PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist Real Portable BIAB app

I think it would be nice if BIAB created a real self-contained portable BIAB app for phones and tablets--for IOS, Android, perhaps even Windows Mobile?

The current portable BIAB app for IOS and Android is only to connect over the Internet to your PC that has BIAB running, and tu run it at a distance, create a song, and send a .wav file of the song over the Internet so that the phone or tablet can play it.

That requires that one's home computer is running, connected to the Internet, that BIAB is running on it, and its background communication program is running. Also of course, one has to have an Internet connection (a fast one, I would think) available on the phone or tablet, wherever one is.

Many times those conditions may very well not be present. One could be on a long transcontinental airline flight, What better way to pass the time than to whip out the phone or tablet and work with BIAB? Oops, sorry, no internet connection on the flight. When one reaches one's destination in the foreign country, getting an internet connection on the phone might be very expensive, so most of the time one is not connected. Furthermore, if one leaves home for weeks, one might not want to leave the home computer running and connected to the Internet for weeks, with no one home.

So, IMO the current IOS and Android portable BIAB app is not really very portable, and would not be usable in many situations.

Couldn't a self-sufficient portable phone/tablet BIAB app be created? Is that already in the works? Of course it could not be just like 2012 desktop BIAB. One is unlikely on a phone or tablet to have storage space for thousands of Real Tracks (or even hundreds). Furthermore, even with the portable processors being faster than they used to be, still probably too slow to run RTs and RDs. Well--RTs and RDs are not necessary for a portable BIAB app like that. All MIDI would be fine. I believe these portable OSes all come with a decent GM midi software synthesizer built-in, no? I think it would be fine for a portable BIAB app to be solely MIDI. If you create a song on the road with solely MIDI styles, when you get home you could transfer it to the desktop,and then add RTs and RDs.

Who else reading this think it would be great to get a really portable self-contained BIAB app, for all the mobile OSes? Please chime in.

I completely agree with you. MIDI only would suit me fine for a mobile app.

If this happens I may have to enter the I Phone world.

Later,

Has anyone had success with BIAB and a tablet? Is it possible to use BIAB away
from home where there's a connection to the Net? I usually keep my computer running
on standby mode but could have it on regular mode. My main concern is whether or
not it's a full functioning program or does it lose features?

Also, I sure wish this program had a hard copy manual to purchase to get detailed
information. Things would go so much faster.

Thanks,
Debb

I use it on an ancient Fujitsu Stylistic running XP (which also serves as a USB power supply for my Ketron SD4 since I lost the original AC adapter.) Aside from needing to use a stylus, it is great for sessions (I also have all my fakebooks in .PDF on there as well.) Screen is about 11" which is probably minimal for a 50-something guy's eyes.

You can get these on eBay for dirt cheap. Disk are a little small, but you could actually put a whole compliment of Real tracks on a 32 GB thumb drive these days.


BIAB really doens't require a whole lot of horsepower to run fully-featured. I wouldn't try to do any real-time MIDI with VXI synths or anything. I am looking forward to the Windows 8 tablets to come out before I make another Tablet move.