Hello again,
Sorry for the long delay in reporting back - other things got in the way!
Using Gaia Sound Designer on a Mac
Note - if you have an M1 Mac running
Apple Silicon then you might need
to use alternative VM software (such as Parallels, UTM or Docker).
Oracle are adding support for the M1 to Virtual Box, but you may also
need QEMU as well. I'm afraid these options are out of scope of this post
and things are moving fast in the M1 space right now!
I have now had the Sound Designer running in a virtual machine
on a Mac in two ways:
- Under OSX Snow Leopard (10.6)
- Under Windows 10
Both of these virtual machines used the free Virtual Box software:
https://www.virtualbox.org/
IMPORTANT
However - and this is crucial,
you must not have the Gaia USB driver installed
on the host system.
If you install (or do not uninstall) the Gaia USB driver on your host Mac (the one
running Virtual Box) then the Gaia's USB connect cannot be passed through to the
Virtual Machine and so will not be accessible from within the VM. This means that
the Roland Gaia Sound Designer will not be able to connect to the Gaia.
You
do have to install the Gaia (SH-01) driver
inside the virtual machine!
Setting up your VM on Virtual Box
You will need a relatively recent machine with a decent amount of ram for
this to work well. However, in the 10 years since the Sound Designer was
released, computer power has increased manyfold. Any Mac from the last
few years should be fine. Check the Virtual Box system requirements to
be sure.
Download and install Virtual Box from the link above. You should also install the
Virtual Box Extension Pack.
You will require install media for either Snow Leopard or Windows 10.
I used an install DVD for Snow Leopard that I had from way back. I used
Disk Utility to make an ISO image of the DVD so I could attach it to the
VM. I have not been able to find a downloadable installer.
You do not require a license key for Snow Leopard.
The Windows 10 installer is available online:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO
For Windows 10, I would allocate a couple of CPU cores to the VM if you can.
You
do require a license key for Windows 10. You may have one already
somewhere, or they can be bought online quite cheaply. I had one already.
If I remember correctly, Windows will run OK for a while without a license
key - handy if you just want to try this out.
Note - When you have installed the operating system you should also
install the Virtual Box Guest Additions from within the VM.
Installing Roland Gaia Sound Designer
Copy the GAIA software that you can download above into the VM, along with
the Gaia USB driver installer that matches your operating system version.
I used a USB drive for this. You have to use the VM tools to attach the USB to
the VM.
Run the Gaia USB driver installer (which will probably involve restarting the VM).
Run the Gaia Sound Designer installer.
Attach your Roland Gaia to the host Mac system using a UAB cable. Then attach
the Gaia to the VM using the Virtual Box USB tools. Remember -
this will not work
if you have the Gaia USB driver installed on the host Mac system! Instead, the host
Mac will 'grab' the Gaia USB connection and you won't be able to pass it through
to the VM.
Known Issues
Aside from the need to uninstall the Gaia USB drive on the host Mac, I did get it
working on a Snow Leopard OSX and also a Windows 10 VM. I did have a minor issue
with starting the VM on Snow Leopard at first. I fixed this by changing the VM CPU
count to 2, restarting (it crashed), reducing the CPU count to 1 and then it all worked.
It pains me a little to say that the Windows 10 VM worked first time. In fact, what with
the issue with trying to get a Snow Leopard (or Leopard) install image, installing on
a Windows VM is probably a better bet!
For a better user experience when using the Gaia Sound Designer, run your VM full
screen (rather than in a window within the host's os) if you can. In particular this
will make the mouse pointer and window re-draws behave much more like a native
app.
Good luck! And thanks again to complexbanzai for posting the install files!
