Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[Dewdman42]

In any case, there is really only one way presently to run Jamstix on a mac. It is with crossover (or Wine if you are brave). Wine is free and is essentially the same thing as Crossover, but you will have to figure out more about how to configure it, the commercial version (Crossover) works more easily out of the box.

Trying to use VMWare, Parallels or anything of that nature will not work well, it is too much of a serious hit and the midi information is not transferred in/out of those environments. I already went down the path of trying VMware, but its just too heavy weight.

However, the good news is that Crossover works absolutely great, the timing is solid, the midi and audio can be ported in/out of crossover using IAC and JackOSX. It also is not running a complete VM so its much more performant. CrossoverMac is your ticket. For a while CrossoverGames seemed to work and CrossoverMac didn't, but as I understand it CrossoverMac has been since updated and probably will work.

I've also managed to get several other windows VST's working under crossover, including Cobalt and OP-X, neither of which are available natively on OSX as of yet.

CrossOver works.

[BoxOfSnoo]

Check this out: http://rayzoon2.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4043 It's taking a lot of resources, so they must be doing something!

I have also run it OK in Fusion, but it's a bit confused with the sound card, it's a challenge. Crossover works OK, but I can't get my GearBox Plugin to work because it needs Windows drivers to activate. I need to have my plugins consolidated on a single platform...

Explain your IAC and JackOSX techniques? I might be able to work with that.

[Dewdman42]

I thought I wrote a detailed explanation once already on this forum somewhere. Please try to search for it. If you search for JackOSX, you might find it.

Anyway, what happens is that JackOSX and JackASIO will provide to your windows program a virtual soundcard device which essentially pipes the audio out of your windows program into the JackOSX wiring, which you can then route to any mac program you want....or visa versa.

IAC is built into OSX and you can also create virtual midi ports a number of different ways under OSX and those virtual midi ports will show up inside Crossover (crossover automatically shares the same midi busses with windows)... so you can pipe midi in and out. It works great.

If you have another plugin that requires a dongle or some other windows driver, then you're SOL that is probably not ever gonna work for you on a mac.

[Dewdman42]

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[Dewdman42]

Hmmm, maybe I didn't type a nice guide here. I thought I did. I can't find it now. I will look and see if I can find my notes and type up a guide if I get some time. I had to go to a number of different places to find all the stuff I needed and pull it together.

- CrossOver Mac
- JackOSX
- wineasio
- VST host of some kind (Reaper, EnergyXT, etc).

Get to know JackOSX, that routes audio around between applications in OSX with virtual audio ports. The Wineasio thing basically makes a JackOSX audio port appear to windows apps in crossover as a virtual ASIO audio interface. wineasio is hard to find in compiled form, but its out there. Let me know if you can't find it and I will try to track it down.

virtual midi ports are built into OSX and crossover will share all of them.

[Dewdman42]

Alright. I take it back, Jamstix is no longer working with the latest versions of CrossOver Mac. Very sad. maybe we can figure it out.

Under the latest CXMac 7.1.0, wineasio does not function at all, but otherwise everything seems to work ok.

Under CXGames 7.1.1, the wineasio works fine, but opening up any jamstix
dialog box such as Options, the window slides down the screen until its off the edge of the screen and the app remains frozen after that.

I'm not sure why CXGames has this window behavior while CXMac does not. kind of strange.

I also tried to use virtual midi ports from CXMac straight to DP and I can get it working but the midi timing is horrendous that way. Something in the chain is causing a lot of inconsistent latency. Unusable that way either.

So I guess until further notice, CXMac does not work with Jamstix. I can't rememember which version of CrossOverMac I was using where I had it all working but if I can figure that out I will roll back to that version and then just hope for Ralph to finish the mac version of Jamstix which will really just make my day.

[Lud_wig]

I gave up on this. It's a great app but not worth all this. Seems to be a one way street and I'm not liking that one bit. At least provide us with an update or starter version.
It's even starting to get funny how we all trying to figure out how to get it working.
I bet a lot of previous Jamstix users who switched to mac gave up on this and just got a sample library with grooves like BFD or Superior Drummer 2 (EZ player).

So good luck to you all and dont keep your hopes up on this one, move on and start building tracks again lads.

If I get thrown out of here because of this take care and see you around.

[Ralph [RZ]]

I fully understand your frustration, Ludwig.

Porting Jamstix to Mac has turned out to be anything but easy. On one hand is our Delphi code base, which must be fully ported to C and then there are the complexities of Jamstix meeting the differences of Mac and PC. On top of that come all the other things we need to do to keep Rayzoon rolling and keep putting out udpates and expansions for the existing (PC) Jamstix owners. The result is that we simply need more time to get the Mac port done. We appreciate everyone's patience as we move ahead towards that goal.
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[spitfire31]

Ralph,

As they say – if it were easy, anybody could do it…

Seriously, I think that all of us on Macs truly appreciate the fact the the Jamstix Macification is indeed in the works!

And it's certainly better to have us wait a bit longer and be assured of a robust and stable Macstix, than stressing out a half baked product that has to be endlessly tweaked and updated.

The main thing is that we know that eventually, Jamstix Mac will come to him/her who waits patiently.

Best,

Joey

[BoxOfSnoo]

Yeah, Ludwig, I understand why you're distressed, but no need to be too impatient. I'd say Ralph only just started on the Mac version, so it's waaaay to soon to be frustrated.

Besides, one thing about Rayzoon is they are startlingly QUICK with responses to customer requests, so it's not going to delay any longer than it needs to.

Ralph still needs a week off, too, remember. The poor guy probably rarely sleeps as it is.

Macstix heh, I like it.

[Dewdman42]

ok!!!! I got it working again. I'm still looking forward to the real mac version, but at least until then, I have it working...



That is Jamstix2 with Digital Performer and Superior2. What you can't hear is that I am actually hearing Jamstix sounds and Superior2 sounds at the same time, in sync, tight, sounds great.

Here is the setup:

- Install Codeweavers CrossoverGames v7.0.0

- Install wineasio

- Install EnergyXT2

- Install Jamstix2

- Update jamstix.ini file with BlockMouseMouse=1

- Add Jamstix arcana skin

---------------------------
Notes about setup
---------------------------

The most recent versions of CrossoverMac and CrossoverGames are having wierd problems. But this version of CrossoverGames seems to work. There is a version of CrossoverMac that will work too, but I didn't look for it. You are free to download all the old versions from their website, you should be able to find out. 7.0.0 is the newst version of CrossoverGames that will work with Jamstix.

I use EnergyXT2 for the vst host. It works great. You are free to try something else. Think light.

That BlockMouseMove entry in the ini file does not work with jamstix 2.0. You have to update a few versions before it will recognize it and fix the problem that occurs otherwise.

--------------------------
Notes about running it
--------------------------

Digital Performer has a way to create virtual midi ports. I created a virtual midi port in DP and then sent the midi output from EnergyXT to DP through that virtual midi port. The Superior2 drums are being hosted inside DP and they are sounding.

You have to make sure you start JackOSX before trying to launch EnergyXT and using wineasio with it.

I have found that the midi out from EnergyXT or crossover is a little weird, sometimes it won't be established unless I start it playing and then while its playing go into setup and select the virtual midi port..then it started working. It took a lot of fooling around to get there, but it finally did and the timing of the midi is tight in sync with the audio I hear coming out of Jamstix.

I'm not sure what else there is to say about it. Took a while to figure this out, but its working. That being said, having the real JamstixOSX will be a million times easier so I look forward to it, but at least I can use Jamstix with DP still.

ps - I also got OP-X and Cobalt working on CrossoverGames as well, the only other two irreplaceable windows-only VST's I have.

[funktional]

Hi
I used to run jamstix with vmvare fusion and the parallels before my wife has bought a pc notebook.IMHO the jamstix is one of the best software
I have encoutered so far.Just for jamstix I had bought the vmvare fusion and the parallels.İ like fusions performance better and I had decent results with jamstix.http://rayzoon.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2872
I am looking for the native mac version and I think is not that easy to translate everything to mac.But the day becomes available it will be a good day for a mac user like me.But I think if Ralph says is gonna be done that means is gonna be done beautifully
peace
burak

[Dewdman42]

Well I still found one more glitch in the Jamstix on Mac scenario. The vst host I am trying to use, EnergyXT, does not support any kind of midi sync. So there is no way for me to have it controlled by Digital Performer or visa versa for syncing up jamstix with the host.

I can still use it to work out some beats and copy the midi files out over to my house, that is fine.

Anyone have any suggestions for other vst hosts that can receive midi clock messages and start/stop messages from an external midi device and can host jamstix as well?

[Brian]

I'm pretty sure Reaper will sync to incoming MIDI clock and Song Position Pointer messages.

Brian

[Dewdman42]

(sigh), I will try Reaper then. I was trying to avoid Reaper because its WAY overkill for this situation and I don't really want to have to learn it, just to host jamstix.

I have been messing around with VSTHost and Savihost for the past hour or two and they host Jamstix fine, but have little to no control over starting and stopping it, and I doubt can sync to an external sequencer either...

EnergyXT apparantly does not sync with external sequencers either.

Anyone know anything about PlogueBidule or any other simple vst hosts that can handle Jamstix appropriately such that jamstix will sync with an external sequencer? I will try writing to the author of VSTHost to see if he will get more interested in adding support for this into VSTHost, but I will need to know more about how Jamstix syncs with a sequencer-as-host in order to be able to ask them for help.

Next stop, Reaper...