PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Beginners Forum A few noob questions on BIAB.

Charlie, actually customization is probably the easiest update PG can make. Function wise it is packed. The beauty of customization is that each user can adjust the program to their liking. Customization is like: You do not place the bed in the kitchen, just because you can sleep on it...But perhaps some would like that...to be close to refrigerator at night
(Extra tracks would be nice though, and a few other relatively minor things)

As far as my opinion on Realband "merging".(I knew I am going to be eaten for breakfast) I think this was misunderstood. Here is a simplified version of what I was talking about. Take a look at the picture below. You open "one" program, with option which program you want to start by default. So lets say you work in BIAB and you need to edit some stuff in Realband, you click on magical button on the top and your BIAB project is transferred to Realband freezing the project in BIAB without closing it, until you click "BIAB" button in Realband. So basically you have ONE project that is editable by ONE program that has both BIAB & Realband at the same time. I know there are many things that are involved, by I do not believe this is such a horrible idea.

But Matt, when these converge, it's a beautiful thing man.

Hi Guitarhacker. English is not my native language and I don't understand what you mean when you write "Next.... if you regen the project, on occasion, it will pick up some lead in notes."

Sorry to ask, but I cannot find the word "regen" in any of my dictionaries, so the sentence is a bit difficult to understand. Is it just BiaB slang that I have to learn?

Kind regards,
Will

Will, regen is shorten for regenerate.

David, in Cakewalk (recently by Bandlab) I use Neutron, which is a tool of choice.

Thank you. I learn something new every day. :-)

Mike, I'm not really into the RealBand vs Biab debate but I do get your analogy of putting the bed in the kitchen and it is a great example of my earlier point that the issue is really more about personal preference than functionality. It's easy to see the bed never changes its functionality being moved into the kitchen and adds nothing to the functions of a kitchen, it's a personal preference to not have to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen at night. It's a workflow thing. But there's always compromises isn't there. Moving the bed to the kitchen may double the time and distance getting to the bathroom. My perception of switching back and forth between BIAB and RB for 'quick' edits is no more logical than writing sentences in Notepad and transferring each sentence as I write it over to Word to punctuate it and then return to Notepad for the next sentence. That interrupts my train of thought and would cause me to lose focus with my project.

An example many give they use RealBand to open a BIAB project and begin to open and audition various RealTracks for their song. This is very easy to do quickly in BIAB. Especially if I'm experimenting or structuring a song and want to audition different instruments and I've not progressed so far into a project I know the layout and instrumentation finalized. The functionality of BIAB to allow up to 10 instrument variations per channel is much faster and convenient way to audition instruments and not have to lose time and focus to swap between programs until you are ready to actually build your song.

Functionally, changing your workflow in BIAB can drastically change how you construct a project and expose you to features that easily allow you to structure your song, build your instrumentation, choose styles all in such a way to make it so you can eliminate RealBand, Sonar or any other external software you may now use.

Rusty,

I hear ya man. Bandlab 2018 with Pro Channel, EQ and Waves J-37 (third party).

Purty Ain't it.


GET 'ER DONE

I really need to try Waves J-37. I've been using their Kramer Master Tape for years, J-37 appears to be even better.

Saturation really is the secret sauce! It's funny how much work I put into trying to make tracks on my modern high-end PC sound like they were tracked on comparitively primitive gear from decades ago

Cheers
Kent
PG Music

Kent,

I think the J-37 might still be on sale. I love it and use it on almost everything. On reviews, users generally seem to prefer it to the Kramer and say it has more of a real tape feel. To me it is like butter. On the latest song I posted on the forum "Tahoma" I am using the set up shown in the picture in Bandlab using tube saturation, tape emulation, and the J-37 as well on the master bus.

It sounds pretty analog to me.



And yes, saturation is DEFINITELY the secret sauce. I am at the point where I have learned it is just best to go ahead and saturate everything.

Rusty, you're not the first noob to come on these forums with a lot of recording experience and start opining in detailed long posts what's wrong with these programs and offering suggestions. What you're missing is you're speaking to some in this thread who have been beta testers for years, some over 10 years. We know all this, it's been talked to death already especially the idea of merging the two programs together. Several years ago there is a HUGE thread about that very subject. Detailed arguments for and against.

Here's what you don't know. Real Band is not simply another version of Biab. RB is a version of Power Tracks Pro Audio which is nothing but a simple basic DAW. It's a completely separate program with different developers. Way back PG dropped a bombshell by having Power Tracks able to generate a Real Drum track. There were no Real Tracks yet. Considering how lame midi drums can sound this was incredible. Later they added other Biab functions to PT and created a new program called Real Band. Here's the deal, RB can open a Biab file but it cannot save in Biab format. That has been requested for years now and it's assumed it's just not possible because PT was NEVER designed to be another version of Biab, it's its own discrete program. That means your idea of having those buttons to switch back and forth and do edits in both programs is useless.

We're not diehards Rusty, we're just very experienced users who know the history of this development. You're like a new guy who was just hired at a company and is attending his first meeting. The new guy is going to expound for hours about what they've been doing wrong for years and start talking about all these great ideas he's got to fix it? In your first meeting in front of people who've been working on that stuff for years?

First of all we users are not the ones who make any decisions at all. PG does that. PG stands for Peter Gannon and he will post here once in a while. The forum etiquette is to put your suggestions and comments on how to fix stuff into the Wishlist Forum. That's where the developers look and they actually do add things based on some of those suggestions.

But hey, this is an open forum for free discussion so knock yourself out and have fun. Just don't expect a lot of action.

Bob

Praise Jesus, Hallelujah, and Thank GOD for Peter Gannon.


yeah.... both BB & RB are God Sends to me and how I create music. Each one does something specific and unique that nothing else in the world does.

Bob, got where you stand. For the big following that BIAB has and with all the market at their fingertips, I have yet to find good reason why interface sucks and speed is so slow on my lightning fast computer... Except for greediness. This is my opinion.

Reading numerous posts, I got the impression that PG does not offer road map or even some distant promises. That I find a bit bitter and distasteful. That was/is approach of RIP greatest thief of all time Steve Jobs with millions of fan boys and girls, who like to be "surprised" and "amused". I would like to know before hand what I am getting into.

Besides technical questions that I ask, I am sorry if I offended you with my opinions. My biggest question which consolidates all others is: "DOES BIAB HAS A FUTURE"? or it is a dying dinosaur? I do not mind riding a dying dinosaur for few years, but I also do not want to invest endless hours in getting to know it very intimately if doctors pronounced incurable disease.

A simple 5 word reply from someone in "secretive" development saying: "we are working on it". (64BIT / modern GUI)
Should resolve most of anxiety

Mike.

Ok Mike, first I'm not offended in the least. We're all friends here, we're just having a friendly discussion. Concerning 64 bit. I take it you didn't search for that subject and find Peters very detailed post about that?

Bottom line it's not needed and would do nothing for overall functionality. It concerns memory allocation on a Windows PC and JBridge handles that very well for $10. So I guess Peter's calculation is ten bucks or who knows how much to completely rewrite the program for 64 bit?

Like I said man, this is old stuff, been discussed to death already and the Forum Search function is actually quite helpful...

When you say you're afraid Biab is a dinasaur that may die soon another thing you probably don't know is Biab is huge in music schools all over the world. For all we know the education part could account for the majority of their sales and a school would care little for all this stuff we're talking about.

A friend of mine is a very good schooled guitarist who also runs two music schools. He and his staff all use Biab with students. I watched him once with a student. All he did was take a standard Real Book tune and have the student play along with it. He just used the basic midi synth, no Real Tracks, no Real Drums, nothing fancy. Just have the kid play along. This is going on the world over.

On to something that could be real. You said your very fast PC is slow with Biab? Explain that because none of us here have that problem, maybe we can help you with that.

Bob

David, I think Buddha is a better choice for me.

jazzmammal,
my issue is that while assembling a backing track in BIAB I spend about 50% of time waiting on regeneration and slow GUI. So if a backing track normally takes me 3-4 hours to assemble, it takes 6-8 in BIAB on average. Freezing
or not, it happens for 2 reasons:

1)Old code that is responsible for lag and slow GUI (yes, I read most of the looooong post that pipeline posted for me)
2)tracks regeneration is happening from source, not from/in RAM.

I estimate that with all the technique available, I can reduce "dumb" time by 10-15% but it is like eating aspirin if your tooth needs a root canal.

Sadly, at this time, I doubt anything substantial can be done about it. I guess the best approach would be just wait and check by the end of every year to see if patient had improved or...not.

A few comments to your points.

"old stuff, been discussed to death" - Means there is an active issue.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"it's not needed and would do nothing for overall functionality" - That one I do not agree completely with.
----------------------------------------------------------
"Peter's calculation"- for established users maybe his calculations are correct. For new blood... I do not know many people who would "start" using 32 bit Delphi program in 2018. Not that I care, but I do as this will impact development in the future.
------------------------------------------------------------

Bob,

To add just one example to this "educational application" you mentioned (and I am sure it applies to most instruments):

Most of the Brent Mason tracks have notation because he records with a Fish midi converter most of the time I believe.

Brent is called by some the "greatest telecaster player alive" and was discovered by Chet Atkins. So, if you are wondering whether the Chet Atkins "train-style" thumb-picking tracks are life-like, well, you are hearing and LOOKING AT (in notation) a guy who has played on Chet Atkins' albums.

For all or most of his tracks, you can press notation and watch what he is doing, see how he plays, what notes he is using, and where, at as slow a tempo as you like: i.e., you can go to the Brent Mason guitar school at your desk.

For a guitarist, it is mind-boggling to consider that you can do this, or learn jazz guitar from say, Oliver Gannon.

This feature alone makes BIAB the most jaw-dropping musical program in the world--and that is just one feature out of 5,000.

I would say the programmers have done a pretty good job. Musicians think so at least. We are stunned.

And yes, over at Meredith College nearby, the music department runs on Band-in-a-Box, I am told.

You said it's been discussed to death so that means there's an issue. An issue with who? You and Pipeline? Pipeline is a great forum member he knows so much about this stuff it amazes me. BUT...

My point is you guys and a few others like you are not the average users of Biab.

You mentioned slow regeneration times. Do you consider generating 8 tracks in 7 to 8 seconds slow? That's how long it takes me to do it and you can read in my sig the specs of my PC. If you're referring to how long it takes in Real Band, yes it takes a whole lot longer but it has nothing to do with old code. Here's another tidbit you probably don't know.

Years ago when the Real Tracks first came out followed by a total flood of new RT's every year since people started complaining about how long it took to generate because prior to the RT's Biab ran great on old, sloooooow XP machines with 1 gig or less of RAM. That's because it was all midi which requires minimal processing power. I'm not going to go into detail just understand that manipulating audio like Biab does requires a TON or processing power. An old Core Duo with 2 gigs of ram can take a minute and a half to generate 8 tracks of RT's. Midi? Almost instant.

PG advertising says Biab runs fine on older machines and that's true. Doesn't mean you will be happy with working that slow.

What PG did and this was some time ago, is massage Biab to begin playing your song after it had only generated maybe the first 4-8 bars and not wait until it regenerated the whole thing. That transformed the time it took to hear playback BUT as you are playing back it's still generating in the background. You would not notice anything unless you stopped after a bar or two and hit regen again. Then Biab can lock up while it does it. It hasn't crashed, it's just working.

Real Band since it is NOT simply another version of Biab needs to regenerate the whole song and since it can have way more than 8 tracks it can take a while but if you use RB like I described and just do one track at a time, no problem. That's what you do in your home studio anyway, right? One track at a time. Also, RB does not use temp files for edits like most big name DAW's do. There are good sides to that and bad sides. The good is you don't have to go back and flush (Adobe Auditions term) all your temp files created by edits. One project I worked on took almost 15 minutes to clear all that out. RB does it all in real time with no temp files which makes your immediate work flow slower but then you don't pay that time back later.

Anyway, back to your issue with time. Tell us the specs of your PC and your EXACT steps you take when you generate your tracks and let's see if you have a fixable problem.

Bob

I am an average user
I can only respectfully bow to pipeline and several other members who keep the "reality check" button from getting heavily dusted.

That is not true. (not to be rude)
How RB handles these temp files at the end of a session may differ, but there are definitely temp files in use. Otherwise 'Undo' would not exist.

In Audio prefs area there is a specific location designated for these temp files. It's labeled Audio Temp Directory.
I always use a separate drive for this location simply because incoming audio gets stored there (temporarily) during recording. I think it's a big 'little thing' you can do to add stability and speed to RB.

This way recording 8 incoming tracks to a different drive than the one that's reading 24 outgoing (already saved) tracks is beneficial for obvious reasons (drive thrash for one).
Check that mentioned location during a session; you'll see the temp files.

When you save the project they get interlaced in the project and a backup of the original is created, and then they get cleaned up (usually), but temp files do exist during a recording/editing session in RB.

For those whom are complaining about regeneration time I'll bet you never worked with tape. It would take say 20 minutes to load a song/game only to have it crash at the 19th minute. So you rewind, start it again, and hope that it was just an anomaly.

Or you never had a 5 minute 10 track song that only used external hard synths. It would take 5 minutes for each track to get recorded to your DAW, thus it would take about one hour to complete the transition.

Having done the tape thing and occasionally doing the external hard synth thing I don't complain about a few minutes of regeneration time. YMMV.

rharv.. Temp or not, they are loaded from a directory on the hard drive, not from memory. (That was confirmed by PG) It is a BIG mystery to me, why they did not make a choice to work with realtracks that are used in the project from memory once they are selected in the project. I believe most of PCs with 8-16gb RAM should handle that option just fine.

Mario, I remember good old tape days pretty well and computers that run on tapes and even know what perfocards and perfotapes are

There is overall huge lag in BIAB. To some it feels ok, probably because they got used to it and find all kinds of excuses to justify it. I would prefer it to run much faster, at speeds of modern software. But who am I to judge? Just opinion of how it feels to me.

Different animal, vArranger. Initial startup that takes about 15-20 seconds, to fully load 12gb of sound content into memory, but then it flies.