Now I am confused.

Before I press 'the button', what is happening? Am I deleting some of my RealTracks?

What is this 'stretching algorithm'?

I am familiar with most audio formats and how compression works.

:-)

You're not deleting any RealTracks. The 'button' deletes files that are not needed with the new stretching engine. The 'old' RealTracks had several files that were used to transpose the instrument into other keys. These are the +/- files that is referred to. There is an option in the RT settings that enables the use of these +/- files. If it is not checked, the new engine is being used. If your computer is slow, the option to use the +/- files is there.

My understanding is that using the new engine is a bit slower than the +/- route.

If you look in a RT folder, you'll see the +/- files. As stated, make sure you have a copy of your RTs before deleting the +/- files.

Here is a post I made yesterday with more info. http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/showflat.p...true#Post297218

I may be able to explain it. The stretch engine in the old version was not fast enough nor of high quality to do the stretch on the fly. Those +/- files were not separate recordings they were the original that had been statically stretched.So now what you are hearing is a far superior stretch tool doing it on the fly and at better quality instead of the program grabbing pre-stretched files.
Follow the logic.

Yes ........ I understand all of that.

Thank You all.

Mal :-)

So the new engine only uses one of the realtracks as the "master" track? The other, stretched ones are not used at all, which means you can remove them and thus reclaim some disk space.

/pete

There you go.

Yes, you are in reality deleting some of your realtracks. Only because you don't need them anymore.

This is why the suggestion to 'back them up' keeps coming up. You will likely never need them again; but if you are worried about it or if something goes wrong, it would take a while to download and start over. So back them up and reduce them afterwards. Always good to have a backup anyway.
That said, my 100 gig of realtreacks is now 30+ gig. That' a lot of savings.
If I wanted to go back and use them on a system that has BiaB2009 I would be in trouble (since it doesn't have the intelligence to use the new format). So I would need the backups.

For use on an an every day basis it is a great feature.
I don't plan on going back to 2009, but backing them up gives me that option.

I need help please.

Ok, I just dl'd the new 2011 BB/RB but have not yet dl'd any new RT's. I have been running 2010 on my c drive but I have BB/RB 2010 with all my existing RT's also backed up on the usb drive they came on.

So I could go ahead and shrink my existing real tracks and see if my old computer can handle the new way right? I'm still using my Compaq Presario AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.41 ghz running XP sp 3.

My other question is how do I know how much cpu it's using - where do I look?

Thanks ya'll.

CPU usage CTL ALT DEL at the same time and watch or check the thing while pressing play after loading an all Realtracks style.

Josie, Peter Gannon specifically advised that users of older laptops running under Windows XP may not want to erase those +/- files. However, yes, since you have backed them up, you could try it and see if it worked. I would first take a very careful look at the files and make sure you will be able to recognize what got deleted and what therefore would need to be put back.

Matt,
It's a tower not a laptop - does that make any difference?

Yes, Josie, somewhat. The laptops generally have a slower hard drive and throttled-down CPU routines, so they would be worse candidates for eliminating the +/- files.

I'm not as familiar with AMD specs; I use only Intel boards and CPUs, dating back to the days when some music programs only ran on Intel chips. Perhaps someone here like rharv can comment more on how powerful your machine may be, relatively speaking.

Make a backup copy of the original Realtracks folder and then give it a try.

Works fine here, both on laptop and desktop, both older AMD II driven, running XP SP3.

The caveats are there beause there are lots of slower machines out there in the world running XP (or 2000, or...).



--Mac

Thank you Mac, Matt, and John.

In RealTrack Preferences, if the Use +/- RealTracks box is not checked, you are using the new engine. Performance will be equivalent to deleting the +/- file. If no problems, it is 'safe' to delete the +/- files.

Again, make sure you have a backup

R

Thanks Rachael. That makes it easy to try it out.

At times if I have "fast generation" checked I'll have dropouts. Not always. I just leave it checked and see what happens. It appears that if you get a style close to the tempo you'll have no issues of course this sort of defeats the purpose somewhat. Nice to use a 120 BPM style on an 85 BPM song.Just uncheck "fast generation"

Everybody, take another look at Rachael's post, 3 above. This is an elegant and simple way to test whether you should delete the +/- files. I think that box was unchecked by default in the early versions of 2011, and has remained so. Would someone who just purchased 2011 please verify that the box comes unchecked by default?

+1 on what Rachael posted.

like Matt says,


--Mac

Good eye rachael

The Use +/- RT's was unchecked be default on my new install of BIAB 2011. I do not yet have the Real Tracks (hopefully Wednesday or Thursday, Tuesday would be awesome) but I am deleting the old +/- files away. I've recovered 57GB of space.

Now, let's see if they work.

And, yes they do work, very well, even without the new RTs.

Gary

Good, now we know for sure the checkbox is unchecked by default. Thanks, Gary. That means, if everything sounds good, one can erase the +/- files (after making a backup, to be safe).

Update. So far it all works ok. I followed Rachael's advice and haven't pushed the button yet. The cpu usage meter is quite fascinating. It seems mine varies around low 40's to high 50's when playing a BB file of all realtracks with bpm at 104 and tracks that are native 120.

The odd thing is running Realband when I click on "select and generate real tracks" and the list comes up the cpu meter maxes out - but I believe this has been going on before the upgrade even tho I wasn't watching the cpu meter then.

I recall that Peter Gannon recommended that the CPU% stay under 60%, and if it does, then you can safely erase the +/- files.

I don't know if that means some 100% peaks are OK - your description of "maxes out" - but I doubt it.

Hi Folks,
I'm pretty sure you can try the new stretch feature first. Go to the realtracks settings menu (ctrl + rt icon sax)) and tick both--use speed up generation of realtracks and --high quality tempo/pitch stretching--. Untic --use +/- Realtracks for generation --. Then open an all rt demo and generate it-noting the time it takes. then change the tempo 25 or 30 and generate again. On my machine it takes around two seconds longer on average if I don't go too far from the original tempo.

For example, I loaded Brent Mason RKMDMB2 which took about 8 seconds to start at 120, about 9 seconds at 140 and about 13 seconds at 60. These are all acceptable to me but maybe not to someone else. I'll probably use it this way for awhile and if I don't encounter anything worse than that, one of these days I'll hit the +/- button and erase all the pre-stretched files.

Later,
Jim

I guess I'm dense, but with all the discussion of shrinking real tracks, it's not clear to me as to how, why, and when one needs to "shrink". For example, with hundreds of tunes playing under 2010.5, many of which use real tracks---does that mean that you need to shrink these songs/tracks before loading 2011? Or after? How many steps are involved? Can you have some tracks shrunk and other not? For those who've gotten the new upgrade, is this process explained, or does one have figure it out on their own? I was hoping that installing 2011 would do all of this automatically---for the new tracks and those already installed. I just hate clicking around the program once it's running good. Because I always screw something up.

I think all of your questions have already been answered in this thread alone, except for the question about "shrinking songs" used in 2010.5. Songs should not be affected.

If you have plenty of spare Hard Drive capacity, then leave well alone. My working installation uses an internal drive dedicated to RT & RD which was becoming full. Reducing the size of the files has saved some 60 gigs of storage. So far I have experienced no problems using the program. My backup is on my PGMusic external drive which has not been changed in respect of Rt & RD files.

I use RB for live playing but as a point of reference look at my computer specs in my signature.
I could not use BIAB to play live with this computer with the new engine and the +/- files being deleted.With "fast generation" checked playback is VERY unreliable. With it checked I'd drink too much beer while the song generates.My point is if you have a lappy and it's specs are not considerably better then mine be very careful playing live.
One option though is to freeze all your songs.

Hi Larry,

At the risk of adding more mud than clear water, I'll have a go at explaining. lol. Just keep in mind that I'm not an expert myself and I may tell you something wrong. If I do, hopefully someone else will jump in and correct me, then we'll both gain something. ok.

My understanding:

.....We′ve made big improvements to the sounds of the RealTracks, so that they sound more natural over a much wider range of tempos with the elastique Pro V2 time stretching engine by zplane.development.....

The 'shrinking' and 'stretching' we're referring to is the operation of the new V2 program.
This new code does a much better job than the old, but it does take longer to do it. It also takes a decent amount of ram or it's going to bog down. You can test your machine by ticking certain options and un-ticking others. (see my above post).

If the new engine does work fast enough to suit you, you can remove a lot of old realtracks that were already 'stretched' or 'shrunk' and optimized to match tempo, gaining back a lot of disc space. The trade off is slower start time when loading styles and songs just to check them out--something I do quite a bit. However, for the songs you are working on, you can always hit freeze and they will load and play pretty fast.
Hope this helps.

Later,
Jim