MIDI latency in Parallels?

B

buckaroo

Member
I'm working on a Macbook Pro with Windows XP via Parallels and wondered if there was a better way to get the latency down?

I have a USB M-Audio Keyboard attached and in Parallels can easily switch this one keyboard to play on either the Mac or Windows side.

I am using programs like Reaper, with some Windows only VST's at a low latency. And although they play fine : the latency is 'just' slightly out so its annoying when recording MIDI that its just off and a slight delay between key and sound.

I have this latency down to 256ms but think this is down to parallels that this is delayed, as on the Mac I can have 512ms or 1024ms and its very sharp and un-noticeable.

Any ideas on how to get the latency down through Parallels?
 
Yes, I'm not sure there's a way around it unless the Parallels team knows?

Surely there must be alot of users switching their keyboard between the two OS's?
 
Bro , have you manage to solve the latency issue? I was thinking of getting a usb audio interface. That will solve the problem for sure..
 
No I 'm afraid not as I still haven't heard a single thing from the Mods or Parallels themselves even after sending a ticket!

I use a USB interface, and its still no better. I want to switch my USB Keyboard into Parallels and reduce the latency this way (which works, but the latency is still too great)

:(
 
I have found a work around that seems to work ok most of the time, but I agree Parallels are lame for not create a virtual midi device as part of the Virtual Machine. Apple makes it very easy to create virtual midi devices, very small amount of code, and if Parallels team did that, then on parallels side it appears as windows midi device and on Apple it appears as virtual midi device, or they could tap into IAC. There are a number of ways... In any case, first reiterate, I have asked Parallels folks for this myself over the past couple years and they acknowledged my question, but obviously did nothing about it. Pitty.

Anyway, here is work around. Get rtpMidi, its a free download: http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/rtpMIDI.html

Once you have that installed into your windows environment, it can communicate with standard apple IAC-network. My testing so far showed zero ms network latency and seemed to work quite well. If the windows program has the ability to create a larger midi buffer, that might also eliminate any jitter from VM slowdown, but so far I found it worked quite great. I was piping midi out of Jammer Pro under parallels, into Digital Performer, and recording 12 midi tracks at once.

Just wanted to share this work around.

Now if the parallels team would just please consider adding a virtual midi device to the VM or an IAC VM midi device, many of us would be very happy. By the way, that would probably be a much better way to get midi to your OSX hardware midi devices from windows as well. Let the OSX USB driver handle all the hardware layer and just have parallels shuffle the midi out using IAC, should be very transparent on the Parallels-VM side of things.

buckaroo, I think using the stuff I just mentioned, you can find a way to route midi to your USB device. The IAC network utility has a way for routing, and if that fails, try the Midi patchbay program to get it there. I believe this will be much lower latency then trying to run the usb hardware driver under parallels-windows.

try it
 
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