Hi folks, So .. there's some music software out there which ONLY runs on Windows and I was wondering about the possibility of using parallels desktop and running an instance Windows virtually on my M1 Max. Most of the work would be done in Pt and Logic but some things just need to run on Windows.

Does anyone have experience running a virtual windows instance for music production on an M1 at all? For a start it needs to be the ARM version of Windows which makes me cringe...

And one more thing - probably totally unrealistic as we're talking about virtualised and emulated code (!) - could I also run Blue Cat's Connector to link the output from this back into my host mac.

thank-you.. thoughts & experiences most welcome ....

 

You need to try it, it's actually pretty straightforward, Parallels offer you to even download Windows 11 on startup and all that, you will find all this out really quickly.

I got this to be able to run MixMeister, installed Bitwig too, both run, didn't really tested it further, I just use it for MixMeister and it runs flawlessly, both systems are synced, it uses whatever output you choose in macOS, I'm satisfied.

 

Last edited: Mar 25, 2023

Excellent thanks a lot will do

 

You can use AudioGridder too, just tried it quickly, Connector installs on Windows and there you start AudioGridder server, scan your plugins and all that, than load AudioGridder plugin on macOS side and voila.

 

Ahh I get you .. and wow I'd never heard of this software - thank-you, will try it out once I get Windows 11 and everything installed.

By the way how much diskspace do you give to Windows 11 / does it require? Or do the virtual volumes expand automatically now?

Do you use the Pro version of Parallels or just the standard version? Thanks

 

Windows 11 is using about 11 Gb, you can cut the excess of data through Parallels, to fit the real size of data in windows side.

I am interested on this too, thinking on the options:

-Audiogridder works (the gui is awfull in mac side, the button flicks)
-Sound Siphon, or Audio hijack, to take the audio of the computer on macos side. (never tried)
-Blue cat's connector. I was trying, but I wasn't able to make it work (my mac is not connected to internet)