Good afternoon all,

I was working on an arrangement and wanted to add some shaker or tambourine to supplement the RD track. The Soloist track was empty so that was the destination, but by mistake I generated the same RD instead of the intended shaker.

I was surprised to find that the volume for the same RD was considerably louder on the Solo Track.

I am using BIAB 2018 (516) and the mix is set to flat, dry and centre.

With tracks in solo mode the R&L volume bars at the base of the mixer show the RD on the Drums track around half to two thirds in the green area whereas the same RD on the Soloist track extends up to halfway into the yellow area.

This volume difference is the same for any non Drums track, i.e. Bass, Piano etc.

Is this normal or is there a setting buried somewhere that I may have missed.

Thanks in advance,
Vintage

Vintage,

The track volumes are set within Stylemaker when a style is created. This is done so that the particular instruments used in the style all sound balanced when set at a volume of 90 in BIAB's mixer.

Although some styles use the Soloist track for Realtracks, from what you've typed, it sounds like the particular style that you've used has the Soloist set for MIDI. This, I suspect, is why the drums sound so loud.

Try loading a style that has a RT on the Soloist track. Then replace the Soloist with Realdrums, generate it and see if there is a difference.

Regards,
Noel

Noel,

It's not just the Soloist track, I substituted all the RTs in a 5 instruments style with the same RD and the volume was greater in all.

I've just done the same test using a different 5 inst style, with the same results.

Following your suggestion I checked out the Stylemaker and the V Button (Volume of Pattern) for each track, mystery solved! Drums are set at 40 other tracks randomly around 60. It didn't occur to me to check here as I assumed these were MIDI style settings.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Vintage

I am not sure if that will actually affect the volume, since the individual tracks in style maker were designed for midi There is a tab labelled MISC, that controls the overall volumes. You need to check the volume changes with style box as well.

When this gets figured out, the instructions should be placed in the Tips and Tricks Forum.

Dave,

Have just tested the V tab settings by changing the Drum track setting from 40 to 120 then saved under a different name. On re-opening the new style the drums behave as before with lower volume on the drum track and higher volumes on all others. I think this confirms your view and my original assumption that these settings are MIDI only.

Also checked out the MISC tab and all Instruments are set at 90, I reckon this is the setting for the sliders on the Mixer panel and not the underlying volume setting as in the V tab.

To test this I generated the same RealDrums in the Bass and Soloist tracks leaving other tracks unaltered. Then in Stylemaker Misc tab, I adjusted all these to 120, checked the volume changes with style box.
When I clicked OK to the Misc amendments the Mixer sliders instantly moved to 120 except the Soloist (which contained RealDrums). The soloist remained at 90.
When I saved under a new name, the Bass track which I had generated as a RealDrum reverted to the bass RT for that style.
When I re-opened and generated this new style all sliders jumped to 120 except for Soloist which remained at 90.

This seems to confirm that the MISC tab controls the Mixer sliders, though the presence of the RealDrums in the Soloist track seems to have created a glitch in the process, and that the Stylemaker functions are basically MIDI.

I don't see the volume discrepancies as a problem since relative adjustments can be made easily, but would be interested to find out why and is there an override.

Regards
Vintage

Vintage Gibson

You will notice that there isn't a "soloist" channel in style maker, and the only volume adjust is under MISC.

Have you tried making an adjustment with the soloist edit function? On the main toolbar (File edit play...) there is a soloist selection. One of the submenus is 'Edit Solist Track', and its submenu has 'Adjust Level of Soloist Part". A popup window similar to the V you found previously may let you change the volume.

Sorry Dave but you seem to be missing the point, or maybe I confused the issue by mentioning a specific track.

My question is why does a RealDrum track play at a louder volume when generated on ANY other track than the same RealDrum generated on the Drums track.

As I said earlier, it's not a big deal as there are numerous ways to adjust tracks relative to each other inside BIAB or DAW of choice, but I'm curious to know why it happens and if it can be avoided.

Regards
Vintage

I've done a little more looking around on this topic and this is what I've discovered.

1. Instrumental volumes for Realtracks can be set in Stylemaker's "Misc | More".

PG Music often use this to adjust instruments/tracks so that the final sound of a style has all instruments balanced to '90' in the mixer.

The IMAGE 1 below shows how to do this.

• select the BIAB track (#1)
• select the instrument (#2)
• offset the volume (#3)

The net result of this is that if the same RT is generated on different BIAB tracks, it's possible that there will be a volume difference because the volume settings for each track might have been offset differently in Stylemaker. Such settings will affect RTs on those BIAB tracks.

When Realdrums are generated on those tracks, though, these offset settings don't seem to have any impact.


2. Realdrums can be adjusted under Stylemaker's "Misc" settings.


3. In addition to this, Realdrums also have a volume offset setting in the text file that accompanies them.

For example, looking at the file...

• BluesBBEven8^01-HiHat,Ride_120_Style.txt

...that's found under "bb | drums |BluesBBbluesEven8^" and provides the instructions for 'BluesBBEven8^_120_Style.wav', the volume settings for the drums can be controlled.

These are shown on IMAGE 2 below.


Given the above, and that Realdrum volumes are often louder when the Realdrums are generated on any track other than the Drums track suggests that the instrumental tracks do no fully interpret the dB offset settings in the .txt file instructions.

Just my 2¢ worth.

Regards,
Noel

Noel,

Thank for the research and reply, sounds logical.
I would be interested to hear from Kent or someone from PGMusic on this.

Regards
Vintage

p.s. just noticed the typo in my original post title!!