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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Aug 2000
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OP
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OK, I started a new thread on this topic.
- I have BIAB 2009 on the supplied hard drive.
- I think it is a 75GB drive and I think BIAB takes up about 45GB on that drive... right?
I was going to just do a standard installation to my new PC's so I had the BIAB supplied hard disk as a backup... but then it takes about 45GB of space... so...
Question 1 - Can I just copy the files to a 64GB flash drive and run the program from there... or is a flash drive fast enough... or what?
Question 2 - I'll upgrade on the next BIAB sale... if they will still let me... but... does the current version of BIAB still come on its own dedicated hard disk?
Question 3 - Do you guys...
3a - do a typical "install" on your computers internal drive... or...
3b - run BIAB from an external drive... or...
3c - do the setup like you were going to run from the external drive then copy the BIAB files to your a folder (c:\bb\) on your hard disk... and run it from there as if it were an external drive...
3d - or what?... and what advantages/disadvantages for either way?
Thanks for the help.
My PC's:
- Win7 64bit Desktop
- Win8.1 Laptop
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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1. Haven't tried it. I would think it would work.
2. Yes, a nicely compact USB external drive, bus powered. Good unit.
3. I've used a, b and c on various computers. My choice depends on how many and how fast the disk drives are in my computer, and how full. I have the audiophile version so I can't really run your test on the flash drive easily.
BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thanks Matt. Let me know how it works from the flash drive.
BTW, what is audiophile version ?
Thanks for the help.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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For all versions of BIAB except the Audiophile, Real Tracks and Real Drums are supplied in a compressed file format (I believe it's WMA, but don't quote me yet). They take up less drive space but have minimally inferior sound quality. Note that you would probably have to have a moon rock sound system and ears to match in order to tell the difference. The Audiophile version comes with uncompressed WAV files for higher fidelity. They take up much more drive space but provide full fidelity. For a full description of the package go here. HTH, Richard
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Will, as Richard described, the audiophile version's RealTracks and RealDrums take up on average about eleven times the disk space of the regular versions. Yes, those are .WMA files.
That's why you should test the flash drive, not me.
BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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1. never tried it
2. yup
3. a,b,c at various times.... they all work just fine.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Journeyman
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It should work fine on the flash drive - it is just another type of drive, like the external drive you have from PGM.
The only issue that might cause you trouble with this approach are some vst's, or external programs that like to be installed in the traditional Windows way (assuming a Win pc). Don't know how that works out on a flash.
You said you thought about installing BIAB on your 'new' pc, so that leads me to think that even an entry level pc should have a 500gb or 1TB capacity drive. The 45gb for BIAB is a drop in the bucket by todays standards. Laptops may have smaller drives but still more than enough to handle BIAB.
Personally, just knowing myself as I do, I would be afraid of having all of my song work on a flash drive because I know I'd loose it in about a week or less. I have never misplaced my desk top pc.
Good luck, and if you try it on the flash let us know how it goes.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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There was a thread some time back in which the issue of running BB from a USB stick was raised, Peter Gannon himself posted something to the effect that the good folks up at pgmusic had been looking into USB stick as an alternative to the shipped hard drive and had come to the conclusion that, while it can work, there really needs to be a bit more development in those things before the company would take the plunge.
But he did also state that bb could be run from the stick, so.
I'd be concerned with two major issues, the first being that the speed of things happening would very likely be a tad slower than the speed obtained using the hard drive. I would suspect from just looking at the specs, that the stick would deliver slower RealTrack loading times, for one example. How much slower would really have to be empirically tested, though. The other concern I would have is the fact that BB by nature must do a lot of Writing to disk, for example, any time you Freeze and Save, or just plain do a Save, or record Audio Track, and then there's that ever-present issue in which BB must Write to disk every time you close the program, updating the "intrface.bbw" file and a few others sometimes, again, there may be a speed hit there using the stick.
But I do encourage those who have the time and curiosity to experiment with use of the stick.
Maybe not a great idea for the noob to the program, though, there are enough things to learn how to accomplish in the first place, many of which there would be no way to know if a certain problem happened to you due to use of the stick, or for some other reason.
And - for BB2014, I would be greatly concerned that 64g is just not enough headroom.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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In addition to the above concerns (and I've physically lost my share of thumb drives too), what would worry me is the reliability of these drives. From unplugging at the wrong time/ wrong way, to having the cases break, to just plain losing them, they aren't reliable enough for me to invest the time to load them up with BIAB or anything else of value.
How many flash drives have you had where you lost data? Too many for me.
BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Around here in the Chesapeake Bay area, with the high humidity, I've seen far too many cases of guys losing data due to the humidity actually causing condensation on the internal pcb of the thumb drive.
Carrying the stick around in a pocket during high heat/humidity times is not a good idea...
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I've never lost data on a flash drive, but then I don't carry them around in my pocket either.
I've had one with a physical failure, the USB plug became unattached internally to the housing, so pushing it into the computer pushed it into the drive. I did get the data off it.
I do one-nighter gigs for a living and keep all my backing tracks and charts on a flash drive - just in case. Every time I learn a new song, the data gets added. It lives a hard life, traveling back and forth to the gig in a laptop case, but on the other hand, it doesn't get used much.
I don't know why an external flash drive should be slower than an external hard drive. It seems to this non-tech person that the USB speed should be the same, and the fact that the external hard drive is spinning and the flash drive not, should make the flash drive more reliable and possibly quicker. But like I said, I'm not a techie so I'm sure someone who is will explain it to me.
On the other hand, if BiaB would work as well on a flash drive, I would suspect PG Music would distribute BiaB on a flash.
Just thinking out loud here.
Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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The theoretical transfer rate for USB 2.0 is 400Mb, which equals 50MBs. USB3 is, of course, faster. Here is a link to a Sound-on-Sound article about USB ports. But as with most everything, this is not a "one-input" problem. The actual measured data transfer rate of USB 2.0 is all over the place. Sometimes that is due to various OS problems such as drivers, chipset, bios and other internals, sometimes it can be due to hardware implementation methods that, while conforming to the usb specsheets in theory, do not always perform that way in the real world for various reasons. "Transfer Rate" and "Transfer Time" can also differ for some of those reasons already mentioned. Doesn't seem to make sense that such should be the case unless and until we understand the difference between "burst" rates and sustained transfer rates. Burst rates are good for most common tasks, but when the need is to transfer lots of large files, such as we encounter with Multitrack Music apps and the like, it may be problematic as vs the use of hard drive via the same USB port. Keyword there is, "may". Some motherboards seem to handle these things better than others, then there is the fact that some memory sticks themselves may also be not as good as others at this point in time. http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/data_transfer_rate/dUSBtwo.html Note that the above is not a Boolean argument. Take off the digital hat of "either/or" "one and zero" "all or nothing" and that leaves us with a qualified "try it and see how it works for you and your machine" as it could go either way at this point in time. And also bear in mind that it is the intrepid experimenter that is willing to try working with the different or new idea that often blazes the trail in this sort of endeavor, maybe finding out key pieces of essential information along the way, such as possiblities of isolating certain brands and models of USB Memory that work better at it than others, same would go for the other variables, such as the computer motherboard in use, the implementation of that board's usb hardware, plus the way the drivers are written that can make differences here. If I was to go about this experiment with BB2014, the first thing I'd want is complete and thorough backup system, such as also using the hard drive alongside the stick until such day as the stick had proven itself. I would also not want to be a Noobie to the Band in a Box program itself, as the learning curve of using Band in a Box is one thing and there could easily be problems encountered that might be part of that kind of situation, or might be caused by use of the memory stick - and it could be quite frustrating at that point. --Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thanks Mac, you never disappoint.
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Will,
I had purchased BIAB 2008 and never really used it because I didn't like the synth tracks. When I heard the Real racks with BIAB 2014 I decided to upgrade and go all in. The info for BIAB 2013 indicated about 40 gig for a full installation. So I purchased a laptop ASUS running Haswell i5 processor w/8gb RAM and 2 128 gb solid state drives.
BIAB 2014 took 70 GB of hard drive space (and several hours) for the full install - that was not going to work. I did install Amplitude and the other plug-ins on the C drive. Since my laptop has USB 3.0 I decided to get a Flash Drive. I bought a 128 GB PNY USB 3.0 for about $70.
It is running perfectly and runs much faster than running BIAB from the supplied hard drive - and no moving parts.
Jim
RightSongs
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Welcome to the forum, Jim. Thanks for your report that you can run BIAB successfully from a flash drive.
I wonder, how much of the speed increase is because it is USB 3.0? In other words, if someone had a USB 2.0 flash drive with all of BIAB running on it, would they still be pleased with the performance? I realize you can't answer that, unless you had a second flash drive, one that was USB 2.0, and tried it. But for curiosity, how long did it take you to load all the files on your 3.0 drive?
FYI, I have the BIAB program on my SSD boot drive, and of course it runs very fast from there. I suspect that's even faster than running from a 3.0 flash drive. An option in the setup is to place the program on the boot drive but the RealTracks (and RealDrums) on another drive, because they are what takes up most of the room for a full install. This is particularly true for the audiophile version that I use.
BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Apr 2003
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Expert
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Matt, Jim, and Others,
Over a year ago, I loaded everything (2013 UltraPak) from the external drive onto a 2.0 USB flashdrive (it was a 128GB X Patriot flashdrive that I picked up at Fry's for $70). I do not do gigs using BIAB so I have not used it for gigs, but I have used it many many times for practicing at many different locations (out on the deck, in my music room, at the park, at a family reunion, etc.) and it has worked perfectly. It is a little slower (I haven't had to check the timing since that has not been a problem at all) possibly than the external drive but it's really not noticeably slower.
I reported this to Peter at that time (again, this was about a year ago) and he went straight out and got one as well, but I did not hear back about his experimenting with it. It definitely has served the purpose of "miniaturization"; just drop it in your shirt pocket and you're good to go from any location. There is also plenty left over space on the flashdrive for all my tunes, my favorites, etc.
Now for the funny (hard to believe) part of this story: my wife accidentally washed a pair of my pants that had the flashdrive in one of the pockets. By the time I got home at the end of that day, it had dried out completely. I put it in the flashdrive slot on my laptop and it worked perfectly. Even harder to believe is the fact that when I removed it from the drive, the outside shell came off; I pushed it back on carefully and it still works fine to this day. GO FIGURE!!! After reading Jim's experience above, I will also be getting a 3.0 USB to use as soon as I get some additional time to do the change over. One might wish to categorize my experience as a "sample of size 1", but I'm still "good to go" with the 2.0 USB flashdrive.
Cecil
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Great to read all these reports of what is possible. Thanks, Cecil.
BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Patriot brand is now at 2X positive report.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hey Matt, it took about 3 hours to load all of the files onto the USB 3.0 thumb drive. Keep in mind write speeds to USB are much slower than read. The program seems to run as fast as it did when I initially installed it on my SSD boot drive.
Also for safety, any files that I create myself are stored in My Documents folder on C drive and auto synched with a cloud service (Sky drive in my case).
Jim
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thanks for the report, Jim. I haven't worked that much yet with USB 3.0 and I would have guessed it might take even longer to load than three hours. Appreciate the info.
BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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