speeding up virtual pc

[danielhf]

Hello all! I am running a 1.67 ghz powerbook with 2 gb of ram. I need to do an audio mastering project, and I hate using pro tools for mastering, and I can't (and don't want to) afford Bias Peark Pro 5.

I have been using virtual PC to run Sonic Foundry Sound Forge, and it is slower than slow. It's completely ususable. Is there any way to speed it up?

Daniel

[ElDiabloConCaca]

VirtualPC is not suited for processor-intensive, professional-level tasks -- not even on the fastest G5 processors. Video editing, audio editing, heavy image editing and gaming are all things that are best run natively, not under emulation.

You can try turning off all eye candy in Windows, like disabling fading menus and performance-type things like that for a negligible boost, but other than that, VirtualPC runs like VirtualPC does.

[Thank The Cheese]

have you tried tinkering in the PC Memory settings? (see image attached).

get to it by clicking on the small chip icon at the very bottom of the virtual pc window (sixth from the left, next to the printer icon). Must be in windowed mode to show up I think. Anyway, when you click it choose CPU Usage options, then in the new window click on Oopen PC Settings... button at the bottonm-left.

When you click that, a new window will pop up and you need to click on PC Memory int he list to the left (if you need to, shoudl already be selected though)

But ElDiablo is right -- anything to do with playback of video or audio is crap in Virtual PC. I have heard of people using 3D Studio Max in Virtual PC -- but that was with a PowerMac G5 with dual core and Maxed-out RAM, and even then it was crap for anything more complex than a couple of boxes and a sphere.

[adambyte]

Hmmm... rather than trying to get Virtual PC up to a speed where you can use it with an audio app (darn near impossible), why don't you just try another audio app? What, specifically is your audio project? What kind of editor are you looking for? There's LOTS of Mac OS X audio apps, and one of them is bound to be suitable for what you want to do and the way you want to work.

You can find all sorts of audio apps at http://www.bigbluelounge.com/ . Great place for audio of any sort.