Anyone using a Apple Mac with Hoster

[Stefan]

I believe the new Mac can simulate or operate a Windows OS. Anyone doing this?

[Deeter]

I'm wanting to know the same thing. It's time to upgrade the old laptop and if Hoster will run on a Mac I'm headed that way. My only concern is finding a good external sound card to replace my Audigy IIGS I'm using now.

[Stefan]

I got the Macbook Pro and have a program called Boot Camp that will let me start up in Windows 7. Goes good so far. I now have the the best of both worlds.

Watch this space.

[mgrowolski]

Originally Posted by Deeter

I'm wanting to know the same thing. It's time to upgrade the old laptop and if Hoster will run on a Mac I'm headed that way. My only concern is finding a good external sound card to replace my Audigy IIGS I'm using now.

Try the ESI Gigaport 8 channel sound card been using them for 5 years no problemt all

[rmryanjr]

Originally Posted by Deeter

I'm wanting to know the same thing. It's time to upgrade the old laptop and if Hoster will run on a Mac I'm headed that way. My only concern is finding a good external sound card to replace my Audigy IIGS I'm using now.

Deeter, I use the iMic from Griffen Tech... Stereo, in and out full duplex. I record all singers and burn CDs for them.

never had a problem at $29 bucks (just found it on sale). it opens nice features in XP and Vista sound properties.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/

Bob

[Deeter]

OK so I'm typing this right now on my new Macbook Pro with Parallels desktop running Windows 7 Pro. I got Hoster all installed and migrated over from my old Vista laptop- all my songs are there and my singers are as well.
Should I disable UAC since all my songs are on the hard drive- not an external drive?
Any suggestions for graphics settings? I think Aero is on. I tried couple of songs and they are sweeping way slow at -.5.
I set up the virtual machine memory at 2 gigs ram. I could push it farther since when I use Hoster I won't be running any other programs.
So far everything looks great if I can resolve the graphics sweep slowness. I have a USB external sound card on the way so can't wait to see how that works.....

[ddouglass]

Look at the same webpage for Vista settings. It now has the differences on it for Windows 7 as well.

[Deeter]

Found it - thanks

[Deeter]

OK so I made all the changes recommended for Windows, turned off Aero, etc. and Hoster is still sweeping slow. On the default "0" the music is so far ahead of the lyrincs the singing on a known song has started before Hoster stops drawing the song splash screen. I've tried setting the offset as far as it will go negative and it's still behind the music. I really had hoped to get this to work. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

[ddouglass]

Deeter, you are in "uncharted waters" here. MTU doesn't support any Mac operating systems. This set-up (Parallels desktop running Windows 7 Pro) may be ok for things that do not require hi speed syncronization. Consider that when you are running this emulation you also have the Mac O/S and who knows what else running in the background to acomplish this.
We don't even know if the controls for this emulation are the same as an Intel Windows 7. If some of those controls are not turned off your sync will be off.

[Deeter]

Yeah, I realize I am in the tall grass here. Since I am purely a recreational Hoster user, it's not super-critical to get this working immediately. I am on the way to China for 3 weeks, but when I get back I'm going to try to get Hoster going- maybe using bootcamp and XP if I have to. I'd sure like to make this work on the mac, but if I have to I'll pick up a barebones laptop just for Hoster.
If anyone has any helpful hints about how best to configure Parallels, I'm all ears!

[MTUSUPPORT]

You can change the sweep settings to try to sync it up under the Tools Menu\Options. Select at least -0.25 and that should help, keep going lower if its still out of sync until you find a good median that seems to work for you.

[Deeter]

Bryan-
Thanks for the help but that's not working. I've set it as low as -2 and it still runs behind the music. I'm getting close, though, by playing with the screen resolution and the offset. I was able to get a pretty close match by setting the screen resolution at 1024x768 and running a -.5 offset. The behavior at those settings is as follows- the lyrics page shows up, then there is a slight hesitation on the first line of lyrics then the rest are in sync. It does this on each page of lyrics.
As I said, I think I'm getting close. When I get back in country I think bootcamp and XP is the next thing to try. I hoped to get it working in Parallels since I have 2 full gigs allocated to the virtual machine.

[ddouglass]

Hoster is optimized to work at 1024x768 and 800x600.

[Deeter]

Yeah, that's what I use to run at - the laptop at 1024x768 and the monitor and the TV at 800x600. Just got a new TV and it supports 1024x768 so now I'm running that setup. But I haven't got to the point where Hoster is working well enough on the Mac alone to even try plugging in the other monitors.

[Deeter]

Dale-
I saw in another thread that a keychange problem with 4.11 was fixed by upgrading Windows Media Player to 11. If I remember correctly I haven't done any set-up of the Windows Media Player in my Windows 7 Parallel installation at all. I'm wondering if going through the WMP11 set-up and preferences might help at all? In any event, I'll try it when I get back and see..........

[ddouglass]

I have a couple of computers that I have never opened WMP 11 and no problems with them. I haven't done this because this automatically starts its network service connection, which just eats up processor time. Since your Windows 7 comes with WMP 11, you may have to activate it by opening it. Just be sure to turn off everything you can in it that would run in the background, especially the automatic addition of all music files to its listings.
Also, that was for Key Change problems and not sync problems.

[Deeter]

The more I look into this the more I think the way to go may be to use Bootcamp, install a Windows partition and Windows 7 and install 3.321. I never had problems with the lyrics lagging with 3.321 and I believe it uses less resources than 4.1. I'll try when I get back....

[Deeter]

OK update time. Uninstalled Parallels and ran Boot Camp and reinstalled Windows 7. Went through all the updates, etc and reinstalled Hoster. Since I didn't quite allocate enough space to the partition () I left the KMA files on an external drive and pointed to them and rebuilt the songs database. Fired up a particularly "fast" song and it looks like it's tracking perfectly. So 4.1 seems to be working fine. I've ordered and backordered and cancelled one place for the ESI Gigaport HD external USB sound card and still waiting on it to come in. Then it will be time to pull out all the equipment and give it a full run through.

[Deeter]

Update-
I'm glad to report that I have Hoster running perfectly on the MacBook Pro using Bootcamp and Windows7 Pro. Video out works using a simple VGA Y-splitter cable ($4.99) and one 75' cable run and another 15' run to two separate monitors- one being a Sony Bravia 52" LCD. I tried a USB external sound card (Audio 2 DJ) but cannot get the sound completely right. There is an intermittent "crackling" that persists throughout the songs and even background audio MP3s as well. Interestingly, the crackling is not present in WMP or Winamp, only in Hoster. Booting in the Mac using Snow Leopard and kJams the crackling isn't present so I believe it to be a Windows Audio 2 DJ driver issue? Anyway, sound is fine using Hoster and going out through the headphone jack through a rolls-off type filter and then into the Mackie mixer.