Downloading the upgrade for Parallels Desktop build 5584 (from build 5582)

Thank you. Yes, the sound is quite good on most programs. But I have one piece of software that plays the hymns from our hymnbook and the sound is not so good on that program. If you can find something else that might be helpful I will be thankful.

 

I've been reading this discussion thread, and I'm wondering... From your most recent message, it seems like the software that plays hymns could be what you are trying to get to work better under Parallels when running that particular windows software. Just out of curiousity, what software is that? Also, those hymns that you are playing, are they recordings in a particular file format like .MP3?

The other guess that I have is that maybe you have some sort of MIDI player that you enter the notes into or that you have .MID files that are played by that software? I know with midi files that the music can be awful and sound more toy-like with some software on some PCs but then sound like orchestras on another PC running different software. I've heard this effect with the different sounds of the music from the midi files on the different PCs and softwares that I have and I've even heard these differences on different iPod-type devices that I have where I have loaded a midi file. If you're not dealing with midi files, then I would be interested in finding out which software you are using.

Just asking because I'm wondering if you can play other music like CDs or regular MP3 files or WMA files under Parallels/Windows on your computer.... because you say that the sound is good on most programs.

 

The sound is pretty good on other programs and it wasn't there at all prior to all this stuff I did as advised by Xenos (I think that was who it was). The program I am using to play hymns is a hymnal. I don't know what type of files it uses, but it says it was created with Macromedia if that tells you anything.

 

Kathleen, please try to use Macromedia Flash Player to play hymns.

Best regards,
Xenos

 

I'm wondering who is the publisher/maker of your "Hymnal" software. I don't think Macromedia makes software called "Hymnal" but my guess is that someone used Macromedia software to create that "Hymnal" software. My guess is that your software could be some sort of flash player that someone created for specific use with midi files that happened to be for hymns. (My guess is that you could probably use that "Hymnal" software is to play any midi file for any music.) If my guess is correct that you really have each of your hymns as midi files (with a filename like "Holy Something.mid"), then you could always try playing the midi files in Windows Media Player while you are in Parallels/Windows, or even try to play the midi files in iTunes when you are on the Mac side of your computer. You'll have to find where the midi files are on your computer if my guess is correct that each of your hymns are in midi files.

 

Okay. That works. Except that it is quite cumbersome to go back and forth using the software program in Windows to sort and locate particular hymns that fit a service and then moving back into the Mac to listen to those files. At this point, I have located the files (and they are midi files) and copied them into my shared folder so that they can be accessed by the Mac. Any more ideas of how I might make this a little more streamlined?

 

The publisher of the hymnal (which is the Presbyterian Hymnal) is Westminster John Knox Press in Louisville KY. The software was actually created to be Mac compatible, but is not compatible with Leopard because it requires "classic" whatever that is.

 

The mac version of your "Hymnal" software was probably written for OS9 (hence the "classic") which is before Mac OS X. I still have an an eMac that has Mac OS X 10.1 with a built-in "classic" emulator for running old OS9 software. Think of the "classic" emulator as something like a "Parallels" for running old incompatible OS9 on Mac OS X. I haven't bothered to upgrade my eMac to a newer version of Mac OS X because I want that "classic" emulator for running the old OS9 software that I have. So I could probably run that other mac version of your "Hymnal" software on my old eMac. But I use my Macbook most of the time now and the more current versions of Mac OS X don't have the "classic" emulator anymore.

So, what you could probably do now is make a subdirectory (maybe music\midi or music\hymns where the subdirectory is inside your mac user default music directory) on the mac side of your computer, then go into that subdirectory and copy all of your midi files to that new subdirectory. Then you could try importing those files into iTunes. I have some .MID files in my music directory on the mac side of my Macbook, but they are not showing up in my iTunes -- or I simply can't find them since I have so much other music on my Macbook. But I think they may not be showing up in my iTunes because they are so much smaller at only a few kilobytes in size than modern music files (MP3, AAC, etc. which are larger at a few megabytes in size per file) and iTunes may be ignoring the much smaller midi files. (Oh well I'll have to figure that out.) So if your midi files don't show up in iTunes, what you could instead do is use Finder to go to the subdirectory that you made on the mac side of your computer and double-click those files one at a time and QuickTime will turn on to individually play the file.

Otherwise, you can keep those midi files on the windows/parallels side of your computer, and have Windows Media Player play the midi files under windows. I could go into more detail as to how I would do this myself under windows, but it seems like that you now want to do this all on the mac side of your computer at this point. If so, this is fast becoming no longer a problem of running this under Parallels/Windows.

Whichever way you go, hopefully they'll all sound okay to you.