I'm using ASIO4ALL within W2K and it works perfectly. I even set the buffer down to 256 and get very good performance. I tried MIDIOverLan and found that ipMIDI was faster and more reliable. I use both FLStudio 5.02 and eXT as hosts in W2K. By using Wormhole, I can even send audio to my Mac host. There are several reasons I do this:
1. Reaktor is not a Universal Binary, yet.
2. There's a lot of good Windows VSTi's that don't exist in the Mac world.
3. By setting up my Windows DAW as a "effects rack", I can use it like outboard gear with full delay compensation handled by my host.
4. ipMIDI allows me play my USB keyboard thru my Mac and into the Windows DAW. I get about 15ms latency (fully loaded DAW) which isn't too bad for playing pads (Atmosphere, STS-21, Protoplasm Pro) and tweaking controls in Reaktor. With a single VST or Reaktor in standalone mode, latency is around 10ms or less.
Though you can sync MIDI via the LAN, it's not sample accurate. I usually record loops and send them down to my Mac DAW for editing.
Right now, this is the most stable system I've EVER run. FL Studio used to crash on me constantly on a PC but on my Mac, it's perfect. NEVER crashed, yet! It's actually spooky.
The only thing I hate about Parallels is how it handles USB MIDI. It doesn't work at all. I've tried six different manufacturers MIDI controllers and none of them work. Coreaudio grabs it and won't let it go. VM Fusion has a clever way of handling it; it slays the MIDI device and allows Windows to take over. That's VERY cool. I've been trying to figure out the command in a terminal window but haven't been successful, yet.
Once the UB versions of all my software come out, I'll probaby stop using Parallels. In the meantime, I'm having a blast playing in "both worlds".
What I'd love to see is Parallels come up with their own ASIO driver that talks directly to Coreaudio and a USB solution that works like VMWare. Music guys would love it.
Cheers.
-Dale
Edit: I just wanted to add that the ASIO4ALL driver is working with the emulated soundcard within W2K and NOT the Presonus. The sound does go out the Presonus (Firewire) device, though. It's pretty spooky but it works great. Win2K doesn't know that the Firewire device is there.
Last edited: Nov 13, 2006