In january of 2015 SM Pro Audio was acquired by Harman, leaving v-machine owners out of support, the knowledge base and website gutted and the software auto-update function broken.
This page is for owners of v-machines to still be able to use their $500 (new) - $350 (2010) device as intended.
The v-machine is a small form-factor x86 computer that runs linux and a wine layer to run windows VST plugins. The hardware is a 32-bit Via C7 CPU running at 1 GHz, 512 MB DDR-2 RAM and 1 GB flash drive. The RAM is upgradable to 1GB and the storage can be upgraded with any compact flash card and CF2IDE adapter, but problems may occur with FAT32 and large drives. You can also use any USB mass storage device to directly load plugins from.
It has two 6.3mm unbalanced TR sockets as well as a 3.5mm TRS socket for audio out (both -10 dB line-level) with about a -50dB noise floor, a 3.5mm TRS socket for audio in, MIDI-IN and 2 USB ports for external storage or standard USB-MIDI equipment. You can of course hook up USB hubs to expand the number of ports. Digitally it's stereo 44.1 khz at 16 bit.
You can use it for VST instruments, samplers and effect processors. For live settings, fx loops or just to remove load from your main DAW. Keep in mind that the CPU power is comparable to a windows machine with a pentium 4 running at 1.5 ghz, so you won't get too much polyphony, heavy cpu-using vsts or just much in general. But it's perfect for live situations where you don't want to deal with your OS crapping out, as it's very stable and can run for hours with no problems.
I personally use it as host for Toontracks EZDrummer (in combination of an electronic drum kit) and various free plugins as synthesizers for keyboard, it works fine with that with around 3-4ms of audio latency.
It takes quite a bit of work to get your VST setup on the device. Along with having to work with non-intuitive VFX software, complex wizards and no official support: it's not a plugin-and-go piece of equipment. However if you have set it up, you can simply turn it on and it will work.
You shouldn't synchronize plugins with the built in sync function, it uses MIDI-EXT messages and is very slow (10 KB/sec). You're better off copying your VFXLibrary (either in My Music or in Users/xxx/Appdata/Roaming/VFX) to a USB flash drive, insert that into the v-machine and use import from the menu.
In general, if it's a simple (free) plugin it will work. If it needs external files or authentication, look above in the compatibility list. If not there, you can try to forge your own vfxinfo file but it will take a lot of trial and error and you're probably out of luck.
There is none. SM Pro Audio stopped responding in 2012 to any questions and the latest software update is from 2010. The support board and website broke somewhere late 2014, along with the unofficial support forums. That doesn't mean that the v-machine is totally useless though, all you need to use this machine is a usb flash drive, the vfxinfo files on this site and some rational thinking. Compared to a Muse Receptor or similar devices, they are very cheap, consume a lot less power (30W max) and they work well with simple VST plugins.
Most material on this site is still under © and there are probably a couple of ™ floating around belonging to SM Pro Audio, Harman International or whoever the current owner of their IP is. This page exists simply so that v-machine owners (and this product is still being sold as-new retail!) can download the software required for the operation of their devices. If SM Pro Audio or Harman would offer these files themselves (or atleast respond to my inquiries), there would be no need for this page to exist. On that basis this copyright infringement should be considered fair-use.
Also it should be noted that we are dealing with a 7 year old product and the last official update from SM Pro Audio was 5 years ago. My v-machine works fine and is certainly capable of a lot of things, so it would be a shame if it would be useless because of lack of support. Plus it took ages to find all this stuff, so here is it so people can still enjoy their vst hosts.
Needless to say, I claim no relation with either SM Pro Audio or Harman International. All software is provided with no guarantees or warranties. Use at your own risk.
For ease of other users backing the whole thing up instead of relying on internet, here (2.5 GB) is a complete copy of this page and all downloads and here (350 MB) is a copy with only the basic files for windows usage, it should work fine from offline situations like filesystem or DVD.