Sound quality in VPC7

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markg5@SPAMBLOCKmyrealbox.com - 28 Mar 2005 13:41 GMT

I know it isn't supposed to be brilliant, but I am experiencing problems with
the sound on my G4 iMac (1.25GHz), running VPC7+xp, under 10.3.8.

A couple of progs tried so far give the same problem - static and stuttering,
with "echoing" at times. This surprises me as I have read about those using
VPC to watch video and listen to music. One of the progs causing trouble is
ReBirth (demo) from Propellerheads. It does a check before it runs and claims
my machine should run it easily (BGInfo says I am emulating a 660MHz PC)

Other things such as flash/video are choppy at times, so I suppose my
settings could be off.

Any ideas?

Thanks

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Mark

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TSC Support - 28 Mar 2005 15:09 GMT

> I know it isn't supposed to be brilliant, but I am experiencing problems
> with the sound on my G4 iMac (1.25GHz), running VPC7+xp, under 10.3.8.
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>
> Thanks

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do to fix that problem. That is all
normal occurances and even if you have the most powerful Mac it will still
not do any good.

It is a limitation of Virtual PC. Maybe you can try running the Flash on the
Mac side.

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Ron - 29 Mar 2005 04:38 GMT

Hi
Two weeks ago I bought a G5 Imac and today I installed Virtual pc 7 and
i am having the same sound problems that you are. Apparently tech
support for this product is $35 even to new users so this might be my
only option. I am having the problem mostly on aol 9.0. My Imac runs
beautifully except for this so I suspect that it has to do with os
10.3.8 which i also have. if you find a solution, I'd appreciate you
letting me know too.
Good Luck
Ron

> I know it isn't supposed to be brilliant, but I am experiencing problems with
> the sound on my G4 iMac (1.25GHz), running VPC7+xp, under 10.3.8.
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> Other things such as flash/video are choppy at times, so I suppose my

> settings could be off.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks

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Ryan - 29 Mar 2005 09:44 GMT

I've been having these issues with the sound on every version of
virtual pc and on every variant of apple hardware. It seems like audio
has less priority than other opperations so the audio ends up skipping
samples to keep up with the timing rather than playing the audio
correctly. It's probably a good sacrifice. Otherwise VirtualPC would
have sync issues with the audio. It would be nice if some how it could
just put a tad more priority on audio instead of just dropping samples.

The worst offender to me is the 'bootup' sound that windows plays. It
ALWAYS studders.

> Hi
> Two weeks ago I bought a G5 Imac and today I installed Virtual pc 7 and
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
> >
> > Thanks

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mmmmark - 29 Mar 2005 15:07 GMT

I've never had this audio problem, but I'm using VPC 6 on a G4 iMac. The
only time the sound goes wacky is if it is in some serious number crunching
app like a game. Normal sounds work fine, including the startup sound.

I have even successfully used a windows-only sound editor to edit .qcp files
for a cell phone.

How much physical memory do you have and how much are you allocating to VPC?

-Mark

> I've been having these issues with the sound on every version of
> virtual pc and on every variant of apple hardware. It seems like audio
[quoted text clipped - 45 lines]
> > >
> > > Thanks

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Michael Koenig - 29 Mar 2005 18:16 GMT

> I know it isn't supposed to be brilliant, but I am experiencing problems with
> the sound on my G4 iMac (1.25GHz), running VPC7+xp, under 10.3.8.

Sound is far from perfect (or even good) under Windows 2000 for me too.
Interestingly, I've had much better experience when using Windows 98
Second Edition (stripped down with 98lite).

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M.I.K.e

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mmmmark - 29 Mar 2005 19:52 GMT

Ditto that. I forgot to mention that I am using 98se which in my testing
seems to run faster on my particular computer than 2000 or XP (YMMV).

Tell me more about this 98lite. Is that a windows app that streamlines it
for bare-bones installations?

-Mark

> > I know it isn't supposed to be brilliant, but I am experiencing problems with
> > the sound on my G4 iMac (1.25GHz), running VPC7+xp, under 10.3.8.
>
> Sound is far from perfect (or even good) under Windows 2000 for me too.
> Interestingly, I've had much better experience when using Windows 98
> Second Edition (stripped down with 98lite).

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Michael Koenig - 30 Mar 2005 00:25 GMT

> Ditto that. I forgot to mention that I am using 98se which in my testing
> seems to run faster on my particular computer than 2000 or XP (YMMV).

The most demanding software I tested successfully on my 2GHz G5 with
VPC7 was Grim Fandango. I played it from beginning to end on Windows
98SE without any issues. But more demanding stuff also ran too slow and
with chopped-up sound.
Under Windows 2000 Grim Fandango isn't really that much fun, because the
sound is chopped up, and I bet it's even worse on XP, because that needs
more performance.
Surprisingly enough, Grim Fandango runs unplayable with Windows 95 due
to sound and graphics issues. I'm not totally sure if it's a driver
problem, but 98SE seems to be better in every respect but boot time and
memory need.

> Tell me more about this 98lite. Is that a windows app that streamlines it
> for bare-bones installations?

The full 98lite probably has a whole lot more features. I'm using the
free preview version:
<http://www.litepc.com/preview.html>

With only a Windows 98 CD it lets you remove the web-integration of the
desktop, thus making it faster, especially on an emulator.
If you have one of the early Windows 95 CDs as well (later ones
unfortunately had web-integration as well), you can replace the Windows
Explorer with the old version, which makes file handling much faster as
well.
If you choose the latter approach you get the better drivers and the
more stable kernel of 98, but the less cluttered desktop of 95, which
really helps the overall performance of Windows running on an emulator.

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M.I.K.e

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mmmmark - 30 Mar 2005 01:23 GMT

I'll have to dig around. I might be able to turn up a 95 CD. I wonder if
an OEM one could be coaxed into working?

Might be more trouble than I need, since I've found precious little that I
NEED to do on a PC lately. SO little, that I gave away my ancient PC
(friend's kids can use it) that I was keeping around "just in case".

Thanks!
-Mark

> > Ditto that. I forgot to mention that I am using 98se which in my testing
> > seems to run faster on my particular computer than 2000 or XP (YMMV).
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]
> more stable kernel of 98, but the less cluttered desktop of 95, which
> really helps the overall performance of Windows running on an emulator.

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Michael Koenig - 30 Mar 2005 13:24 GMT

> I'll have to dig around. I might be able to turn up a 95 CD. I wonder if
> an OEM one could be coaxed into working?

I think the OEM should be fine.
BTW, I forgot to mention that it seems to be better (at least according
to my experience) to let 98lite do its job during a fresh installation
(or rather before, since it then copies all needed installation files to
the harddrive), rather than having it performing the modifications to an
existing Windows installation.

> Might be more trouble than I need, since I've found precious little that I
> NEED to do on a PC lately. SO little, that I gave away my ancient PC
> (friend's kids can use it) that I was keeping around "just in case".

When I just got it I played around with VPC7 a lot, but I've always seen
it as a fallback measure anyway, and at the moment I hardly use it.

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M.I.K.e

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Swift - 30 Mar 2005 10:07 GMT

> I know it isn't supposed to be brilliant, but I am experiencing problems with
> the sound on my G4 iMac (1.25GHz), running VPC7+xp, under 10.3.8.

------->

> Other things such as flash/video are choppy at times, so I suppose my

> settings could be off.
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> --
> Mark

I'm running a G5, Dual 2.0 with a gig and a half of RAM, and it still
stutters.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Virtual PC / March 2005

Sound quality in VPC7