Hi

When I load an all midi style into real band, it will play every instrument within Coyote.
Now when I change default player to Aria it seems that I have to choose/load everything from scratch into the Aria Player slots.
Is there a command to import the coyote settings (channel and instrument program) loaded directly to Aria ?

TIA

No. You can set up multi's in Aria with common BIAB combinations (Acoustic Bass, E Piano, Guitar etc.) in the appropriate channel slots. Then when you load a song, you can choose the appropriate multi with the instruments you want. Does that make sense? I don't think you can make the Aria player a GM type VST that is controllable as you want. I am not an expert though, so somebody may know more than I about that.

Hi Joe
Thanks for the help.
I can understand what you mean ..

General MIDI (GM) is at the bottom of the sounds good spectrum and Coyote is very near the bottom IMHO. GM is a somewhat universal as each GM number is assigned to a specific sound, i.e 1=piano, 19=rock organ, etc. See here:

https://www.midi.org/specifications-old/item/gm-level-1-sound-set

I say somewhat universal as each GM sound set may have a different piano, or trumpet, or rock organ, etc.

A step up from Coyote are some soundfonts (SF2). If you need or want to keep in GM then check out some free soundfont players and soundfonts. Some soundfonts are free some are not. The Cakewalks TTS-1 is also a better sounding GM.

BUT the best MIDI sounds are not in GM mode. They included SFZ as well as Aria, and the more expensive sounds like Kontakt, SampleTank, East West Play, etc. Why? Because GM must contain 128 instruments and 7 drum kits, thus they are constrained by the total sample size (KBs). For instance I have one piano sound that is larger in sample size than an entire GM, but it sounds a whole lot better than the GM #1 piano.

So if you want better MIDI sounds you have to get a non GM sound set. But you will have to assign what sound you want for each MIDI channel. Depending on what sounds (presets) you have with Aria you may find that you have a number of trumpets for example. That is the beauty of non GM in that you can have multiple options for sounds from more that one sound source.

What you need to do is to assign say a piano to the BiaB MIDI track by selecting Aria, placing a piano in Aria, then matching the BiaB channel and the Aria channel. In non GM sounds nothing is preset, you have to set everything up but the resulting sound(s) is much better.

I do all of my setting up in my DAW and not BiaB but others here can help you with that.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

This is not really true.
I have GM sample sets ranging in size from a few meg to a few gig.
The GM spec does not restrict the sample size; the synth/hardware does.

'Finding' a good GM sample set is a whole 'nother problem, but the spec isn't the issue. There could be more awesome GM sound sets if there were a market for it.

By being constrained by total sample size I meant to indicate that a GM sound set with excellent sounds like those from Kontak, Sampltank, East West Play, etc, would be an extremely huge file and would take sometime to load. I'd bet many of us don't have the HD space or the ram to use such a huge file. I have 16 Gigs of ram and I don't think that would be enough.

I agree that there is a very limited market for GM. Anyone serious about using better MIDI sounds moves away from GM very quickly.

I apologize for any inconvenience that I may have caused.

Using Aria is a good idea, just have to set it up for each tune if the instrumentation changes. As Mario has said, GM sounds are just not very good. OK for a quick listen to get the idea of a style maybe, but only just that. Really not good if you want to do something professional. IK Multimedia was having a great sale on their Total Studio Max 2, which includes Sample Tank 4 and a huge library of great samples, as well as Amplitube 5, T-Racks 5, more than I can remember. Quite easy to learn to use as well. Their licensing and authentication system can be confusing and there are a multitude of downloads to do when you purchase, but in the end it is worth it.

Total Studio 2 Max is normally $1000, but they have it at $249 right now. Huge package of stuff.

The Synthfont64 soft synth PG Music provides for use with the 64 bit Band-in-a-Box (and 64 bit RealBand perhaps?) includes a GM patch.

For those that want to try something different there is Don Allen's +++ Timbres Of Heaven +++.

Where do you find Synthfont64 you say is provided for BiaB 64?

Page 11 of the 2021 Band-in-a-Box user manual.

The first mention I can find is on page 13 of the 2019 Band-in-a-Box user manual. That would make sense as I believe 2019 is when 64 bit BiaB was introduced.

The file itself is located at x:\bb\Data\libx64\VSTSynthfont64.dll where "X" = your BiaB drive.

FYI - The Synthfont64 included with BiaB is a trail version. To use it past 15 days you have to purchase it.

Hi
Thanks for all the inputs on my topic. There is a lot to learn, but this helps !