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Dewdman42 · Grand Master Jam Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 326

Jono, you are best to ask the Crossover folks. My understanding is that their license is based on a 12 month period and will include upgrade to 7.x for Mac. So if you get it now, you get both Mac and Games and all updates for one year.

Jono-60 · Jammer Joined: 14 May 2007 Posts: 33

I finally got round to trialling Crossover Games.

And yes it works!

Had to add the line in the ini file to stop windows being stuck to the mouse.

I also notice that it runs slightly smoother under EnergyXT2 than it does under Cantible.

It seems to take a bit of CPU on my macbook so Im not sure how well its going to run with Logic at the same time. Need to upgrade my RAM to 2-3GB anyway.

However I will most likely not use Jamstix in real time with Logic anyway, just as a drum assistant to give my robotic loops some life. Import the MIDI back into Logic to trigger Battery.

So while this trial lasts, I really need to figure out my workflow. Gonna be difficult though I haven't touched JS in over 6 months and I have never used JS2, gonna be a learning curve. Thanks god the weekend is coming.

Dewdman42 · Grand Master Jam Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 326

Glad you got it working. Honestly I don't think it should be hogging your CPU so much. You have an intel Macbook right? How fast is it? There is probably some investigation that might turn up something that lowers CPU. When you run win32 stuff on Wine, it will not take any more CPU than it would if you were running it under Windows directly. There are no extra layers of processing like is the case with Parallels or VMware.

That being said, I have noticed that JackOSX seems to take a fair bit of processing. So I bet if you run JS2 under EnergyXT alone that would work well for you. EnergyXT has a sequencer, so in theory you can build your drum tracks in there and then export the final midi file over to Logic. That would avoid JackOSX. I'm not sure if JackOSX is the issue or the wineasio.dll...but I do notice a fairly substantial hit on the CPU for the whole enchilada...its true. My 3.2ghz quad core hackintosh has plenty of CPU overhead left...so I'm not too worried about it, but I know what you mean.

Another thing you could try is to not route audio from JS2 back to Logic, but only route the midi out from JS2 back to Logic. Then use sound sources in Logic instead of the JS2 sounds. Again, that would avoid JackOSX. Actually now that I think about it, its perfectly possible that CoreMidi could be causing the CPU hit.

I have noticed on the windows platform that various virtual midi drivers I have tried were fairly hard on the CPU. I think this is because of the realtime nature of midi, but I'm not really sure. It could be because two audio programs are both competing for high priority CPU access at the same time also...I really don't know what is the culprit for sure.

Anyway, sounds like a fun weekend ahead for you. Good luck. I'm not sorry that I purchased CX Mac. It has a number of cool features that Darwine does not have to make adminstration easier. Plus you can create those "bottles" and even save an image of a working bottle. So when you get a bottle setup perfectly with JS2 and whatever other windows music apps you want, image that bottle and keep it safe to restore if anything gets messed up, etc.. Darwine doesn't have that. It also has a proper installer/uninstaller to add/remove programs. Also, each time you install a program using their installer, it generates a little wrapper program with the same name of the win23 app you installed so that you can place it in the doc and run it from there. Darwine does not do that either.

Also I feel good about supporting that company because they are pushing the envelope for running windows stuff on a mac without VMWare. I have been able to run a few other windows apps too that I am glad I can. When I was messing around with Darwine I ran into a few problems and eventually even corrupted my setup, etc... I went back to CX Mac and its been smooth sailing so far, plus I have the bottle imaged just in case.

Jono-60 · Jammer Joined: 14 May 2007 Posts: 33

I have been playing around with it a bit more. It only really kicks the fans off when its using the 'brain' and composing on the fly. After that, its fine.

I can't seem to get my workflow however. I can't find a way of getting the MIDI off of it and into Logic. I tried enabling MIDI out from EnergyXT and hit record in Logic but nothing gets recorded. I can see the small MIDI OUT LED in JS2 is flashing.

Oh also are you using EnergyXT 1 or 2?

ricinro · Junior Jammer Joined: 29 Jul 2006 Posts: 12

It seems that using crossover is just part of the challenge of getting JS2 working in logic. As a vst it would need to be wrapped as a AU plug-in ($$). Then I would somehow need to download JS2 again on my imac (currently it is on my old PC that my son uses).

I think JS2 is the best drummer out there that doesn't breathe but until Ralph does his magic and I can download it in the super simple apple manner, I will just need to wait. Until then I just have ultrabeat.

Dewdman42 · Grand Master Jam Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 326

No, you don't need a wrapper. You can't use jamstix inside of logic or any other mac DAW. You have to host it under Crossover using Reaper, EnergyXT or some other free/cheap vst host. Then you use CoreMidi to pipe the midi out of Logic into this win32 host you're running and JackOSX(with Wineasio) to get the audio back into Logic. Should work fine. if you want to use jamstix with Logic, you absolutely can, though admitedly, you don't have sample accurate audio rendering and drag and drop of midi into tracks, etc...but you can export the midi files and bring them over, etc..it totally works.