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Using VMware and Samba Network Path

Is there any advantage or disadvantage to keeping PIL tracks on a mapped Network drive rather than a physical local drive? Thanks!


Personally I wouldn’t keep the playout system library on a network drive. I would keep the master of the library on the network drive and a copy on a local drive (ideally SSD). I would also keep a full set of tracks on the network drive and then the structured set of folders reflecting the categories of the music rotation. I would also use mp3 gain to equalise the subjective level of your music rotation folders (but not the masters of the files).

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Thanks, Mark!

After I wrote the initial reply, I've given the matter some further thought and come to a bit of an "it depends" conclusion with the implied wider question.


You are obviously thinking about running PlayIt Live on a virtual machine. Leaving aside the location of the library (and I still recommend a local SSD) I think the viability of PlayIt Live in such a system depends on what sound cards you might want to use.


At its simplest, PlayIt Live can make a Shoutcast/Icecast stream from the internal mix. While I've never tried, given the relatively low hardware requirements of PlayIt Live (I've run it relatively successfully on an Atom tablet) my guess is doing that on a virtual machine would stand every chance of working (given high priority etc.) It starts being difficult once you want a physical interface and "real" sound card.


Once again I've never tried it, but I have considered using PlayIt Live with a Ravenna virtual sound card (somewhat hampered in that by not having a suitably capable mixer but costs are going down) but it looks interesting https://www.ravenna-network.com/2013/09/13/free-version-of-ravenna-virtual-sound-card-for-windows-now-available-for-download/


That MIGHT work in a virtual environment.


The physical keyboard/mouse is less of an issue as RDP works fairly well with PlayIt Live and I assume would be your way of connecting to the virtual machine.


In a way, it all comes down to what you are trying to do and why.

 

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