CPU than running it "native" in OSX. It just allows you to run EXEs. I've seen it in action running Reaper with a few common Win-only plugs. Only thing that sucks is that you have to run a Windows version of the DAW in order to run the plug-ins. I wish someone would just port those plugs over to OSX already...

 

[-Loco-]

yeah what he's saying is you can get like parallels for your mac but tbh you are talking to the right guy because i've tried to get my setup to run consistently for ages and im using mac pro + windows xp dual boot.

Boot camp is really easy to install, disks can be reaaaaaally susceptible to corruption when you have the dual boot though - i find anyway. I had to repartition twice.

My mac pro at the moment is running kinda slow but i've got 8 cores with only 2Gb of ram and XP only registers up to 3GB so im looking to get windows 7 in the future, Notch my memory up to a comfortable 4GB and tear shit up! are you looking at getting a new mac for boot camp or is this for your existing macbook?

i think in terms of memory usage you'll get alot more out of using your OSX than XP on your macbook. If you absolutely cant live without the amp sims though then shove XP on there. Interface problems are a BITCH so hard to find one thats working - at least for the firewire chipset in the mac pro's i had to sell my saffirepro and am only recently acquiring a profire2626(m-audio seem to be the only company that actually gave a shit about this issue)

there is a fix for this problem under bootcamp though so i dont know if interface choice is more flexible!

hope this helps

 

[Kazrog]

If you want to use Windows for music software on your Mac, particularly if zero-latency is important, you must use Boot Camp. Any kind of virtual machine scenario is HELL for audio. Conversely, dual booting with Boot Camp makes it as seamless as it would be on any Windows PC.

 

[Carcass29]

I have the Macbook Pro 08 version 2.5g 7200 with TI chip Bootcamped with XP...althought I feel the same way...can't live without m XP programs. I'm entertaining the idea of selling my MBP because it doesn't seem really stable...it works decent but when running alot of plugins, it crashes.(blue screen of death) I would try that OSX Exe program if it works and keep your Mac a Mac.

 

[Brandon E.]

If you want to use Windows for music software on your Mac, particularly if zero-latency is important, you must use Boot Camp. Any kind of virtual machine scenario is HELL for audio. Conversely, dual booting with Boot Camp makes it as seamless as it would be on any Windows PC.

Hmm, So it's really just the same thing a dual booting on a windows PC? Because I used to "dual" boot like 3 operating systems on my PC without any stability problems, so I don't really understand why doing it on a mac would be a problem, especially when nowadays macs are pretty much PCs as far as hardware goes...The specs on the newest macbook pro's are almost identical to my PC. On the other hand if it really is a problem I'll go ahead and purchase a copy of Revalver/TH1/Whatever...

Interface problems are a BITCH so hard to find one thats working - at least for the firewire chipset in the mac pro's

That's strange, everything I've read seems to indicate that Macbook Pros use the TI firewire chipset, except for in 2007 when they briefly switched to the Agere chipset. One of the reasons I want a Macbook Pro is because of the TI chipset, it's nearly impossible to find another laptop that uses it. Which is yours?

 

[mick thompson]

I've never heard of that program or functionality Mike; is it basically like an emulator for .exe's? (and thus does it increase CPU use since it has to convert in real-time, like parallels)

yea he's right, crossover (used for exe gaming etc in osx) it emulates a standard windows machine creating a virtual c drive, emulation of processes and hardware resources - it draws some data from osx such as your current drives, audio outs etc and all this is contained in whats called a bottle

i can honestly say i have never enjoyed or successfully ran crossover without problems - its slow as fuck, very buggy and its just a general nightmare of an app. its en-evadable that happens when emulating something as large as an OS's structure and attempting to emulate the language between x86 software and half emulated hardware

 

[updog]

I see in you're sig that you use TH1 on your macbook, do you think its up to par with all the free amp sims we have around here?

I like it. I originally bought it to be an all-rounder, and I think it works pretty well for different stuff. It's also pretty light on your cpu.

Some seem to think the 5150 in it is fizzy, but I don't think it's bad.

Here's a little something that hasn't been mixed, just some random riffs I laid together for a project. Double tracked guitars.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2314572/piisi1.mp3

 

[-Loco-]

That's strange, everything I've read seems to indicate that Macbook Pros use the TI firewire chipset, except for in 2007 when they briefly switched to the Agere chipset. One of the reasons I want a Macbook Pro is because of the TI chipset, it's nearly impossible to find another laptop that uses it. Which is yours?

it's not the texas instruments device its to do with a data sync rate between the interface and the chipset because of shitty drivers which they didn't bother to fix for ages. Although for some reason patching XP with a driver from any copy of vista seems to sort the problem. Hopefully,they've fixed it all by now!
and i'll find out at the weekend when i get my profire

 

[MF_Kitten]

i run windows xp using boot camp for gaming purposes, and it´s the best "pc" i´ve ever had

sadly, my firewire interface won´t work with it. i read up on it, and apparently it´s got something to do with the firewire chipset not working across to the windows platform...

 

[updog]

i run windows xp using boot camp for gaming purposes, and it´s the best "pc" i´ve ever had

sadly, my firewire interface won´t work with it. i read up on it, and apparently it´s got something to do with the firewire chipset not working across to the windows platform...

Yeah, my interface never worked properly on Bootcamp either...

 

[006]

Weird, the only experience I had with Crossover was perfectly fine... but I digress.