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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Last time I purchased, I bought the 2008.5 megapack.

If I take the cheap $79 upgrade, it contains a fewer number of realtracks etc. If I install it over my current setup, will I still be able to use all the older extra bits of the megapack (since the new version has different smaller format realtracks etc)?

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Everything should work just fine. In fact, with the new BIAB, you'll be able to save disk space by making your 'old' RTs much smaller.

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The answer is yes, you can still use the older RealTracks.

The newest RealTracks are not really 'smaller' in one sense; it's just that there are fewer files required, since the program used to need the other files for pitch shifting. Those files, called +/- in the RealTracks Options in Preferences, are no longer needed, now that the new and better pitch stretching algorithm is used. However, this only applies if your machine is fast enough to use the newest RealTracks and to eliminate the redundant older ones. Careful; there are many threads about this from around early December 2010.

The reverse situation is actually more problematic: users of BIAB prior to version 2011 cannot use the newest RealTracks. Perhaps that is what you were thinking.

EDIT: Rachael answered while I was composing my answer. She is correct. However, if your machine is several years old, go slowly and write back for more advice before deleting the +/- files to recover that space. One thing you could do is run Geekbench, a free benchmark program, and let us know what score you get.

Last edited by Matt Finley; 03/25/11 04:23 PM.

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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I just downloaded and ran geekbench. The host (linux machine) gets 2960, and the Windows virtual machine that runs BB gets 2338.

Not such a powerful machine, just an AMD Sempron.

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Note that this is not verified info, and the sample is very small, but so far the only ones with problems seem to have lower scores than yours, in the 1000 range.

My Core 2 Duo scored 4,000 and runs 2011 fine. One person here had an i5 score of about 6,000. Many had scores around 1,000 to 1,500 and only some of them had problems.

Your test is interesting, by the way, showing the performance hit by running under a virtual machine.


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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VMWare is an excellent product in that regard. Overhead is quite small.

Mind you, the VM is running at high priority with input "grabbed" (but drops back to normal when it loses focus and you do things back in linux).

I don't suppose there's ever going to be a linux version?

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Thanks for the tip about Geekbench. I just ordered the 2011 Audiophile version and my machine is older so I ran this program. My score is 2024, which based on the comments here is not great but should be "good enough."

I noticed that Geekbench has subgroups of tests and scores for each. A few of these were much lower--in the 900 to 1100 range. Should this be a concern, or is the overall score the only one that matters? And does the minimum acceptable threshold go up if it's the Audiophile version?

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No need to get deep into it, if the overall score fits, that's enough to know as far as running BiaB is concerned.

And as far as the Audiophile version goes, it actually should be a bit *less* cpu intensive, since BiaB will not have to convert from compressed wma to raw .wav each time a realtrack loads. It will be more disk intensive, though, due to the much higher filesizes involved.


--Mac

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I don't know if there is a special post for Geekbench scores. I finally ran Geekbench on my Toshiba Satellite L45 running Vista. Score is 1818. No problems running BIAB at all. Quick generation of RTs is enabled as well as HQ Stretching. A song with 2 RTs typically begins in about 3 seconds.

I never got it to complete on my XP machine. I am curious though and will try again.

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Intel T2080 Dual core (1.73 GHz), 2GB Ram
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