Originally Posted By: colly
PUMPS2 When I take BIAB tracks into a DAW where I can use the full palate of tools..
Do you mean you can use 64 plug ins...?

I mean when I want something to actually sound presentable -- something better than I would use for strictly basement practice purposes, I either pull MIDI from BIAB or else I render WAVs for EACH INSTRUMENT from BIAB and then run it into a full-blown DAW environment. And yes, these DAW environments are almost exclusively 64 bits these days -- have been for most of a decade.

Originally Posted By: colly
PUMPS2..I can create a much higher impact product

For if and when you are a producing artist the radio stations would turn it to mp3...what bit rate then...?

I don't think you understand what I am talking about, or I am doing a very poor job of explaining it. MP3 is irrelevant. I can give you a great sounding MP3. Chances are it will be 320 kb/sec. I don't often use anything less these days, and increasingly people are using FLAC, which has no bit loss at all. The losses over the radio waves are far greater than any fidelity loss from MP3 at those bitrates.

Nonetheless. I can take a file coming directly out of BIAB and put it into MP3 @ 320. And I can take that same material through a DAW and mastering tools, also ending up in MP3 @ 320. It will be night and day. I am not joking here. If you have not experienced that, I really recommend that you do that. I think you will find that a very educational and rewarding experience.

Originally Posted By: colly
PUMP2..In short, the sound coming out of BIAB today might sound pretty good compared to the days of tinny sounding GM softsynths. But it is an UNPOLISHED sound, clearly inferior in a world that raises the bar every year

What bar we are going back the way with recordings not tinny synths...No to the way we listen to music...android ...ipad ...cmon you know fine what im saying.

No, I really don't know what you are saying. I think you are confusing the speaker fidelity of the device with the content of the music file. As I said above, I can give you an MP3 that sounds great -- and I can make a big improvement on any file that comes directly out of BIAB. Yes, obviously, if I try to play that file on an Android phone, it won't sound like much. But with good headphones and/or a nice stereo Bluetooth speaker, the quality will be evident.

Originally Posted By: colly
PUMPS2..And for the same reason, I have very little use for the PGMusic realtracks. Give me great MIDI lines and I can run that through the best VST instruments out there.

Can you put your chords and do all those things we do in BIAB..THROUGH your VSTI out there...

Yes. I can generate MIDI from BIAB and run it into a DAW, then render it with VSTis. I would far prefer to use Addictive Drums, for example, than any of the drum audio that comes out of BIAB, because I can control that sound to an gnat's eyelash. If you have not worked with these tools, you should try it.

Or I can render each instrument in BIAB and move each instrument's WAV file to the DAW. I do both techniques routinely. I would rather use MIDI because then it is easy to align the bars and beats in the DAW, which is useful for many things, such as synchronizing a delay each to the beat of the music.

In addition, I often take MIDI from BIAB into a notation program -- not to notate the MIDI, but to include a rhythm section bed in an arrangement, for example. This is why I say the MIDI output is far more useful to me than the RealTracks.

I think the fundamental issue is that BIAB started as a practice tool. It gradually evolved to something higher quality, but the authors and majority of the user base were comfortable with the walled garden. During that same time, we have seen an explosion of tools that really do work together, and BIAB does its best to not play nice. There is a certain percent of the BIAB user base that is very much committed to this broader music technology world and finds PGMusic's insular approach to be out of line with what is happening in the broader space. It is a shame that PGMusic looks at it this way because there really is no reason why they cannot excel in both market segments.

BIAB: 2023 UltraPak
DAWs: StudioOne 5 Pro, Cubase 12 Pro
Audio: Scarlett 18i20
OS: Win10 64-bit CPU: Haswell 4790 Mem: 24 GB Vid: GTX-760Ti

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