|
Log in to post
|
Print Thread |
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 21
Enthusiast
|
OP
Enthusiast
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 21 |
Hi awesome music software developers,
While I understand the desire to keep the end-user purchase price down, the 1.5TB drive that comes with the Audiofile PAK is the loudest thing in my studio. I am going to have to remote it out of the room somehow in order to use it.
My guess is those of us who go all-in on this are pretty serious about not only recording the best possible tracks, but also preserving the environment in which we mix them. Please be conscious about this on upcoming releases. I would happily pay more for it if I knew the HD it came on was whisper quiet.
Thanks for considering this,
stratavinsky
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 812
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 812 |
This is good info. I do not have that edition. However, if I did buy it, and noise was a big consideration, I would spring for a Solid State drive. Expensive, but if you read the reviews of the latest drives, they are blazing fast, make no noise, and are cool running. Theses drives have also had the bugs out, the reviews of the latest drives put them at 2.5 million hours. In other words, even if you moved 50 GB of data on them everyday, they would last between 15-25 years.
I looked at both Newegg and Tigerdirect webpages to get info.
Ed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506 |
Stravinsky, I have the audiophile external drive. I took the drive out of its case and mounted it inside the PC case (I was fortunate to have another SATA slot open). The drive is almost completely quiet like my other drives because the noise was from the fan in the external case, not the drive.
Ed, wow, an SSD drive for Real Tracks would be wonderful. However, there are over 1.2TB of files for the audiophile edition. I haven't seen a SSD as large as a TB in size yet, and if there were one, it would probably cost as much as the rest of my PC. Or my car. I can't wait until the capacity goes up and the cost comes down, though. If that happens, all drives will be SSD in short order.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 21
Enthusiast
|
|
OP
Enthusiast
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 21 |
Great tip Matt! I've never performed open heart surgery on an external drive before, but all-in-all it went pretty smooth. Navigating through the directory structure on the Audiophile HD is lightning fast now, too.
Hail SATA,
stratavinsky
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,116
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,116 |
Quote:
Hail SATA
I've gone to the same solution on the last 2 Audiophile drives. Frankly, PG Music could save themselves and me some money on future audiphile editions by offering an option of just shipping the bare SATA drive without the usb case. I'm just going to pull the drive out of the case, put it in the PC and throw the usb enclosure in the trash any way.
Quote:
I would happily pay more for it if I knew the HD it came on was whisper quiet.
Naw, not so much here. Considering that I don't need an external usb enclosure to make the drive work, I'd rather get cheaper and leave the enclosure out altogether.
Keith
2026 Audiophile Windows 11 RYZEN THREADRIPPER 3960X 4.5GHZ 128 GB RAM 2 Nvidia RTX 3090s, Vegas,Acid,SoundForge,Izotope Production,Melodyne Studio,SONAR,3 Raven Mtis
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506 |
Stavinsky - excellent. Glad it worked for you.
Keith, I was thinking the same thing. For the next major version, I will urge them to send me just the drive.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 603
Journeyman
|
|
Journeyman
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 603 |
Another perfectly reasonable course -- if you need to keep it in the USB box -- is just to cut the wires on those noisy junk fans and throw them to hell.
Many high-grade enclosures no longer have fans, which have proved unnecessary for present-day drives. I have two fanless (in fact ventless) USB hard drives that don't get hot and have worked nicely for a couple years.
Larry
______
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506 |
Larry, interesting idea. But you still have the performance limitation of USB rather than using the SATA connection directly. About receiving only the drive, I just posted in the Wishlist. http://www.pgmusic.com/ubbthreads/showfl...ge=0#Post266911
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506 |
Update. I just saw a 1 TB SSD drive at Newegg. It costs $3800, and even that would not be large enough capacity for the program with audiophile Real Tracks.
I was right. It costs well more than my whole PC, and almost as much as my car is worth now!
Someday...
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 812
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 812 |
Hey Matt, yeah, you nailed it on the head about cost/capacity issues. Let's hope they come WAY down in price soon.
I watched a few videos today on Youtube about SSD drives in General, learned a lot. I saw where they are best used in a Raid o array, up to 24 can be used. Access time as well as Write/Read times go through the roof as well.
I just bought a refurbished Dell D620 Laptop for $349. Intel Core duo 2. 60 gig drive. So I'm thinking about replacing it with a OCX or Micron 60 GB SSD drive. The drives are about $200, but the speed is supposed to be amazing. And more durable when I'm traveling, less heat, much longer life. If and when I do it, I'll report on how it's working in regards to using it with Digital Audio.
Ed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 493
Journeyman
|
|
Journeyman
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 493 |
Matt, if you have that much of an 'in' with PGMusic, perhaps you can also push for them to update the enclosures for the hard drives (for all versions) to include eSata ports. That would make it much nicer for me anyway. USB on a 1.5tb drive is painfully slow. My computer case is full, so external or replacement for another drive are my only options.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506 |
Yes, I thought about that, too. I don't have any more 'in' than anyone else, and you should post that good idea on the Wishlist. Having a choice of preferred drive type would be nice.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180
Apprentice
|
|
Apprentice
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180 |
Quote:
Update. I just saw a 1 TB SSD drive at Newegg. It costs $3800, and even that would not be large enough capacity for the program with audiophile Real Tracks.
I was right. It costs well more than my whole PC, and almost as much as my car is worth now!
Someday...
Hi Matt,
There are a couple of 2TB raid SSD drives that are mounted on PCIe cards and which can achieve throughput many times faster than SATA but these are even more prohibitively expensive than the one you quoted. Given that they are basically built around silicon, Moores Law should mean that they will come down in price pretty rapidly over the next 3 or 4 years so to the point where we could maybe afford them as our dedicated BIAB server drives.
I have previously suggested to PG that they should consider distributing the audiophile version in the 'Lossless WMA' format. This will only give around a 2 to 1 compression ratio but right now that would mean that we could fit the audiophile version on to 600GB instead of 1.2 terabytes. If they did this then maybe BIAB could meet SSD drives a year or two sooner down the price performance curve. (Which would be nice!)
For people who are happy with the WMA version of realtracks an SSD may be an affordable option right now - you can pick up a Samsung 256GB SSD for around £500 in the UK (The way the exchange rate is going that will probably translate to $500 pretty soon!). This is still not pocket money cheap but you get a lot of bang for your buck.
Meanwhile I am thinking about installing a Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB drive as my internal BIAB drive. This is a 7,200 RPM drive which uses clever technology to deliver performance which beats even the 10,000RPM Velociraptor drives. This costs around £200. Together with the faster realtrack generation times in BIAB 2010 this should give awesome (if not quite SSD) performance.
Regards, Aubrey
If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,506 |
Fascinating being on the cutting edge. Let us know how it works out.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box for Windows
|
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 20
Enthusiast
|
|
Enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 20 |
Before buying a SSD here's a link to some interesting information about these little beasties. There seems to be two different grades and the consumer grade has some undesirable artifacts as per this quote: "The consumer grade drives (the Adaptec, Apricorn, Dot Hill and Ritek systems) showed dramatic variations in response times (latency) under sustained write conditions, which some vendors are calling the 'write cliff'." The link to the article is here: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/CDN/News.asp?id=57255For us folks that use BIAB on laptops the USB drive is a necessity but the fans on the unit enclosure supplied are pretty loud and distracting. If you have "golden ears" the whine of the drive can still be pretty annoying even without the fans. (I disconnected mine and have been monitoring the heat but there have been no issues or heat generation of any significance so far.) I have ordered a new HDD enclosure to try out and will report here if it makes a significant difference. I hope so! Otherwise, I can't say enough good things about the new BIAB audiophile version. I've waited for many years for something like this and feel it is absolutely outstanding. Highly recommended.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac® users: Build 904 now available!
If you're already using Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac®, make sure to grab the latest update! Build 904 is now available for download and includes the newest additions and enhancements from our team.
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® users: Build 1237 is now available!
Already a Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows user? Stay up to date and download the build 1237 to get all the latest additions and enhancements.
PowerTracks Pro 2026 for Windows is Here!
PowerTracks 2026 is here—bringing powerful new enhancements designed to make your production workflow faster, smoother, and more intuitive than ever.
The enhanced Mixer now shows Track Type and Instrument icons for instant track recognition, while a new grid option simplifies editing views. Non-floating windows adopt a modern title bar style, replacing the legacy blue bar.
The Master Volume is now applied at the end of the audio chain for consistent levels and full-signal master effects.
Tablature now includes a “Save bends when saving XML” option for improved compatibility with PG Music tools. Plus, you can instantly match all track heights with a simple Ctrl-release after resizing, and Add2 chords from MGU/SGU files are now fully supported... and more!
Get started today—first-time packages start at just $49.
Already using PowerTracks Pro Audio? Upgrade for as little as $29 and enjoy the latest improvements!
Order now!
Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows Special Offers End Tomorrow (January 15th, 2026) at 11:59 PM PST!
Time really is running out! Save up to 50% on Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® upgrades and receive a FREE Bonus PAK—only when you order by 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, January 15, 2026!
We've added many major new features and new content in a redesigned Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®!
Version 2026 introduces a modernized GUI redesign across the program, with updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, and a new Dark Mode option. There’s also a new side toolbar for quicker access to commonly used windows, and the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, making it easier to customize your workspace.
Another exciting new addition is the new AI-Notes feature, which can transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI. You can view the results in notation or play them back as MIDI, and choose whether to process an entire track or focus on specific parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
Upgrade your Band-in-a-Box for Windows to save up to 50% on most Band-in-a-Box® 2026 upgrade packages!
Plus, when you order your Band-in-a-Box® 2026 upgrade during our special, you'll receive a Free Bonus PAK of exciting new add-ons.
If you need any help deciding which package is the best option for you, just let us know. We are here to help!
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® Special Offers Extended Until January 15, 2026!
Good news! You still have time to upgrade to the latest version of Band-in-a-Box® for Windows® and save. Our Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® special now runs through January 15, 2025!
We've packed Band-in-a-Box® 2026 with major new features, enhancements, and an incredible lineup of new content! The program now sports a sleek, modern GUI redesign across the entire interface, including updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, a new dark mode option, and more. The brand-new side toolbar provides quicker access to key windows, while the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, creating a flexible, clutter-free workspace. We have an amazing new “AI-Notes” feature. This transcribes polyphonic audio into MIDI so you can view it in notation or play it back as MIDI. You can process an entire track (all pitched instruments and drums) or focus on individual parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
There are over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
When you order purchase Band-in-a-Box® 2026 before 11:59 PM PST on January 15th, you'll also receive a Free Bonus PAK packed with exciting new add-ons.
Upgrade to Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® today! Check out the Band-in-a-Box® packages page for all the purchase options available.
Happy New Year!
Thank you for being part of the Band-in-a-Box® community.
Wishing you and yours a very happy 2026—Happy New Year from all of us at PG Music!
Season's Greetings!
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy holiday season—thanks for being part of our community!
The office will be closed for Christmas Day, but we will be back on Boxing Day (Dec 26th) at 6:00am PST.
Team PG
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Forums57
Topics86,053
Posts799,480
Members40,021
| |
Most Online44,367
Mar 4th, 2026
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dansk
Deutsch - Windows
Español
Français - Windows
Italiano - Windows
Nederlands
Polski
Português
Svenskt
русский
Japanese
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Korean