Hi all I could use some help.
I get the yellow error box when I try to load hq midi sounds into a song. Basically I get the, "Can't find at" then list direcory path. I am reluctant to copy or move these files for fear that:
1) I will never be able to keep this all straight, copying folders to multiple directories,(which already seems to be getting a little tedious, as it seems that Sampletank already has redundancies in the patch list, possibly put there by me during adding the Omnisynth library)
2) if I just move this instead of copying, will the parts that seem to work now get lost to Band in a Box.
I like some of the features of Sampletank, but parts of its implemenation, along with some of the issues I have with it comunicating with Band in a Box, are frustrating. If PG is going to bundle these two together, they should have it work smoothly,i.e. call up the patches from BIABs GUI and be done with it. This digging through the directories to patch things together to make things work is counter-intuitive. Anyway , if I do this ,will it be ok? Where do these sounds need to reside, and how do I get ST2.5 and BIAB to both see them? I am not a Noob to this, I use Sonar x3 and have a pretty good knowledge of how things work, but this also gives me insight to how things SHOULDN'T work as well. Anyone have any experience with this, and what did you do?

Hi,

Well with Omnisynth are you loading the patch map every time you open biab and wish to use Omnisynth? That patch map should be in the Omnisynth folder I believe, Just copy the 2 maps to a more convenient place.

If so then its straight forward enough to change the various instruments from the main biab GUI.

Does take a bit of messing around to get the Hi Q sounds set up. I have got that error myself a few times, I think there are a few threads on the forum about it.

Musiclover

Hi tconnelly.

Here's one of the posts that musiclover mentions.

Sampletank 2.5 - Omnisynth & Default Directory

In this post, there are instructions on how to successfully use Omnisynth as a general midi synth in Sampletank 2.5.

Also, further down the thread, this post explains about how to set the default path for Sampletank sounds.

Hope this helps,
Noel

Thanks guys, I'll take a look and monkey around with it tonight. Part of the ongoing pro vs con of having synths that are native and VST/Dxi. Sometimes they want to read info from different places, especially if you use them in standalone mode. I had to go through the same type of thing with Native Instruments stuff. Part of what makes this a headache is you have the "teaser" sounds in one folder and the stuff you purchase for real in a different one. I wish they would just get together and incorporate the products as part of a bundled release instead of "hey, you might like this, so we'll give you this limited functionality/library product and you can buy the real version for $X." They could probably find a way to integrate them more seemlessly if they were truly playing ball together.
Enough of my rant, thanks for the help.
Tim

I've farted around with this, manually loading my patches for awhile now. Every time I try to load one of the GM maps for Omnisynth, the whole program crashes. It's weird, because some of the time it starts playback, and I can see that it has changed the patches inside Sampletank, but then the whole thing freezes and I have to go into task manager and kill all the processes. Back to my rant. If you are going to offer a product, make sure it really works with your core program. PG dangling the sampletank carrot in front of you is not cool if they don't have the bugs worked out. If you need to load the GM map every time you want to use it, that is a red flag right there. I can work without it, loading my own patches every time, but that seems kinda stupid to me. Sampletank 2.5 omnisynth is the perfect solution for a program like BIAB that is so reliant on 1) 32 bit VSTs 2)general midi. They need to make it air tight though. It's one thing to have to develop a strategy on delaing with Realdrums vs. GM, it's a whole different thing when the whole program buckles because you load IK's GM map into it. Support should figure this out and give implicit step by step instructions to resolve. Noel, they already have a good start with all that you have done to figure it out. This wouldn't bug me if I didn't feel I was "this close" to making it work.

Not to insult you but ensure you are loading the Sampletank VSTi and not its DXi

see thread

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=222273&page=1

and

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=185610&Searchpage=1&Main=27229&Words=tank&Search=true#Post185610

good luck
Larry

No insult taken. I am about 95% sure that I am loading the VST.
I do have some confusion with that post that shows a row of buttons.Record, Record Audio , VSTi and a yellow X. I don't see that at all on the toolbar, but I do see the Dxi plugins, when I access it's dropdown list I can see exactly what is in that post, namely Dxi and VSTi instuments, plugs , etc. I choose the VST version. I am using 2014 , I noticed that post is from 2012, did they change some of the buttons?

oopss I take it back, it is the VST plugins button on the top toolbar that blows down into instruments and effects and you can select the vst

Larry, you win the prize! Somehow I didn't have the VST version installed! I downloaded, authorized, threw in the map and voila! I knew if all of you were having luck with this it had to be something dumb and it was, me! Thanks to all! When it's working right , it's so much easier.

It's good to see you've got it working. When it comes to midi, Larry is one of the best on the forum!

Thanks to you as well Noel, for troubleshooting and being a sounding board for my growing angst. 1 more question. I tried to call up one of the HQ MIDI sounds on a song, and it gave me an error message DXi Sampletank not installed.(When I chose to install the VST version , I failed to check the Dxi box and it appears to have overwritten it with nothing) I am now confident that I can get that going as well(same process), but is it even worth it? If Sampletank is the source of the HQ instruments is it easier to just grab them and load them in, or is there something extraordinary about these patches that makes them "wonderful"(special or large sample files, special efx processing, etc,)My thoughts are: 1) once I start down that road I might as well just audition a few sounds and pick the ones I like and add my own effects. 2)even if they are good, they are kinda like presets on plugins, you always end up tweaking them to your liking anyway, so might as well start fresh.Your thoughts?

The Hi-Q patches are PG's way of helping folks easily access ST without having to open up ST and manually load those patches onto the instrument tracks. ST allows a third party to create custom patches and link them up in some way.

All you do is right click on an instrument like guitar for example and about halfway down the list is "select Hi-Q MIDI synth patch". That opens up a window that lists all those patches, you select what you want and that's it, done. Biab remembers your patch selection so they're there with you reopen that song. Whether you think those sounds are good is up to you. Since PG is able to do this I'm pretty sure us users could create our own patches and link them up but I've never tried it.

Bob

Hi tconnelly,

As you will find out by using Sampletank (ST) sounds is that the more money you put into MIDI sound sources the better the sounds will be out of the box. The ST that comes with BiaB was the free one that IK put out as a sampler: that is if you liked the sounds you would upgrade, but they are a sample of the identical sounds used in the more ST expensive programs at that time. Having said that you will find that the ST sounds are much better than the GM sound source that comes with BiaB and Forte. Note that some people based their entire bias on BiaB's free MIDI sounds, well actually they were a Microsoft GM set, and thus said MIDI sucks. Not true. I use mostly all MIDI so you may want to listen to some of my songs in the User Showcase forum and in fact some users have commented on how some sound like RTs.

Thus out of the box your MIDI mixes will sound a lot better using ST. But they still may sound stagnate. However you can make MIDI sounds come alive and/or more emulate acoustic instruments by using MIDI CC commands, effects, subtle timing and velocity changes etc. Think of using MIDI as an instrument in that it takes practice and time to get a handle on it.

Even though ST will sound better you can get better sounds out of more expensive sound sources like Kontakt, which I have, SampleTank 3 (note that ST3 is 64 bit only), and other sources. In fact the Kontakt Player is a free version of the full-blown Kontakt and is much like the ST sampler that comes with BiaB, however the sounds are much better.

Your thoughts are right on: 1-pick some sounds from ST and listen to them then 2- experiment with some of the suggestions I made above.

Ps - I have found the BiaB and good MIDI sound sources are excellent companions. You can do a lot with MIDI with a little work.

I should note that using better MIDI sound sources like ST also means that you are not using GM sound source in most cases. That is it is not as simple just loading a file and listening. You have to set up each channel so the bass goes to a bass sound, piano to a piano etc. The best GM sound set that I have heard is Cakewalk's TTS-1, however I don't believe they sell that separately.

Also if you need any help there are a number of us here that know about MIDI.

Thanks guys. I was just wondering if the HQ sounds were anything super special.I bought the omniynth sounds so I could have a complete(32 bit)GM set.I like them a lot better than Coyote. I usually tweak BIAB songs to my liking , then dump the midi files into sonar X3, where I start with the TTS (Cakewalk/Roland) and refine from there adding guitars, sometimes replacing the drums or bass, changing instruments ,adding vocals etc. I too have Kontakt and Reaktor and all that , as well as Dimension Pro , Rapture , Zeta +2 more sounds than I can shake a stick at. My question is, based on the given that I have Sampletank and Omnisynth2 library, and I have to go load the DXi version of Sampletank in order to access the HQ sounds (at least that's what the error message told me)is it worth the hassle, or are the Omnisynth sounds pretty darn close already?
I just don't want to download and authorize a second version of Sampletank(Dxi) just to find out there is little to no difference in the sounds.

tconnely,

You have another option you may not have considered, why not set TTS-1 as your default software synth? You already have it and use it with your Sonar software. You can always use patch selections to overwrite the TTS-1 default selection.

I should also point out the British magazine, Sound-On-Sound, has a 2005 pdf article about using many of the lessor known features of TTS-1. The Cakewalk website has a nice video tutorial. Both are pretty easy to find by performing a websearch.

Tconnely, Jim beat me with his TTS-1 suggestion! I will add that with what you have now I would not even bother with ST. Those ST sounds are dated compared to what you have in Sonar and Kontakt.

Just as a bit of info, the MS GM sound set was licensed to them by Roland long ago, so they are actually a Roland set.
Much like the old VSC DXi synth (which had better samples), this sound set was cast aside by Roland (long ago after being 'dummied down' for the OS use). They continue to let MS continue to use it.

Also, this default set of samples can be tinkered with (within the OS), but as Mario pointed out; the basic free set that comes with Windows is from the W95/98 era and pretty basic. If'n you use your imagination you can almost here the intended sounds. That's Windows fault, and not BiaB.

/the more you know!

Jim,
You got me thinking, I was operating under the assumption that because it wasn't installed in x86 directory that it must be 64 bit, but I looked and it's a DXi. I thought BIAB should be able to find it, since DXi is more of a Windows thing than VSTs, but I'm going to try and load it and see if BIAB can find it, once it knows the path. If not, I'll copy it to the same folder as all of the DX plugs that PG can see. I'll keep you posted.

Epic fail. I can't get it to load. Add VSTi is the closest thing I can find to search for it. I can find TTS-1 but can't get it to load into BIAB it says ,not a valid VSTi.

The tts-1 that I have loaded on my system and that works fine in BIAB is a DXi (not a VSTi).

Noel

Thanx, I had forgotten about the Roland connection!

Mine too, but I don't know how to tell BIAB to go "look" for it. In the DXi/VSTi drop down, it's not there, and I don't know if I have to move it to get BIAB to find it, and it looks like the only option I have is "find new VSTi" button (which it isn't, it's a DXi, I tried, it wouldn't work.). I have a bunch of DXi's and DX plugs that it couldn't find. Cakewalks's default was to put them in Program files/ Cakewalk/ shared DXi's (not in the x86 directory). Is it possible that these were coded in 64 bit?.I know Sonar and I believe earlier versions of BIAB would allow you to rescan folders for VSTs and DXi's, but I can't find where to do it.

Noel

Thx for compliment but I'm not even by half the best MIDI person here.

Tconnelly

No your issue has nothing to do with 64 bit or TTS-1 missing from x86 folder - TTS-1 is a 32 bit app. DXI's are DirectX plugins and are all 32 bit.

Unlike VSTi's which do not have a "central" repository in the system registry, DXI's do. While there are multiple references for all VSTi's and DXi's throughout the registry there is ONE central location that all applications, e.g., Sonar, BIAB, RB, Reaper, … look to find installed DXi's - that is NOT true for VSTi's.

DXI's are ALL listed in the registry under: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MfxSoftSynths\

BTW PLEASE stay out of the system registry if you have no idea what you are doing, you can and probably will muck up your PC or installed applications.

You can tell BIAB, RB, SONAR, etc. where to find VST's and VSTi's individually if those host applications don’t find them in the usual VST places and/or you can add additional "paths" to re-scan or re-scan at program start-up (like in Sonar); however, that is NOT true for DX/DXI's.

As far as I know all host apps look to that ONE specific system registry location to find all installed DXI's and that's the ONLY place a host app looks when it starts.

Look in your BIAB directory (C:\bb or where ever) for a file called "DXiPluginList.ini" it's built each time BIAB starts (check it's date/time stamp). If you don’t see an entry like this

"Cakewalk TTS-1={… " with a bunch of hexadecimal address/index codes in between the braces {}, then BIAB didn't see it and won’t list it as a DXi for you - in that case you might have to re-install TTS-1.

good luck
Larry

If it's not there then it's somehow locked to Sonar. I used to use the TTS-1 years ago and I installed it as part of an old copy of Music Creator. After I installed MC, the TTS-1 showed up in Biab. You can't install the TTS-1 by itself, it only installs with one of Cakewalks DAW's. Maybe with the newer versions of Sonar they don't allow another program to use that synth any more. You could try searching the Cake forum to see if anybody knows how to allow another DAW access to the TTS-1.

To the larger question, with all the super softsynths you have why bother with getting any of this to work with Biab? You're moving your songs to Sonar anyway, right? Just use the mediocre sounds of the Coyote Wavetable to get whatever Biab arrangement you want, move it to Sonar and then you can change the synths and instruments. Or follow the instructions how to set up Omnisynth with Biab. Omnisynth sounds better than the TTS-1 anyway. The TTS-1 is no big deal, it's about 20 years old.

Bob

For BiaB 2014 go to "Audio" > "DXi Synth Settings ..." That will bring up the "VST/DX Synths/Plug-ins (synth in first slot)" window

Select the "Options" button to open the "DX/VST Options" sub menu:

I would try the "Scan for New DX Plug-ins..." button first. It has worked for all the DX Plug-ins I use. If that doesn't work then try "Register a New DX Plug-in ..."

This is exactly what I do.

TTS-1 works fine in BIAB (it's my default synth).

But you may (not sure) need to install the 32-bit version of Sonar to get the 32-bit TTS-1.

For those with Music Creator, it's not a problem, because MC is a 32-bit application.

Once installed, it should show up in your DXi list. You don't have to go out and find the file for a DXi, because its information is already stored in the registry.

It definitely works with BIAB (and RealBand), though.

Larry, that's what I thought too, but I didn't want to make any assumptions about DXi at this point. I will check registry and DXi list, although I predict that it won't be there and option 2 (reinstall) maybe my only one.

Jim,
THAT is the info I was looking for, if I can't get TTS-1 to work there then.....

Bob, Mario,
I am THIS close to working exactly as you say. I KNOW these work in Sonar, I can just dump them there and continue the process. Sampletank and TTS-1 in BIAB are just a workflow enhancement to me, it is not at all critical to getting my work done, just a convenience(a convenience that is quickly dwindling as I spend more time chasing it).
Once again, I would like to thank all of you for hangin' in there with me, as I sort this out. Now that I got Sampletank to work as a GM and I have (always had) Coyote,
that should be good enough, but I'm going to try your TTS-1 suggestions one last time before I move on.
Tim

I have to correct something I said - it's a nit - just setting record straight.

I said:

"Look in your BIAB directory (C:\bb or where ever) for a file called 'DXiPluginList.ini' it's built each time BIAB starts (check it's date/time stamp). "


BIAB ONLY updates that .ini file when a new version of BIAB is initially installed, when you manually do a re-scan (as suggested above by Jim above), and POSSIBLY after an update is applied (I just tested that theory but it doesn't seem to be true - but I updated from build 386 to build 386 so...).

It's all good, guys! I've given up on the TTS-1 thing and am now exporting midi to Sonar. Larry, I found everything you mentioned, and all the DXis are in the same folder. At this point I have to conclude that there is some proprietary code written into the cakewalk stuff, 'cuz I couldn't get ANYTHING cakewalk related to work in BIAB. I know I probably have a previous version of TTS-1 on a Sonar disk somewhere that will work, but forget it. I'm not pushing this boulder up the hill anymore. I have all the tools I need in Sonar, so I'm just going to migrate over to Sonar when my BIAB tracks are the way I want them. Oh, and all that GM Omnisynth stuff? I like to save the setups as presets better, because it includes any effects tweaks I've done in Sampletank.Still, it's nice to have GM for auditioning the basic styles. thanks again to all. I will post my latest song when I'm done ( it's a holiday time collaboration with my brother, so I can get out of the house and decompress for awhile, not holiday material though. Kind of a world music contemp jazz thing)