Pmix 6.x on a Macbook w/OSX 10.7 Lion?

[Steve]

Hello,

This weekend I hope to install Pyramix v6.x on my 2008 Macbook Pro running OSX 10.7 Lion. I've trolled the forum for info on this but am wondering if anyone has any thoughts, caveats, warnings, tips, etc on how to approach this. This will be with XP Pro SP 3.

Many thanks,
Steve

[fl]

This weekend I hope to install Pyramix v6.x on my 2008 Macbook Pro running OSX 10.7 Lion. I've trolled the forum for info on this but am wondering if anyone has any thoughts, caveats, warnings, tips, etc on how to approach this. This will be with XP Pro SP 3.

First off, I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe that the version of Boot Camp which comes with Lion, version 4, is restricted for use with Windows 7 only, so in order to run XP, you should look for a copy of the previous version, which I believe is 3.2, which is available in two versions, one for 64 bit operation and one for 32 bit operation: http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page= ... ads.search Note that while Pyramix Native version 7 is compatible with a 64 bit environment, Pyramix 6, and probably most of your plug-ins, will require a 32 bit environment.

You should find a few posts in this forum, about how to configure XP on a Mac to run audio applications with low latency. Other information can be found in the RME Forum here: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4320 - be sure to read the whole thread. More information can be found here: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1475 and here: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=974

As you'll see from those posts, there was a range of Macs produced around 2008 when Apple switched from the Texas Instruments Firewire controller, to one made by Agere/Lucent. The first generation of those would not work with many Firewire interfaces, although a workaround was to insert a Firewire hard drive in the chain between the interface and the computer. Later versions of the Agere chip were changed so that they now work fine with most interfaces. You should probably test your interface with your computer to see if it will work at all.

Once you have determined whether or not your computer can drive a Firewire interface successfully, you can move on to optimizing your system for audio. This means that you will need to apply some tweaks to Windows to insure that DPC Interrupts do not disrupt the flow of audio data. You will be able to gauge the state of your machine by using this tool: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml, but that will not tell you what is causing the DPC spikes. For that, you will need to follow the instructions found here: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140263- ... interrupt/ and here: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140264- ... d-by-apps/

For most users, this translates into disabling the Apple Keyboard driver, the Battery Monitor and the Broadcom WLAN controller. Once those sources of high DPC Interruptions are dealt with, the only thing left is to address how hot your machine will run, which will be due mostly to the graphics hardware, which on your machine is probably NVDIA. This hardware has the capability of switch between different modes of operation (high resolution 3D mode, low power 2D mode, etc.) and whenever it switches there will be a large DPC spike. Under XP you can force the graphics to remain in a low power 3D mode, which has the added benefit of requiring lower power, consequently producing less heat. Have a look on the RME Forum for posts by Timur Born, particularly message #32 onward in this thread: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4320
You will need the software found here: http://www.guru3d.com/category/rivatuner/

From there you can further optimize Windows XP for audio using guides such as those mentioned in this forum: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... audio.html

I realize this is a lot of reading, which on the face of it looks daunting. There are several members of this forum who will recommend strongly against running Pyramix under Boot Camp. However, if you are thorough, and understand the issues, it is quite possible to have a happy, stable Pyramix installation running on a Boot Camped Mac, just as I have done for the past five years.

P.S. If it drives you crazy that the layout of the modifier keys on the keyboard (Command, Alt., Control) is backwards to what you are used to on the Mac, make the necessary changes with this program: http://www.tucows.com/preview/327616

[Thomas Grubb]

Hi Steve,

Just a few notes to what you're doing as I went through the same thing just before Christmas.

XP will run in theory, but only if you update your previous 10.6 system and don't install Boot Camp 4. Having said that, I was having issues with blue screens (running Sequoia at least, and I think it rather had to do with some virus program I put on there and took off), so I wanted to reinstall the whole system. The only thing is you can't just reinstall XP under Lion - Frank is right in that Lion and Boot Camp 4 only support Windows 7. This is not all bad news as, after installing Windows 7 (32-bit) and Sequoia (version 8 which is not officially supported, but seems to be fine). everything ran without special modification - latency, while not as low as the XP install, is well within limits. The fans also seem to run better than in XP, though still quiet.

I'll be installing Native for recording at some stage, but for now, Windows 7 feels much more solid than XP did (and the special keys also work as they seem to have fixed the Bootcamp.exe problem!). I'm running the Lynx Aurora interface.

Good luck,
Tom