This is kind of an old problem, but it was slightly easier to deal with before. I'm hoping there's an easy solution someone knows.
When I work with a song that was created with a style that used old MIDI tracks and try to convert it to real styles, what I find is when I start the song from a fresh start of the application, the tracks that were converted will be mute. I go to the Mixer and under plug-ins, I will see the synthesizer (was Sampletank, now Sforzando)listed (*in green, by the way). In versions prior to 2017 I could click it and it would reset itself to the proper real style I had selected and play normally. Now it seems a little more random, and I have to do more 'playing around' to get it reset. Fixing it and re-saving it doesn't help. The Sforzando player is set as my default dxi for the tracks I still have that are MIDI. Is there a way I can resolve this without re-entering the whole song from scratch? Thanks!
sForzando is a 'sample player' at it's core. It reads different format synth sounds and plays them, but it isn't a GM compatible synth at it's core. You can make it be one, by importing the gm.dls file from Windows into it. (or even the 12mb Chaos GM sf2). Voila! you now have GM soundset inside sForzando.
sForzando is very flexible and I am really starting to enjoy it. However it does take more effort to set up in my experience.
GM.DLS and Chaos.SF2 images below The problem is, because it's not a GM synth, it doesn't know what instrument to assign to a given channel.
Last edited by rharv; 01/22/1707:20 AM.
Make your sound your own! .. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Thanks & that is great info - I'm looking forward to learning a bit more about Sforzando soon. I'm thinking my current problem may be a little more systemic, and I'm starting to think it's a bug. If I import a song with MIDI tracks set for, say, the Piano and Bass, and I later assign real tracks to them, when I shut down and restart, the sample player re-appears in the first slot (under plug-ins in the mixer) and mutes the track. I can get rid of it easily enough by clicking on it, but it's a pain during a performance. I just wondered if there was something I was missing in the conversion, or an extra step I should be taking before reporting a bug to the support guys.
I'm trying to understand more fully what you are experiencing.
Is the below a correct interpretation of your problem?
1. You load a midi style that has (say) a midi bass.
2. Sforzando is loaded on the top slot of the bass track as the synth to play the midi bass (Image 1, below).
3. Next, a Realtrack bass is added to the bass track. (The Sforzando synth is still in the top slot even though it now is technically not playing anything because a RT has been loaded.) See Image 2 below.
4. When you now save the song and re-open it, Sforzando is present in slot 1 and mutes the Realtrack.
If my interpretation is correct, when I tried the above sequence, after saving with a RT and then re-opening the file, Sforzando was no longer present (image 3). The RT played fine.
What version of BIAB are you runnning? Also, have you installed the latest build, 457?
Noel - Thanks!! you've described it exactly. When I call up a song that has previously had midi tracks, I get something that looks like your 2nd image. I can click on it and the dxi window comes up. It indicates "none" as in no synth patch loaded. If I re-select "none", "Sforzando" goes away from the plug-in list, and my mixer looks like your 3rd image (all "none" in green).
I am running BIAB 2017 and I just installed the latest build (457) yesterday. It has done this for about as long as I have had BIAB on this computer (except the synth was "Sampletank", obviously) and I have upgraded every year since 2013.
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