PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums RealBand Realband for Mac?

I know there's a lot of interest in having Realband for the Mac, but there also seems to be no interest on PG Music's part to address this (forgive me if I'm wrong in this assumption). Years ago, there was a post (somewhere) where a PG Music rep said that there was so much interest in Realband for Mac that they would look at it.

<crickets>

Off-topic but related: I need a DAW that supports the BIAB VST plugin AND can slave to a drum machine AND is affordable. Reaper currently has issues.

Larry.

RE RB ON MAC.

yep rb on mac with say ( i will add logic) would be a powerfull combo imho.

if i had rb on mac for s's and giggles when the mac 4 silicon came out i would probably get a refurb guaranteed m2 silicon refurb for a few hundred bucks.

re the macs i'm waiting frankly to see how apple address the technical challenges of ramping up the current power of its m series silicon. this is the biggie for me as a tech.

re pc. i gotta be fair and say my new ryzen m.2 pc has been great so far with not one prob. it boots from cold and loads up biab or
rb in just a few seconds. nary a problem.

you know what ? refurb i5 pc's are a dime a dozen.
around 100 bucks if you want to try out rb.
(i did a ton of songs on one for years running bb/rb/reaps.)

a refurb el cheapo pc might be a nice inexpensive strategy to try out rb.
(see my pc tips in the tips section sometime re useing a pc for music production.)

OR if you want to go hog wild...see this refurb el cheapo xeon 'bad boy' which is the type of pc many commercial studios have run.

daft low 190 buks usa price.
studios used to pay big big money for the following.

https://www.pcliquidations.com/p143159-hp-z230-workstation-towerms

note...if i remember reaps was originally developed on pc xeons.
ive used way less to run rb on.
just make sure you get a 30 day return.
note the many usb ports...and the specs etc.
you can also find el cheapo dell and lenova's...just google.

ps...just curious and not knocking it but why the need for a drum machine ??

i gave such up. i can do tons of drum tracks useing pg content and/or drum plugins. from the simple click track to complex stuff like drum solos.
(see my tips on such.)...note rb does support time code.


happiness.

om

Well... In my not-thinking-this-out-too-well mind, I thought it would be easier to control the tempo from a few buttons on the drum machine than adjusting some setting on the DAW or BIAB itself. IN retrospect, yes, the drum machine is probably unnecessary.

I like to play along with practice tracks I create in BIAB and I wanted an "easy" way to adjust the playback tempo.

FWIW there *are ways to run Windows on a Mac, if one so desired .. some of our web dev guys do it for testing.

i would love to run a test...rb in win emulation on a mac m series versus older mac intel...i wonder if the m series would be a better win emulation ??

oh yeah, it definitely is faster .. compiling large projects happens in seconds instead of minutes ..

Rharv.

wow thats impressive. is this compiling c++ or another language.

lol...now we need a brave soul to test run rb on mac new silicon useing win emulation.

what i'm wondering is will there be any lag or stutter issues in rb running under win emulation or will there be zilch given the nice apple m series architecture. if no probs then tings could get very interesting. eg two nice daws on one mac...logic pro and rb.
of course a gotcha might be ease of interchange of wav files tween logic and rb. i know logic will import wavs...so it might be doable.
but i dont know any possible complications.

frankly i'm amazed apple never sold logic daw on pc...but i guess
this would impact mac sales.

did you see the link i posted upthread re a hp z beast workstation for 180 bucks. what a grrreat deal for someone plus all those great expandability options. ie a powerhouse deal....a no brainer buy.
those xeon z's can cost up to several thousands new.
cant beat refurbs imho.

happiness.

om

We compile C# mostly
I'm not asking those guys to try RB tho' .. for one thing, none of them seem to be music oriented (a few of us WIn guys are though)

Rharv.

impressive...

i'm still gonna keep my pc's but if i find a cheap 150 buck m2 refurb ...might give it a bash....maybe when and if the M series silicon hits M 5 or whatever.

as an ex tech marketeer i'm waiting with baited breath and fascination as to the next few years to see how the M series evolves and gets ramped higher, and if they can do that.
cos there are big Rn D //tech//manufacturing//physics challenges noone has cracked yet which is why the multi core divide and conquer strategy was implemented.

rharv what i meant was some intrepid pg user with both pc and mac m series do a test re rb running under win emulation on the m series.
the one thing that bugs me is the paucity of ports on macs...compared to that beast of a hp z xeon workstation i linked to upthread.
its got ports coming out the ying yangs for expandability.

a lot of the hp z xeon pc';s (and dell and lenovo's) come off lease every year <<< superb for music production...and i wonder how much this impacts mac sales. what i mean is here we have a 180 buck beast that blows the doors off and someone could save over a imacs price of 2k. (much as i like the new macs.)

gonna be interesting times.
i wonder if anyone has run logic pro under mac os emulation on pc.
hmmm...gonna google.

happiness.

om

Give me time

Given my personal experience with an M1 Mac, no contest. It outperforms my old i9-9900k machine by a large margin, and that already outperforms the old workstations you're talking about.

It's not just raw performance, it's responsiveness. ARM architecture has less overhead than x86, which leads to (I believe) lower process latency, which likely results in lower DPC and audio latency. In synthetic benchmarks, my old 9900K was around 12% faster than the M1, yet I recently had a Logic project with over 200 tracks (with plenty of plugins) that the M1 easily handled while the 9900K choked on half of that.

Again, that's a 9900K with 64gb ram and an RX 580, vs an M1 with 16gb ram, both with 1tb NVME SSD's.

Probably yes, but it's likely easier to get macOS running natively on a PC.

Simon.

just some thoughts in reply.

1..imho these are gonna be very exciting times for users of pc's and macs.
its been boring for too looong imho....lol.
(only sooo much can be crammed on a wafer....)
and moores law has been screwed up by the tech plateuing.

2..i'm glad the mac silicon has come out because (like duellists of yore...) its going to force intel and amd to 'up the ante' in order to maintain market share.
which is good for consumers. ie more power and hopefully lower prices which i hope will help poorer musicians.
some higher end processors the pricing is too high imho.

THUS..i would dare anyone to assume intel or amd are just gonna roll over and cede the market to the m series. we shall see.
my call is intel and amd will fight like heck for the revenue.
what i'm suggesting is that the m technology might be slaying the market right now...but...as weve'e seen over the years...
when it comes to tech, what is 'hot' today isnt later in time.
there is a limit to arm tech like any technology.
and like any tech there are limits and positives and negatives.
(lots of research articles on arm vs x86 on the net.)

3..what really interests/excites me is how apple r n' d evolves the m series silicon going forward..and how far they can take it.
will they astound us all ? or...will the m series tech plateau. ??
will something else from intel or amd beat the m series ?

4..lets remember us musos are just one sub market.
lots of people out there just wanna surf the net/email/office tasks etc etc. and thus this new fanless hold in ones hand pc that i just got for 140 bucks off amazon is perfectly capable of these tasks....sure..it would not do 200 tracks and a host of plugins but for s's and giggles rb reported 74 track capability. which i would prolly halve (to have a buffer ) to 30 tracks. in summary it would be fine for knocking out a rough song demo with a few tracks.
in fact the little beast has surprised me....it boots into win in just a few secs and even latency mon gave it the green light dpc wise. but heavy duty stuff...of course not.
(but i'm not useing it for song production of course and keep my song production pc sandboxed.)
but my little 140 buck beast i would suggest with more powerfull next gen processor...at that price point could with the proper cpu boosts handle your 200 tracks for a peanut price in a few years... we shall see.
(LOL...lets not forget the little pi that just got a new processor..). dont get me wrong..lots of respect to apple for the m series...but lets not forget there IS competition from under 200 buck refurbs AND new mini pc's.
talking about refurbs..

5..re..that hp z series for the daft low price of 180 bucks.
ive done very fancy songs on way way less for myself/friends/clients..
in days of yore.
i agree...its not up to the m series class...but...for years many studios have used those workstation class pc's (and dell/lenovo equivalents) for music production.
the thing i really like about those xeon workstations is the expandability. in summary imho yep not up to the m series but still a beast. nobody can complain for such a crazy low price imho.
(it was over 2k when new i believe.)

as i said...exciting times.

fyi i have just tested many different daws and kept coming back to rb.
so...i would love to hear if rb could run in win emulation on m series silicon without probs.

ps...btw..microsofts Pete Brown (who owns a pretty impressive studio) has a midi thread on gearspace..
talking of which...yes...over the years the ms os has garnered various critiques...but...its obvious from the link below ms is makeinga lot of effort for us song creators useing its os.
i gotta be fair...my production pc works day in/out with nary a squeak.
the key with pc imho is to choose the right pc for music production instead of useing any old pc with bad dpc etc stats.

https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1424835-windows-midi-services-info.html
interesting info about midi stack etc etc.

happiness.

om

I agree, holding onto nearly 50-year-old instruction sets in modern technology is a bit boring :P

Not just Apple, but Qualcomm will also force Intel/AMD to work harder.

That will never change lol

Indeed, apparently the Pi 5 is fast enough to use as a daily driver for many people (with enough RAM of course). Especially interesting is that it has a PCIe bus and can boot from NVMe SSD's...

Likewise. I'll try and give it a shot at some point when I'm not so busy :P

The last thing the music world needs is another DAW.

Ensure the plugin is stable and featured in any DAW should be the way forward

Simon.

please dont get rid of rb....its getting very good imho.
(see my reasoning why/answer to MG below.)
particularly with the new comping feature for my vocals...and...YES...
chords in the timeline.
fyi ive been continuing to test various daws from free to expensive over the last few months,
and while there are some very very good ones i found i kept coming back to rb for various features i like.

i suppose its not any easy port of rb to mac due to all the
programming msoft specific api's.
and of course its a pain manageing different code bases etc.
but the m series cpu's are so good i would be surprised if rb didnt work under win emulation.
you know better than i but assuming rb DOES run on a mac m under win emulation would it be easy or difficult to send rb genned tracks to the mac side of the house ? i suspect difficult unless one used the old save track idea to transfer tracks....rather simple D n' D.
for example it might be nice to drag rb genned tracks over to logic
pro like i can in win tween daws.. not doable ?

(btw..thanks for the cheap 25 buck bear iem suggestion.
good for mucking around and it saves my grados and akg's for serious efforts.)

MG.

let me comment on why i respectfully disagree with you re rb.
(BTW i easily drag tracks from rb to another daw i sometimes use.
which also runs nicely the suite of pg dx plugins i like in rb.)
my suggestion is of course keep developing the plugin but not to the exclusion of rb.let me explain why.

heres an example of why diversification in a business can be successfull. in pg's case bb/the plugin/rb.
(ie multiple products).
someone i knew in england ran a very successfull restaurant in a busy tourist seaside town.
the major reason it was a booming biz was there was a bus stop right outside the front door for the packed tourist busses to stop.
in summary the biz was dependent on this one factor for its success.
sadly the town powers that be moved the bus stop to a new centre in the town...and you can guess the result.
its the same with software apps that rely on one factor for success
instead of a multi pronged biz strategy.

thus i would suggest pg continue as they are rather than dropping rb.
many of us like rb and want to see further development.
twould be a boring world if we all liked the same things.

i think it fair to say that yes rb is difficult to get into for some.
it has so many features that of course this means a longer learning
cycle...but many daws i tried recently also have long learning cycles.
its just the nature of the daw market. everyone trying to win new customers by offering lots of features.
but once one explores rb in depth one will discover very interesting capabilities imho. but one must be willing to really drill down and spend time.
it seems that the users that like rb are people like myself that started with pg powertracks...

fyi in my comparison of daws recently a couple i thought were nice were samplitude music studio and multitrackstudio.com.
haveing been in software engineering in the past i particularly liked the latter because of how much it did in a small footprint exe.
(same for reaps...small footprint.).
some daws i couldnt test because the trials wanted too much personal info.
in contrast multitrackstudio.com was a breeze to test out.
downloaded and opened it in a few minutes.


happiness.

om

please please don't drop RB! super users may want blistering performance but many of us use BIAB and RB to replicate the kind of small bands we used to play in. and as for hardware, my fairly humble windows pc seems to cope ok. so what if it takes a while to recreate all the tracks when i change the key?