I LOVE RB don't get me wrong.
A lot of Users suggested I should do Beta Testing.
Reply:

I do it all through Total Frustration !
I started out really nice in the Wishlist asking for new features & fixes.
So many are so easy fixed in a few minutes for a programer but it don't seem to happen. I know I can be hard and public in these things but I think it's what needs to be done to bring about change, cruel to be kind so to speak. I can do Beta testing but I don't want to get caught in a system that don't work as it should.
I don't know if it is Just Jeff that programs but they need more even to do the quick little fixes that need doing so very much.
As I mentioned with Reaper that started in 2005 has grown considerably, they bring out update & fixes every month or sooner, PG has been around since the Ark.
There is so much potential for the program to be totally up there with the best if not the best.
Even if they have a Free limited features and tracks version as Reaper to get it more popular. Look at the User Numbers in the Reaper Forum, don't get me wrong I rarely use Reaper !
There needs to be a Quantum Leap and change, the current way is not working.
Honestly if I won the Lottery I would give a large chunk to PG for this very purpose.

Thanks,
SR

SR,
I believe you're in it for the greater good.
I appreciate your efforts, and truly wish someone who obviously uses it as much as you do was 'gathered into the fold' for development/testing. The delivery of some of your comments can be a little harsh, but like I said, I believe your comments are for the greater good, and you seem to have some valid insight.

Like you, I think RB could take the DAW world by storm .. but it would take some work.
/think big or go home

Thanks rharv, appreciate that.

I also appreciate that you mean well, and just want a better system. I do think you push the program a bit to hard sometimes. To compare RB to reaper is a bit unfair

While reaper my seem like a far more advanced and stable program, it also does not have half the complexities of something like RB. Which is a hybrid of two programs.

I was hoping PG would fix a bunch of the small issues RB has rather than add a bunch of stuff this year. They took a whole year to release this time, adding a way to use 64 bit. Hopefully many of the broken features will be addressed in the next maintenance release. I am waiting for a week or two to purchase this year. I will say that if you do not push RB to hard it never craps out. I just have come to realize that it is not as robust as say reaper or studio one, or cakewalk sonar. Maybe that is due to it having so many very complex feature sets like the RDs and RTs, UTs, looping, artist tracks, and more.

But every one of those other programs if you read the forums have bugs and issues. Many that never get fixed right. So maybe in the next update many issues will be fixed, and it will be more stable.

Thanks Robh, if there was only RB 2009 and that was as good as it got I would persevere with that every day because that is how good RB is. It is just frustrating when you are creating a sound and you are in the zone but then it is all comes to a halt with a problem, then you have to get out and put the tracks in a DAW to work on them, then go back and forth regenerating bits, then you are not in a calm creative state. I just want to be able to produce it all in RB. Just an example you generate a RT and you want to mute out bits in places or as you do between vocals, but once you have done this with nodes you can't mix that track Vol in the mixer as it is locked to that vol. Just that little problem and you have to put in a DAW to do this.
I work with loops also but till now I have never used them in RB because I had to wait ages just to preview the loop to see if it would fit.
I think just using it all the time I have got RB fatigue. I need a good long break from it all, Hawaii maybe

Hi Rob, I think SR is not unreasonable. If it looks like a DAW and smells like a DAW, then it needs to work like a DAW, surely?

I agree that RB has some extra features like importing real tracks, but once they are inserted, it should be able to deliver the same features as any other DAW.

The PGM team has done a great job, but need to be mindful of the features that other DAW's deliver, and what the users ask for time and again in the Wish List.

All great products can be greater products. Yearly updates with few new features just give all the other market players a better chance. We don't want that to happen, do we?

My 2 cents

Trevor

SR, I have no problem with your persistence. I am just concerned about your blood pressure. So be sure to pace yourself, cause what you are looking for from RB is going to take a very long time.

My take on Rb is this,

Its a great program for generating realtracks and drums after the initial basic lay out in BIAB, but once I have got all I want, I get to hell out of it as fast as I can and import the tracks into Cubase. Not too many crashes there.

Have you ever opened rb clicked on the styles or realdrums icon, it starts to get ready but nothing appears, then you have to force close rb because nothing will respond, only to find that the actual drums dialog was behind rb all long, so now rb is closed and you have to close the drums dialog as well.

To be honest it probably was a bit of a programming job to create RB in the first place giving it the extra features of biab.

I would imagine that PGmusic has limited resources (though I don't know) the people that have been programming both biab and rb have been doing it for a lifetime, and I can't see anything happening in that department, I mean if they were to say tomorrow we will bring in new programmers to put rb up to top daw quality, but it will cost twice as much, would we all be willing to pay it?

Sometimes I even think biab has gone as far as it can, no point in adding more unneeded things to it.

One very interesting idea that was mentioned I think by Solidrock was an extension to use in other daws, now some sort of VST or extension would be an absolutely brilliant idea where the realtracks drums maybe even chords and all the midi and other styles could be used in the usual daws reaper sonar or Cubase, without having to open biab or rb atall.

In the meantime we just have to accept these programs for what they are quirks and all, report the bugs if we find any in the hope they will or will not be fixed.

At the end of the day still great toys to play with.

Musiclover

Kind of how I work as well except I pull them into Audition and work that environment.

hey i support SR, he wants what we all want. I want to stay in RB from start to finish. Heck i own three main DAWs platforms, and would rather not use them. Actually i seldom do.

To say if it smells like a DAW it is a DAW. RB is far more than a typical DAW. There is not a single DAW out there that can generate what RB does, not one. I would imagine getting to do what it does and still act like a typical DAW is difficult.

My advise to PG is to sit with what you have, and fix the niggley things like the popups behind the main screen. I mean that was fixed two years ago, but comes back with every upgrade. Fix the node system so it acts like a typical DAW If PG said that they would. Fix those things and a half dozen other very aggravating little issues, and add the 101 new RTs, we would all still purchase the upgrade.

I totally agree with everybody's frustrations but I keep coming back to one main point:

RB is FREE to all except those who purchase the bottom basement version of Biab. FREE. Remember that.

Somebody mentioned Cubase. Look up how much that costs. Others use Sonar. Look up how much that costs. I use Studio One Pro. That's about $300.

RB is free so whattyallwant anyway?

Right now RB is a very basic DAW that came from the old Power Tracks. The fact that they can't fix the very basic VST tempo lock issue that at first Peter himself said they were looking into tells me this is old code that can't be fixed without a complete rewrite.

Look in the mirror and ask yourself if PG came out with a killer brand new RB with all the Biab functions but had to charge $300 for it would you buy it?

And, think of the legal issues. I read an article about DAW's and how they all have patented and copywritten features in them. You can't just code a new DAW that works as well as other DAW's without stepping on some legal toes. I suspect that's why Reaper is so weird. It can work well after you learn it but face it, it's weird.

It is what it is guys.

Bob

Those are very valid points JM. I will add that is these things were a simple coding fix they would already be fixed. Hence my comment about not pushing it to hard. When i stay simple and let RB do what it does best, i get very decent results. If I want to really get detailed and use some very deep DAW features, that is why i own, Sonar, Studio one, and Reaper. I start in RB get a good solid song bed, and if i need nothing to fancy i finish there. If i need more i go to Studio one usually.

Still i would love to see the basic broken things fixed. The popup picker windows should not come up behind the main screen.

Your question of "if PG came out with a killer brand new RB with all the Biab functions but had to charge $300 for it would you buy it?"

The answer is YES, cause that is what i would do all my work in.

If RB had tempo lock, 64 bit recording, Better node based volume/pan/automation/FX envelopes and still had the BiaB generation capability i would buy it in a heartbeat.

GUI does not amtter much to me, sure i want it to look decent, but who cares if it is super fancy, i want function.

I was at Lowes the other day to buy a new hammer. they had a simple wood handled one and a fancy Kobalt hammer with a super cool looking plastic contoured handle. Both were around $15. I bought the wood one, it was smoother in my hand, and will drive a nail just as good as the other one. But man that Kobalt looked great. The end result was i got a good working hammer.

Bottom line is, we all want different things to do what we want to do. That is fine and even cool, out of the discussion come some great ideas. Maybe some of this will filter into the program, and it will continue to grow as time marches on.

FREE? Where would someone go to download this free version of RealBand without spending at least $129? If I have to buy something to get something it ain't free!

I use RB in a very limited fashion to generate tracks bar-by-bar but if they added that functionality to BIAB I'd never open RB again! Even better would be if they take the underlying technology and RealTracks, convert it to a VSTi that works with any DAW and there is your killer product!

I have not seen the 'popup behind the screen' thing in RB for over three years.

Related note:
I have been told of issues caused by a mouse that was sending a double-click message on what the user thought was a single click, and wonder if the popup issue (for some) could come from that.

You think you clicked OK, but your mouse clicked OK once and then sent another click message that was on the main displayed screen (since the dialogue box had disappeared with the first click), causing the popup to be sent to the back since the second click caused the focus to be on the next (main) window. It appears the popup disappeared. Natural action for some is to try open the popup again (but it is already open and hidden behind the main screen.)

Our techs have seen this a few times with varying programs; the mouse was the actual problem.

Just sayin', since it was a topic at work recently. Same symptom, different programs, Root Cause was not the program but the mouse!

Tuner "Always on Top".
If you are wondering what that other window is behind it is the RT Picker window.
It happened 4 times in the last few days so I just copied that Always On Top code from the Tuner and pasted it in the RT Picker now RT Picker is Always On Top.

Well..maybe RB is just.. well.. what Jack says to the other poor patients in As Good As It Gets when he comes out of the psychiatrist's office very disappointment !

Maybe Rharv has a point about the mouse but the mouse works fine with other programs that I have, just happens with RB.

Personally speaking I would hope that PGmusic would give Solidrock a job sorting out these bugs maybe they couldn't pay much but Solidrock seems to know what he/she is doing and has a dedication to the program and the fixes.

Musiclover

Thanks ML, but I'm no programer, if I was I would do it for free because the great program has helped me no end, I just work out things through necessity. They need some young programing whiz kid who is enthusiastic and sees things with fresh modern eyes to give them a hand. I've seen 16 year old whiz kids totally re-write re-design old buggy programs. The sky's the limit then.

Solidrock,

Rock on! Keep on with your comments.

First, there's nothing wrong with asking for a product to perform reliably as advertised. Free or otherwise a product should work as advertised.

Every DAW I'm aware has a unique feature or implements a feature better than the competition. Most also have a free or demo version available so, in my mind, your comparisons are valid.

I do not doubt your passion for the product at all and understand your frustration.

Thanks Jim.

SolidRock, I for another, do appreciate your continued efforts. I think that RB is a standout product, capable of unique functions and capabilities. Like many here, if I could stay in RB for all of my work, I would drop my updates to Sonar as I much prefer to work in RB.

Please continue to lead the forum efforts and team up with the good folks at PG, especially Jeff Yankauer to bring this to fruition.

Thanks MS, just sometimes it's like talking to a brick wall, and throwing a coin is a wishing well.

I definitely go back and forth on RB. Sometimes I'll post a detailed description of how cool it can be then I'll post for the upteenth time about the VST tempo issue. That's been ongoing since I first bought Jamstix about 5 years ago.

When I said it was free I was referring to RB being included with the purchase of Biab.

SR, one thing I've discovered that you may or may not know about is the need to close and reopen RB if you've been doing some deep audio or midi editing. That will still bite me on occasion. You suddenly notice that things in the piano roll are acting strangely or trying to expand the audio edit window doesn't quite look right and realize oops, time to save, close and reopen and then all is well for another 45 minutes to an hour although that's not precise. It depends on exactly what you've been doing. It's hard to test this, it just seems to creep up on you. Everything is fine for "a while" and then slowly becomes I don't know, unstable maybe although a song will still play fine, RB isn't crashing it's just some functions don't work correctly without closing and reopening the program.

Bob

Audio edits put chunks of audio all over the place on the hard drive. Each edit creates a new chunk. It doesn't get re-written to a nice clean linear file again until saving. Closing and Opening RB probably involves this step (saving), so that may be part of why it helps. Try saving it.

Another thing that may help is if the temp audio directory is on another drive so some of the work is done by the second drive.

One more thing -
Consolidate Track puts the whole track to 'one chunk' again.
You sacrifice the undo feature for the consolidated tracks, but you lose that when you close/reopen too. Also, certain plugins have more trouble with the multiple chunks than others.

Any of these options may help avoid needing a close/open routine.