Any Parallels experts out there?

[chriskleeman]

My daughter has settled on a Casio PX 575R keyboard for her California adventures with the Young Americans. The MIDI on it looks like it is only compatible with Windows, going from Windows 98 through XP, according to the manual.

She's got a Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro from the Spring, so it can run Windows. My questions are if I need Windows installed on this machine to run the MIDI program, or whether Parallels can translate the MIDI by itself? As I understand it, Parallels is only a software bridge, if you will, to run Windows.

TIA,

Chris K

[krissel]

I haven't a clue personally, but I did take a look on the Parallels' site and found this thread which indicates your answer may depend on drivers for the MIDI product.

http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?...;highlight=midi

(One of the posters obviously isn't an English speaker naturally and I had to smile at this comment about the next version of the app...)

QUOTE

i EAT all days my fingers waiting now for new releases of paralleles !!

 

Here is the support forum where you may find asking this question will get you a more complete answer.

http://forum.parallels.com/

There is also the Fusion app to consider which is mentioned elsewhere on TS.

http://www.techsurvivors.net/forums/index....showtopic=16788

[gunug]

QUOTE

i EAT all days my fingers waiting now for new releases of paralleles !!

Thanks for that quotation Krissel; I'm having trouble sleeping due to job stress (that time of
year at the school district) and the heat and that little mistranslation made my night!  

There are nice and fairly cheap MIDI/USB controllers out there ($60 was a price about six months
ago) but the software that I know about is usually pretty pricey (low margins, high prices) in the
the $600 or better price range.  I'm not a musician so my experience is with making things work
on a friends system.

I came across this software:

http://spongefork.com/midifork/1/

There was also a bunch of other stuff at Versiontracker:

http://www.versiontracker.com/php/qs.php?m...x&submit=Go

[tacit]

MIDI is MIDI is MIDI. Saying that a particular MIDI device is "Windows only" is like saying an Ethernet hub is "Windows only;" the MIDI standard has nothing to do with operating systems.

Now, if the keyboard came with some kind of custom software or some kind of proprietary USB MIDI interface or something like that, then that might be Windows-only. But MIDI in general works with anything, and you can easily find Mac MIDI sequencing software and Mac MIDI<->USB interfaces.

[chriskleeman]

Well Tacit, that's what I thought, but the Casio Manual explicitly states that their keyboard is not compatible with Mac OS... maybe you can understand what they mean by that... I can post the link to the manual if you'd like to take a look... it's on page 67-68.

I'm your basic acoustic/electric musician who has never used MIDI, but I am very well versed in recording techniques, know how to run a lot of gear, but my background is very analog. I just want to make sure that I get my daughter what she needs to do what she wants with the software, and I'm in unfamiliar territory here for sure.

Thanks,

CK

[chriskleeman]

Ok, upon further reading of the Casio manual for that keyboard, the USB interface to get to the MIDI function is what is in question. The USB driver they use is only compatible with Windows.

So, I'm back to my original question, and thanks Kris, I've posted in the Parallels forum and we'll see if there's someone out there who can shed some light on this subject.

Chris K