Hi
I recently purchased BIAB 2018 Ultra Pak for Mac. I have been running it direct from the USB drive as I have V2016 installed on my laptop hard drive and didn’t want to replace it just yet.
After using the 2018 version on the USB for a while I have found it to be very buggy with regular crashes (every hour at least).
I thought I would see if it runs better on my proper hard drive before complaining to PG. But I don’t want to hose my existing 2016 install which works fine.
Is it possible to have 2016 & 2018 side by side on the same drive. Obviously I will only run one at a time

Don't know about Mac, but you definitely can do that in Windows by installing to separate folders. Both can share the same RealTracks and RealDrums.

Hi John

Thanks for that. Can you expand on how you make both installs use the same Realnnnn files? Obviously the tis the biggest part of the install so be good if they can both share one set.
Thanks
Mark

BIAB lets you install the RTs/RDs to a different folder (I keep them on a completely separate drive). Then in RT and RD preferences, you just tell BIAB where they are located.

Hi,

On the Mac, Band-in-a-Box (and update patches) always installs to Applications/Band-in-a-Box, so you'll need to fully install 2016, make sure it's updated to the latest build, then rename the folder to something like Band-in-a-Box 2016, then install 2018. If you want them to share RealTracks and Drums folders, you can delete those folders from the 2016 folder, then set up custom folder locations like John described above.

You'll want to make sure 2016 is the one that gets renamed, as if 2018 is installed anywhere other than Applications/Band-in-a-Box, update patches won't be able to find it.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Thanks for the info.

If I use a custom folder for real tracks/Drums will the updates for them find where they are?

Thanks
Mark

Hi Mark,

As long as they're in Applications\Band-in-a-Box\RealTracks\ on whatever drive you put them on, you should be OK. I'd keep them in the same folder as Band-in-a-Box 2018 if possible though, to keep things simple.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

I just have them in the same folder Applications/Band-in-a-Box/
Band in a Box.app
Band in a Box 2017.app
Band in a Box 2016.app
Band in a Box 2015.app

you can extract just the Band in a Box.app out of an update package using something like Pacifist and rename it Band in a Box 2016.app

That way you should get the newer RealTrack & Drums in the 2016 picker.

Pipeline, if everything is in the same folder, what about the new folder structure implemented in BIAB 2018 versus the old one in 2016? Do you just have duplicate files in the folders (I'm asking not knowing if this change made it to the Mac version or not, as it did in the Windows version)?

I also had troubles with 2018 both from the installed and from USB drive. Sadly, you may not see any improved performance. After weeks of frustration I finally dumped 18 and went back to 16 which is working fine. The additional features and real tracks in 18 were not worth the added stress of not knowing how reliable the program would be in performance.

The Mac version has always had the tidy folder structure, so it was the Win version that was behind.

Thanks, Pipeline!

Of course, that means if you want to do the same on a Windows system (not in this case, obviously), you would have to be aware of the two different folder structures.