PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Audio and Midi Out of Sync Audio 2 Bars Late On Playback Only

Hello Everyone,
Well my audio meters are working today and my USB Audio Device is working in BB. But the audio is not in sync with the midi or is delayed. I am not sure which.

Ok, I switched from the MM Driver to a ASIO Driver. Did some more takes. I hear the audio recording live fine in perfect time but when I play the midi and audio back. The audio is 8 beats or 1 Bars behind and the first 2 bars of audio do not get recorded at all.

Any ideas. I just have whatever the audio defaults are for that kind of audio driver.

My soundcard is a Creative Audigy 2 and my USB Audio Recorder is an Emu 0202.
My output is my soundcard speakers plugged into the soundcard.

Thanks for any ideas.
MidiVox

Over on the E-MU unofficial forum, we have noted many times that a Creative card does not share drivers well with an E-MU card. Be aware of that.

First thing I'd want to know, given your symptoms reported, is what the BiaB MIDI/Audio window is reporting in the Latency window.

Second thing to know is what you are using for your MIDI solution at the time.


--Mac

Hi Everyone, Mac
I have been using this combination of Creative Card and Emu USB Box for 7 years now.
This delay by 2 bars is a new one for me. Have never seen this problem before.

The latency in BB is the default 100 ms.

The default on both the Creative Card and the Emu Box is 10ms in their control panels.

Can one record audio in Real Band over top of a BB Midi File?

I was never able to get Power Tracks Pro to work at all in XP or Vista. So have no experience with the BB recording add on programs.

Thanks for any help and suggestions.

Happy Composing
MidiVox

Hello Again
With BB I have always just used the software midi instruments on the soundcard itself. In this the Creative Synth A and Synth B.

Then I export the midi file to Cakewalk usually to use software synths and plug ins.

Happy Composing
MidiVox

*When changing to ASIO drivers, the Latency readout in BB MIDI/Audio cannot be set there, and cannot be read immediately after changing the buffers setting in the ASIO control panel for your soundcard. Close the MIDI/Audio window and then reopen it, it will get the data from the soundcard and should display the actual latency.

Note that with MME drivers this is not the case, when using MME drivers one can enter their own Latency figure in mS into that block and the program will respond to that immediately. Often is the case where one must find the sweet spot for their system by simply trying higher or lower numbers in that block, narrowing it down empirically until you find a setting that works with your chosen synth and soundcard.


--Mac

Hello All, Mac
Been troubleshooting audio and midi setups for 25 years. What burns my jets is that why music software makers cam mot agreed on some kind of standards where every piece of music software you own could use the same drivers. In theory AISO, is supposed to do this, but then every piece of music and audio hardware wants you to use their custom ASIO driver and often they do not like each other, so I just use WDM Drivers.

Also some software is simply a lot better than detecting, setting up and using whatever audio software and hardware drivers you have. Real Band seems much better at driver detection and setup than BB for example. And often laughed at Magix music software never seems to crash or have any kind of driver detection and setup problems. Same for Cakewalk usually.

Back to this delay problem on playback after recording BB Audio.
Last night I loaded all the files with the delayed audio into Real Band and yo and behold, no delay in audio playback. So Real Band saved that project for me.

The problem in real band came when I tried to create or render the midi and wav tracks to a mixed wav file like BB offers. Real Band did not even offer the option to render a wav file using your soundcards synths anymore.
I do not use Dxi synths. Have never been able to get one to work in XP or Vista. The drivers for them never even load. Can not load Dxi driver, can not find Dxi Driver, Dxi driver missing or bad. Same messages with BB and Dxi synths.

Tried using a VST Plug In Synth, but Real Band could not run both the VST Plug in Synth and my Audio Tracks at the same time. Cakewalk it is not which can run as many midi and audio tracks as I want at once.

So I had to do the save files as seperate midi and audio tracks option in Real Band and also the save all tracks as seperate wav files.

I tried the work around for recording all your project files to a Soundcard Audio Track, in the Real Band manusl, but that option did not record.

Today I will try recording in Real Band directly, instead of just loading the BB tunes with audio into Real Band. Impressive piece of software. Which it had a printed manual.

Happy Composing
MidiVox

When using a hardware MIDI synth of any kind, Direct Rendering is out of the question. This is because the processor that makes the sounds is outside the realm of your PC processor and thus it cannot simply do lookups and assemble the needed notes, durations, etc.

With a hardware synth, we must first record the MIDI tracks to Audio tracks. This is easy enough to do in Realband, simply arm a track for stereo audio and then play back the MIDI tracks only (Mute any Audio tracks for this pass so they don't get recorded as well) and hit Record starting at beginning of song and let the transport run through to the end.

Then use the Audio commands menu to save as a stereo .wav file or .mp3 file, whichever format you need.


--Mac

Hi Midivox, I dumped on you in the other thread for not providing specifics but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to help out if I can. Now that we know what your using here's a few comments.
I completely agree with you about the manufacturers not being able to standardise a lot of this stuff. All I can say is musicians doing this kind of work are a tiny percentage of the PC world and nobody cares about us. It's up to us become total nerds to figure it all out and I was suffering through all this crap too several years ago.
As you've found out ASIO is tricky. Unless you're using a very recent system, you can't use ASIO in more than one program at a time. If you have RB open using ASIO and your other DAW, Magic whatever it is, they will conflict so you have to put one to WDM or MME as PG calls it. Your system has a lot to do with it too. My old P4 2.8 system never worked well with EMU's ASIO. I had to use ASIO4All and even that didn't work as well as it should. My new Athlon Phenom works great with EMU's ASIO. This goes back to your standardization comment. We just have to live with it.
I have the EMU 1820M and when I installed it it said in big bold letters "you must uninstall any Creative soundcard drivers before installing the EMU drivers". I know you've been using both for years but that doesn't mean everything is working properly. I would uninstall both the Creative card and the EMU card and then reinstall the EMU. I can't remember now but I think that after the EMU is installed you can then reinstall and use your Creative card. Check EMU's documentation about that.
You mentioned "With BB I have always just used the software midi instruments on the soundcard itself. In this the Creative Synth A and Synth B." Synth A and B are not considered software synths. They are hardware and you can't use them to render as Mac said.
You talked about never being able to use DXi synths. I don't know what the problem is because I've got a bunch of them including several DXi's I got from Cakewalk when I bought Project 5 and they all work fine in Biab and RB. Tell us exactly what synth doesn't load and what you did to try to install it because if you can install them then you can use them to do the fast render.
VST's are different. They work fine in both programs but there is a very specific way you have to install them. Once a VST synth is installed it will do the fast render as well. There is a tutorial about that but if you can't find it come back here we can explain it to you.

Bob

Midivox, a quick followup about DXi synths. You said you have some Cakewalk stuff. Do you not have the TTS-1 softsynth? Most of the recent Cakewalk products include it as part of the package. When I installed Project 5 several years ago the TTS-1 just installed with it automatically. I didn't have to do anything and then the next time I opened Biab, it showed up in the DXi list. The process was a complete no brainer.
A friend of mine has an old version of Music Creator, it's at least 7 or 8 years old and it has the TTS-1 included. PG sells Music Creator for $40 specifically to people with a 64 bit Windows system who want a decent DXi GM softsynth for little money. It's not that anyone cares about having another sequencer when they have Real Band it's that the Roland VSC DXi that PG provides for free won't run on 64 bit systems and Roland no longer supports it so there's no chance of getting a new driver for it.

Bob

For me, the $40 for Music Creator was worth it just for the TTS-1, which I like better than the Forte (for the kind of music I do). Both are $40, but I think my money was better spent on the TTS-1. It works very nicely with my laptop computer and the built-in sound card (using ASIO4ALL).