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Category: Tools

MB X7 Control for macOS — Apple Silicon

I’ve released MB X7 Control, a native macOS controller for the Creative Sound Blaster X7, designed for Apple silicon Macs.

The X7 is still excellent hardware, but the original Creative macOS software is now quite old. MB X7 Control provides a modern native alternative and does not require Creative’s legacy Control Panel or private frameworks.

It supports the major X7 functions, including SBX Pro Studio, speaker and headphone configuration, E-MU XM7 settings, speaker calibration, Cinematic controls, the Playback Mixer, Equalizer, Scout Mode and other advanced features.

The application is free and source-available. Version 1.0 is currently distributed as source code and can be built locally using Xcode on an Apple silicon Mac; a paid Apple Developer membership is not required.

If you’re still using a Sound Blaster X7 with an Apple silicon Mac, feel free to try it and report any issues or compatibility results.

Project:
github.com/alcatron/mb-x7-control

MB X7 Control is independently developed for hardware interoperability and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Creative Technology Ltd.

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Improving Hyper-V Windows Virtual Machine Network Performance

I have a webserver on a Hyper-V platform as a virtual machine running Windows 2012 Server, and what I noticed was how poor network performance was on long distance networks due to the way TCP works. Local traffic performed optimal, however anything greater to a destination 100ms+ latency , network throughput suffered.

I managed to discover a tweak on the actual Hyper-V Network Adapter on the virtual machine by adjusting the send and receive buffers. I found that a “Receive Buffer Size” 16MB and “Send Buffer Size” 8MB was optimal and significantly improved network performance on response time and single threaded downloads from the webserver. I have included the below images to assist in making the changes and locating this.
HyperV NIC
send_buffer_sizenetwork_receive_buffer
I hope someone finds this useful and it also improves your virtual machine network performance!

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