I'm still kinda new to Real Band. I have the latest update of the version that came with my copy of BiaB 2017. My machine is a pretty fast laptop with 8 GB of RAM running Win7.

This is the first time I've ever tried loading BiaB format songs into Real Band. I was surprised to find that, with the first song I loaded, which had five instrument tracks -- all MIDI -- that it took about 20 minutes for the song to load completely. It loaded itself in stages, but the spinning cursor didn't stop until about 20 minutes had elapsed. I've also noticed that if I'm loading a song with fewer instruments, it doesn't take as long to load. A trio takes about 10 minutes.

I've been thinking about using RB in a live setting instead of BiaB, but having to wait 10 to 20 minutes between songs is unacceptable. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm wondering if I convert the tunes over to .wav files or another format, if this might speed up how long it takes to load the tunes. I'll give this a try next. And if other formats load more quickly, I guess I would like to know why?

Michael -

Once you have fully loaded a BIAB file into RealBand, you should then immediately save it as a .SEQ file, which is the RealBand native file format that ensures you capture everything you do with your tracks. Then, the next time just load the .SEQ file (not the BIAB file), it will load almost immediately (although, if you are using specific VSTi's, there may be some time to initialize them, especially if they need to load a library to support the sound output).

That being said, 20 minutes seems like a long time. RealBand, unlike BIAB, does not load and start playing immediately. It has to completely generate all the tracks before you can start playing.

The two things I would try would be to 1) make sure you are running RealBand as administrator, and 2) if you are comfortable with it, exclude the RealBand folder from your virus protection (just scan it first to make sure there are no issues).

As John mentioned, 20 minutes does seem extremely long.

Can you tell us more about your computer configuration: RAM, CPU, O/S etc?

The Geekbench score would be helpful.

In the Prefs > Song Generation > uncheck Auto generate song.
1. Open BB song.
2. Click Generate > All BB tracks (if you have not Generated any tracks before opening an SGU it will take time as the generating part of RealBand (Data/bbw2.exe) has to be opened and initialized, once it's initialized it will generate any extra tracks quickly.
Now see what actions take the time.
But 20mins, somethings wrong there.
Should be like 20sec.

Thanks, guys. This is a BIG help!