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Hi all,
If I recall, last time I checked the audio data for BIAB was stored in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format.
This is a very old format, and is also proprietary to Windows.
Wouldn't MP3 or AAC be a better option for quality and filesize?
I think WMA does support lossless encoding, but a 320Mbs MP3 is indistinguishable from WAV, and the RealTracks are not exactly super high-fidelity anyway.
I'm asking, because many people have reacted negatively to the huge amount of storage space that BIAB requires on your PC, about 100GB for the UltraPak.
I believe a more modern and efficient audio codec would reduce that size considerably whilst retaining audio quality.
Thoughts?
Last edited by konaboy; 02/12/23 12:37 AM.
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We have had many discussions about this, notably about the file size and the way BIAB is shipped to Europe. I laughed when I read your post because the audiophile version takes almost 2 TB.
Yes, WMA is Windows only, and old. However, in my opinion a WMA file encoded at 128 sound as good as an MP3 encoded at 192.
You are quite correct there are other codec alternatives, and it could be helpful if the Mac and Windows versions used the same for the regular (not audiophile) versions.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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"This is a very old format, and is also proprietary to Windows."
I was thinking that very same thing the last few days, WHY ?
No other software companies use wma that I know of, I think PG is the only one on the planet.
The Audiophile version needs to be lossless WavePack allowing for 24bit 48khz quality.
I think originally Biab was made as a fun thing for hobbyists, but it seems to be hard to get it to a professional audio software state for professional studio users. There seems to be no goal, dedication or enthusiasm to get it there, they seem to have to be pushed to go there reluctantly.
It seems to brush off on the staff also, no enthusiasm for change and making things better, new ideas, if things are done it's reluctantly to stop users complaining.
If the programming language you are using makes it too hard to add things easily and have to spend 6 months on the Mac version doing the same thing rather than a crossplatform language, crossplatform audio codec, Win/Mac released at the same time with same features, so it might be good to start looking at alternatives.
So that's my "Let's discuss the RealTrack audio format".
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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The use of WMA must be a legacy hangover from the early days of BIAB on windows, before widespread adoption of MP3.
It must be be quite painful, I imagine, to maintain one audio format for windows and another for mac, when AAC or MP3 is cross-platform and with much lower filesizes for same quality.
Well, at the end of the day, WMA works, but would be nice to have the faster downloads and smaller install that a newer codec could provide.
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konaboy you might find this thread of interest. notice MCity's lovely graphics. https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=753128#Post753128the topic of wma versus other formats eg flac that i like and have recorded thousands of voc tracks with has been discussed several times in the past. i cant find it.. but awhile back i requested in the wishlists a all flac recording and playback environment for both biab and rb.(or MCity's wavpak would make me happy too.) re mp3 i'm unsure but i think i read somewhere in a tech bulletin on the net that mp3 isnt as advantageous as flac or wavpac...as its a lossy format. i think this might be it. https://stsaz.github.io/fmedia/audio-formats/there are lots of articles like the above on the net. happiness om
Last edited by justanoldmuso; 02/10/23 02:18 PM.
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs(90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
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Download times and storage aren't the common consumer issues they once were.
The only things keeping WMA in the works are the time as well as expense of converting to .wav or similar, (IF the original files weren't kept), and maintaining the allure of the more expensive Audiophile version, (which, in reality, would be easier, faster & therefor cheaper, to have set up as there wasn't the time & expense for conversion to WMA).
A 320 MP3 guitar track in a mix might be hard to distinguish/pick as lower resolution than a 24bit guitar part but there are some complications that occur after conversion & further down the mix/stem/master chain such as dither and noise shaping that can be a problem for the unwary particularly if starting from a low res "lossy" format
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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thanks for making this an interesting discussion.
after some thought, BIAB for 2023 should really work more like this...
only a "lite" BIAB client is needed on the user PC. The massive database of audio resources is stored on PG Music servers. no need to download or install these.
user creates song and enters chords as normal.
song generation is done on-the-fly on PG Music cloud servers. audio stems are streamed to BIAB client in real-time and routed through the mixer just like before.
might sound like science fiction, but we are used to streaming video on demand (much higher bandwidth requirements) and even video games, where all the game and graphics processing is done on remote servers and streamed to basically a web browser running on the PC.
this would even open up the possibility for running BIAB in the browser, with modern and accessible user interface and no installation needed, just a subscription, or lifetime pass.
food for thought...
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I said ages ago PG could have a site where you make up the tracks and they play back with a water mark then if they fit your needs you purchase the tracks and download.
I would rather have the 48khz 24bit audio files on a hard drive to use anywhere anytime and off line as how many studio computers are online. You want faster generate times not slower.
They did this with the ios and android apps where they just access the bbserver and send it chords and style info then the remote server sends the rendered file to the phone.
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I think BIAB would be different if they started now. But they started a long time ago in the era of floppy discs and a total rethink is not really possible. And currently you buy different packs - and different levels of streaming access would be difficult to administer.
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I can see some attractions of a streaming server as an option, but I can also see some issues, not the least of which is that many people deliberately do not have their music PC attached to the Internet.
The streaming would also need to be rock solid if a streaming-based BiaB were to not miss timing of notes or chords and we could easily be streaming multiple audio here .... five or six tracks is common, twenty or thirty not rare, and as RealTracks are time-stretched, pitch-shifted and glued together from audio chunks within the RealTrack file. I suspect each whole RealTrack files would need downloading and caching before use.
MIDI of course has little size in comparison anyway.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2025 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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Konaboy.
re useing pg servers//'lite'.
(nice discussion idea mate.)
as a concept its a wonderful idea... however as ive worked on tech all over the world in varying capacities over the years…often the problem is translating a great concept into a successful implementation…..eg…in this case.... (to name a few.)
1..what would be any added infrastructure costs to pg. as well as impacts viz logistics/day to day operations on pg and users..
(a feasibility study would need to be done by pg.)
2..lots of recording studios are loathe to put their recording rigs on the net due to security concerns/issues. I'm such a case.
(I use a separate computer for the net that i'm using for this post.)
3..bear in mind lots of people around the world either can't afford isp services and/or the area they live in doesnt have the net infrastructure.
in conclusion its a great idea , but i feel it might be early days to implement.until particularly point 2 and other logistics can be addressed.
many people dont seem concerned about security till it happens to them or a friend.
call me paranoid but ive heard first hand the impact on a family of a security issue.
this really needs to be addressed in some way.
prolly by isp's//governments around the world//computer manufacturers working in concert for a solution.
best
om
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs(90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
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if we are suddenly thrust into a dark world without internet then the inability to generate biab songs would be the least of our worries  you all make some great points for and against, I agree with them all. i also work as a developer, building back-end services, and it's never been easier to set up servers using cloud services like AWS. In fact, these days, you don't even need servers, you just deploy your application to the cloud, and pay by the ms of processing time that is used. This kind of thing would be ideal for handling the song generation, creating the audio tracks, and then making them available for streaming. i was not aware about the mobile app. the more i think about it, the more attractive a web-browser based interface would be. i'd be prepared to bet that a lot of people are turned off by the current GUI (see separate discussion about younger people not using the program).... yeah, of course a good internet connection is a requirement, but that is already the case for many of the critical things we do online these days, and it's pretty much a given.
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i'd be prepared to bet that a lot of people are turned off by the current GUI (see separate discussion about younger people not using the program)....
I started with, IIRC, the 2012 edition with the slightly older interface still, of a notepad with a 11" diagonal screen, and I found it both very clumsy and on that notepad unusable. At that time I gave it up and walked away. I tried again when the slightly newer interface came out and stuck with it. I'm now running 2023 of that very same notepad, reasonably successfully. But the interface, whilst better, is still pretty clumsy and arcane. I still struggle to understand why there's a "Track Settings and Actions" dialog, and on the menu, also a "Track Settings" sub-menu and a "Track Actions" sub-menu. That seems perverse.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2025 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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Money wise, bad idea!
1000 people doing editing, generating, regenerating, partial rendering songs in the backend (servers), at the same time, will cost PG Music millions of dollars in Cloud CPU/RAM and bandwidth each year.
Trust me, it's much worse than 1000 people watching NetFlix at the same time.
Also, selling a $10/month subscription, so people won't buy the $500 software?
The CEO will be fired immediately.
A Canadian music producer, singer songwriter, composer, and professional guitarist.
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well, the cost of cloud computing is remarkably cheap, I know because I just estimated it for a client.
i built a service that handles a million requests a month with each request requiring 1 second of processing time. For that, the servers cost just $14. it's astonishing.
another approach would be to stream the realtrack resources to the BIAB client on-demand, and have the program generate the song.
there are significant maintenance benefits in having the program running in the cloud, just one version of the service for everyone, that can be updated and patched with a couple of mouse clicks.
everyone would be on the same version, cutting support costs.
maintenance, development and support costs tend to be way more than the servers.
and so many companies going to subscription model because, it lowers the cost of entry, attracting more users. it also has the benefit to the company in that they can more easily predict their monthly income.
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Wouldn't MP3 or AAC be a better option for quality and filesize? I don't think we would ever want to go down the mp3 path, even if it is supposedly license free now (?). m4a is a good choice, and is what we use on Mac. Various lossless formats would be good to investigate as well. well, the cost of cloud computing is remarkably cheap, I know because I just estimated it for a client True, but not when you start talking about huge amounts of data transfer say hundreds/thousands of TB/month.
Andrew
PG Music Inc.
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For new RealTracks, in future we might switch to m4a to be the same as Mac.
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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I think stick with what you have unless you are planning to give better audio quality of 48khz 24bit on the Audiophile drive if not just stick with 44.1 khz 16bit wav files that everyone seems to be using in this day n age.
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- There are many audio expert articles on the internet showing that, for distributing audio, 44.KHz 16 bit (which we use) is equal to higher bit rates like 24 bit. 48khz etc.
- of course in a DAW you bring in these files and edit them in a higher bit rate environment (24 bit, 96KHz etc), but once they’re finished editing and complete, shipping 24 bit files vs 16bit is no better. No detectable difference heard by audiophiles in the tests done.
-of course we record and mix them in higher bit depth, I’m just referring to how they are shipped after they are finalized.
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Just for curiosity, does that mean that you could provide a 24-bit version? In other words, it would not be an upsampled one, but the original files because they were recorded in 24-bit (or better)? I don't believe that answer was ever known to us.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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