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If this has been put up before then apologies.I loved the style prairie solo accoustic piano but found it was a bit to fast in its style for the song I was writing.I slowed it down to what I felt was an ideal tempo(from 100 to 90) but found the piano was a little strange sounding which apparently happens when slowing down instruments from the normal tempo of the style.So what I did was record the song in biab at the proper tempo and then played it back for recording on my roland 8 track.I then used the vari speed to alter the speed of the song and the sound on the piano sounded really good.Although it altered the key slightly it caused me no problem for the vocal Im aiming to record to this track.Cheers Frankie.

If there is another way to do this within biab or rb then perhaps someone could post it up.


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I found the same thing - BIAB's timestretch algorithm (unfortunately) doesn't seem to be that much better than Audacity or any low-end algorithm. That's problematic if you're trying to deal with tempos slower than what an instrument was recorded at.

To be fair to PG Music, they only say :
Quote:

And you're not limited to 165 or 190, all tempos in between are also covered with the superior stretching features in Band-in-a-Box.



So they don't advertise that you can get any slower tempos. I suspect they made a trade-off to allow users to rapidly change song tempos without having to rebuild all the RealTracks.

But it is problematic if you want to use a RealTrack that's just a bit lower than the recorded tempo, which is... always.

I posted a short instrumental done the other day with the Bossa Nova flute. The song tempo was 120 BPM, and the flute's speed was 140 BPM. I exported it at 140 BPM and slowed it down with the elastique algorithm in Reaper, and it essentially artifact-free. (I did some extreme stretching to some of the samples while editing phrases).

Perhaps PG Music might consider adding a "high quality" timestretch option for those of us who insist on abusing the software past the stated limits?


-- David Cuny

My virtual singer development blog
Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

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Using Acid Express, the free version, may produce better results as it is geared to "mess around" with wav files, if that is the right way to put it.
I have a copy myself that is just sitting on my computer taking up space and used to play with it in this manner before I got bored and reverted to BIAB :>).
This problem is why I use MIDI

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Quote:

Using Acid Express, the free version, may produce better results as it is geared to "mess around" with wav files, if that is the right way to put it.



My recollection was that Acid Express wouldn't let you save the results as high quality files, but I could be wrong. It's got a very slick interface.

If you want to stick with RealBand, you could do everything there until you've got it the way you want, and then export the individual tracks that are below tempo at their "optimal" tempo, fiddle with them with another program, and then import them back into RealBand as .WAV tracks.

It's a bit clunky, but you wouldn't have to leave the PG Music universe except for the timestretching bit.

A nicer solution might be an option in BiaB/RealBand that used a slower (but more accurate) timestretch when working at tempos below the recorded tempo. Perhaps a dialog that popped up warning that the track was some percent slower than the recorded tempos, and that artifacts were likely without using the slower timestretch option. There could also be an option on the dialog to tell BiaB to do this automatically, or never do it, etc.


-- David Cuny

My virtual singer development blog
Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

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Reaper can adjust the playrate without affecting the pitch and it does it very well. I slow down YouTube videos with it all the time when I have a part I want to learn. Yes, it does video too!


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Hi Dc.Reaper? what exactly is this.Is it a stand alone workstation like the roland I have or something else Cheers Frankie


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Reaper a relatively inexpensive software program for multitracking, akin to PowerTracks or RealBand, but without any sort of support for BiaB. That is, you can work with MIDI and .WAV files (among other types), but not RealTracks.

Once I've created a song in BiaB, I create .WAV files and edit them Reaper. Before exporting tracks that play slower than the recorded tempo (such as a flute or saxophone), I'll set the tempo in BiaB up to the preferred tempo for that track, and export it at that speed. When I bring the tracks into Reaper, I stretch them out there using one of the higher quality algorithms (Reaper offers a number of different algorithms, including some that are fast, but low quality).

The algorithms that got the best results were elastique licensed from zplane technologies, and DIRAC LE, licensed from The DSP Dimension. Of the two, elastique pro seems the more popular, since it's also licensed by other DAWS, including ableton Live, FL Studios, Mackie Tracktion, Acid Pro and Cubase.

I couldn't find any free software that performs better than BiaB. Audacity is free and easy to use, but its algorithm performs worse than BiaB. ACID Xpress limits the saved file to low quality.

Edit: There's a free program called BestPractice that seems to do an OK job, but I haven't really tested it so I won't say it's better than BiaB. Also, I'm not sure you can get the timing precision out of it. But it's certainly easy to use.

I suspect it wouldn't be that difficult for PG Music to incorporate elastique pro or DIRAC LE into their products, but I don't know what algorithm they use, or how it's applied. And unless there was demand from users to support slower tempos, I'm sure they've got higher priority items.

Last edited by dcuny; 11/29/10 12:23 PM.
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thanks DC will take a look at the software that youve mentioned Frankie


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The latest version of BIAB 2011 uses elastique pro 2.0. Spiff!

And thanks, PG!


-- David Cuny

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Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

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Frankie, I think you are going to be amazed at elastique pro. veddy veddy lovely.


John Conley
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John,My wife said I can have the 2011 upgrade as a Christmas present.. what a wife Ive got.Frankie


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She didn't have to go to a council meeting and trade her 4 inch curlers for a toaster to pawn?

My wife said if I sold the crap I have I could get new crap. However, we are getting snowed in, up to 3 feet, which means we have to wait for a snow plow. At the rate it's falling it might end up being epic. The neighbours houses are 100 feet away and I can't see them most of the time....


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"She didn't have to go to a council meeting and trade her 4 inch curlers for a toaster to pawn?" Nah.She just went out on the local coal tip.. hauled in a couple of bags of nutty slack and sold it to the highest bidder.Frankie


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