SONAR/PA9 on a Mac w/ Virtual PC??

  • Thread starter Thread starter David H.
  • Start date Start date
D

David H.

New member
I am a user of both Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 and Sonar XL. I run both of these on a Windows 98SE PC. I am about to purchase a laptop that will be used mostly for non-music purposes but I would like the ability to run PA 9 and SONAR XL on it as well. I am considering getting an Apple iBook with a 500MHz PowerPC G3 processor and 128MB ram (or possibly a Titanium Powerbook with a G4 proccesor) .

My question is this: is it possible to run PA9 and/or SONAR on a Mac using the the Virtual PC software that allows Macs to run Windows applications. Has anyone ever heard of this being done? If so, what kind of performance could I expect?
 
Unfortunately, I think you're dreaming. SONAR and Cakewalk use the Windows platform very heavily; they are not simple applications. Even there the drivers and stuff and the environment optimizing are right at the edge. Put all that inside an emulated environment with all the overhead that entails and I'd be surprised if it even worked at all. Maybe in two or three years when processors are so fast the overhead won't matter, but by then SONAR 2 or whatever will also have pushed its own envelope that you still wouldn't be able to run it on an enulated Windows OS on Mac hardware.
 
The more I think about, the more I think you are right.

I will probably end up going for a Wintel laptop.

Thanks,

David
 
Back
Top