ross(a)jose.lug.udel.edu wrote: I had a similar problem to run my favorite Windows apps (SONAR and Rebirth) on Linux. Wine doesn't work at all for SONAR, and Cakewalk developers are not going to work in this direction. Most open source virtual machines are Linux-only and do not support Windows as guest OS (Xen, plex86, ...). The results with Qemu were not good at all -- very bad performance in fact. The best result I have got is with VMWare. Actually, I am able to run SONAR very well in VMWare: no dropout, adequate performance (you won't get the same track count as with native Windows, though). This is the only working solution I found. However, the audio support in VMWare is minimalistic: no MIDI and emulated audio I/O is a SB16 PCI (one stereo pair, 16 bits, 44.1kHz -- no 24/96, no multi-I/O, but there are WDM drivers). I tried various solution for MIDI. Bad results with OSC/UDP (bad timing, too much jitter). Bad results with KeyKit. Finally, I found a much better (no network) MIDI solution: I install a MIDI/serial driver in Windows, I configure a serial/named pipe in VMWare, and I wrote a small named-pipe-to-alsa bridge; this solution works, good timing, low jitter. The only drawback is that I get only one MIDI port (the Roland MIDI/serial driver I use doesn't support multiple ports), but I guess I may find another driver that supports multiple ports. You can download a demo of VMWare and make yourself your opinion about its use for audio. I will release shortly my MIDI bridge. I am even considering writing a Jack backend for VMWareDSP, but don't hold your breath for it. Hope it helps. -a.

On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 18:16 -0400, ross(a)jose.lug.udel.edu wrote: Sorry, I think you're trying to bang a square peg into a round hole. VMWare obviously was not designed for serious audio use, why would you expect it to work? Why can't you use Wine again? Lee

On Sun, 2005-06-05 at 02:19 +0200, Alexandre DENIS wrote: Wine, being open source, is designed to do whatever the developers want it to, whereas VMWare is a commercial closed source product with a different target market, so there's absolutely no incentive for them to make the sound work any better than it does now. There's at least a chance of fixing the problem with Wine. Well, what do the Wine people say about it? Did you submit a bug report? Lee

ix(a)replic.net wrote: More precisely, Wine is always one step behind. When Cakewalk needed NT4 emulation, Wine was good at running old win95 versions of Cakewalk; now that SONAR requires XP, Wine can hardly run old NT4 versions. Running SONAR with Wine has been discussed many times on winhq and even on the Cakewalk forum. No luck, they are doing native Windows software and are not willing to do any effort to help SONAR run with Wine. I have used a dual-boot system for a long time: Windows for audio, Linux for anything else. Now, I want to switch to Linux even for audio, but I'm still in a transitional phase. I have been a Cakewalk user for 15 years since my old Cakewalk Apprentice, and thus I have accumulated a lot of audio work in Cakewalk format (not readable in any Linux software), with tracks using the Cakewalk Direct X plugins (Direct X, not VST, so no jack_fst or whatever). I know that using proprietary software sucks --that's why I am migrating to Linux even for audio-- but the transition is not as easy as I wanted. Using VMware is the only solution that actually works among my numerous tests. The second most promising solution is Qemu. Maybe I should try harder with Qemu instead of VMware. -a.

Hi Very well put!! I think your brave to consider Linux here in a live environment . It will get better and as we all help out by using/testing/feedback, it will develop faster than cakewalk and others. Thing is will cakewalk survive? It seems there will be more consolidation in the music market and not always the best software survives. Will Sonar still be here? I think a lot of the propriety software arguments forget this. If the company is bought out, thats it, gone. It may survive in name only but normally the stuff you bought it for is changed. Just my 2p's worth bob On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 16:14 -0500, Russell Hanaghan wrote:

On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 04:58:35PM -0400, Lee Revell wrote: It looks like contemporary versions of Wine have some oddness in their handling of fonts. If I do a default installation of Cakewalk, it crashes upon startup. I read on winehq.com this is often due to font mapping issues that have failed to install Cakewalk's music notation TrueType Font. The suggested solution is to copy the .ttf to $wineroot/windows/fonts. After doing this copy, Cakewalk starts and runs properly! Unfortuantely, it uses the musical notation font for everything. I've tried a couple of font hacks to get around this. Anything I do that makes the default Windows fonts available again, BOOM, Cakewalk crashes on startup. And no, I didn't submit a bug to Wine - it's documented in their app database, and has been since last Feb. The point of me writing music is to write *music*, not software. Everytime I try to get my composition environment running again, I end up getting sucked into the software, so I thought I'd try a different tact. I'm trying to avoid moving back to dual booting, or buying another computer. At this point, Alexandre's work is my last hope. -- Ross Vandegrift ross(a)lug.udel.edu "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell." --St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37