iTunes Home Sharing from Virtualised macOS?

[metaning]

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has already solved this - I wanted to run an older iTunes version virtualised (because the podcatcher is better than the modern Podcasts app) to act as a network streamer, and for iOS device sync.

I can get the virtualised iTunes instance authorised with Apple's servers, it can play music from the host system's speakers. I can turn iTunes Sharing on, and it will appear as a library source on other Macs running iTunes, and iOS devices in the Music app, but I can't actually switch to its library. On iOS it produces an "Unable to turn on Home Sharing" error and iTunes on Mac just fails back to the on-device library.

Also, the virtualised iTunes isn't seeing any of the AirPlay options, aside from the AirPlay receiver of the machine it's running upon.

Is here a magic combo of settings I can to configure to get this working? Some specific WiFi setting tweak etc?

Oh, I should mention, the network mode for the VM is set to NAT - should I set that to Bridged (Autodetect)?

Thanks.

[Technogeezer]

I would try switching the VM's networking to bridged. My immediate guess is that NAT doesn't pass through some of the network traffic needed to support Home Sharing and AirPlay (particularly network traffic needed for the devices on your network that need to have inbound connections to the VM).

What macOS version are you running in the VM - just as a data point.

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[metaning]

The virtualised OS is 10.13 High Sierra.

oh wow - I tried changing to bridged this evening for airplaying from the virtualised OS to an AppleTV as the *speakers*, and it sort of worked - it connected, and held on to the connection. My AppleTV display would even show the album art, and the little equaliser animation to show audio is being played... but no actual sound came out.

Then I tried Switch To, which is apparently a different thing to Airplay speakers, but it kept asking me to sign in to Apple Music, even though iTunes was signed in to my iTunes account

I completely forgot to re-test shared library streaming after setting the network to bridged - it works great - my iPhone can stream from the virtualised High Sierra instance, it can even play the audio to the Apple TV. Hilariously, it's more responsive to connection attempts from the iPhone than the actual Mac Mini running 10.13 I'm trying to decommission.

Thanks :)

[ColoradoMarmot]

Home sharing/speaker sharing is fragile in the best of times, so not surprised it doesn't work really well from a VM.  

Keep in mind that once you move to an Apple Silicion mac, you'll lose the ability to virtualize older MacOS Versions.

[metaning]

Yeah, the jank is acceptable, though it DOES seem to work better sharing the library from the virtualised mac than it did from the real one, maybe it has to do wit the newer host machine having better wifi etc.

Moving to an Apple Silicon Mac is an IF not a WHEN question.