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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi,
until now I used Bandstand as VST-plugin syntesizer. Everything worked fine.
Last week I 'upgraded' to Native Instruments Kompakt 5 - amazing sounds!
But: It's ok to install the VST-plugin. But the instruments don't load when playing the songs.
Back to Bandstand again - and everything works fine. But with Kontakt there's no loading of instruments. I would have to load each patch manually. I'm sure there's a way that works automatically.
Does somebody use Kontakt (5) along with BIAB? May be you can help me?!
- Thank you!
Ulrich
By the way: Kontakt 5 comes with 3 different VST-plugins: one for 8, one for 16 and one for 32 MIDI channels. I guess the 16 channels will be the best one for BIAB; but the problem is the same for all three of them.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Kontakt libraries do have amazing sounds; however, it's not a GM synth. You would have to preload each channel. So you can't just run through a bunch of songs, unless of course, you are using the same instruments on each track between songs. You can also save the rack of instruments so that you can call that group up easily in Kontakt, however, it does take a little time for each of the instruments to load completely.
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Yep, good ol GM it gets noob's every time including me back in the day. Biab uses the GM standard by default because while it's very limited it's also no brainer easy for people to use. The thing is GM soundbanks are small so they load easily into ram so then all you do is load it once like you do with Bandstand and then every song you want to play just plays. Not so with a synth like Kontakt. The reason it sounds so good is each instrument sample is huge. It's simple math, the bigger the sample size, the better the sound. No way do you have enough ram to preload it all in. That means every song has to be set up manually by you first but the trade off is great sound. Even then I don't know if that would work because of the sample sizes. Maybe Kontakt has a bank of smaller samples that might work. This is one reason why people will go with a hardware synth. No loading of samples. But then you lose the ability to direct render to an audio file and a few other things. Ain't life grand?
Musicians the world over use big samplers like Kontakt because they're using DAW's not Biab. Biab is a real time song generator. A DAW is a audio/midi recorder. You only work with one track at a time in a DAW. You lay down the track, move on to the next and then after each track is recorded, then you mix it. See the difference? You're only loading one Kontakt instrument at a time into a DAW so a sample size for one of the killer grand pianos could be over a full gig in size and it doesn't matter because it's not being used in real time by a program like Biab. Seven instruments could be used in Biab and if each one averages like a half gig in size? That's a ton of processing for any computer and it simply can't happen.
Everything's a tradeoff. Try Kontakt in Real Band because you can generate one track at a time and put your song together that way. It's complicated but you could do it in Biab because it lets you use more than one synth at a time. The problem is with midi tracks Biab will generate all of them every time so you would have to use a GM synth for all the tracks except the one you're using Kontakt with and then rotate them around. I think it would be much easier in RB.
Bob
Last edited by jazzmammal; 07/10/12 10:09 PM.
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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You can load multiple instruments in the Kontakt rack and assign them different channels and then save the entire rack; however, one single instrument can take 15-20 seconds to load. So an entire ensemble could take a minute or two before all the sample load (and some of the samples are half a gig in size, so you would also need plenty of memory).
But the sounds are amazing. I agree with Bob that RealBand is a better place to use Kontakt sounds.
If I get a chance, though, I'll play with it in BIAB some and report back my experience.
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hoops - it seems that I made a mistake when buying the Kontakt 5 synth.I thought it would just work like Bandstand - only with even better sounds.
Nevertheless I will work with Kontakt and BIAB. Thank you very much for the explanations and the useful hints you gave me!
NI's Bandstand is no longer supported by NI since years now. So I thought the Kontakt synth is the follow up software.
But one good thing remains: I bought Kontakt 5 during the special offer time with 50% of the normal price during the time of Kontakt's 10th anniversarie.
Thank you again for your responses!
Ulrich
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Quote:
Hoops - it seems that I made a mistake when buying the Kontakt 5 synth.I thought it would just work like Bandstand - only with even better sounds.
Nevertheless I will work with Kontakt and BIAB. Thank you very much for the explanations and the useful hints you gave me!
NI's Bandstand is no longer supported by NI since years now. So I thought the Kontakt synth is the follow up software. But one good thing remains: I bought Kontakt 5 during the special offer time with 50% of the normal price during the time of Kontakt's 10th anniversarie.
Thank you again for your responses!
Ulrich
if you decide it isn't what you really wanted, and you'd like to unload it and get your money back, contact me by PM. We may be able to work something out. (Unless the software license forbids the surrender of license to another party)
Seriously.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi Pat,
thank you for your nice offer to help me getting my money back. But I think that would be rather complicated as I am living in Germany. It was complicated in another case years before to exchange money between the US and Germany. It took several weeks.
Also, I bought another software along with Kontakt 5 - the Vintage Organs. They are great!!! And I want to use those together with my Yamaha keyboard. The Vintage Organs were also half price last week.
So I got quite a lot of good software for relativly little money. That's ok for me - even when I will not be able to use Kontakt as effectively as I intended to. But thanks again!
Ulrich
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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This is from NI's user license agreement: Quote:
Licensee is not entitled to grant any other third party rights of ownership of the Licensed Software. Licensee is authorized to transfer or resell the Licensed Software (for download sales see restrictions as described above) and Hardware once to a third party, on the condition that this third party agrees to Native Instruments End User License Agreement. Licensee must erase all other copies of the Licensed Software prior to its delivery to the third party. Native Instruments will transfer the serial number upon request of Licensee sent from the email address he/she has registered with Native Instruments, and therefore cancel Licensee’s registration.
Note that only software provided on media may be transferred/sold. Downloaded software may not. Downloaded software falls into their NFR (not for resale) clause, found elsewhere in the license agreement.
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi, I'm also from Germany, as I will immediately prove to you with my English -  If I were you I would never give away Kontakt because it sounds just too good! Kontakt is not only a playback engine, it is also a great sampler, which you can use grandiosely for example in Real Band (and BiaB, see below....). In Kontakt you have to organize the sounds in advance, of course. But with the new options in BIAB, each instrument has a separate VST instrument, you can e.g. replace a Bandstand- sound by one/ two.... great Kontakt- Sounds- and perhaps even by your own sampled voice - By the way, Kontakt has also small libraries like "vintage", many sounds less than 20 MB. You can also pre-work with Bandstand in BiaB and afterwards use Kontakt with Realband to let the sound be much greater. This only as a small supplement. Greetings, Rainer
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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http://www.cakewalk.com/products/sfz/ The Cakewalk Soundfont player is a nice compromise for me. I can create a subset of GM with individual high-quality SoundFonts ans skip the helicopters and accordions. There are still some very nice SoundFont collections out there that you can edit to your liking.
Jan - 12 Core AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Quote:
But with the new options in BIAB, each instrument has a separate VST instrument, you can e.g. replace a Bandstand- sound by one/ two.... great Kontakt- Sounds- and perhaps even by your own sampled voice - By the way, Kontakt has also small libraries like "vintage", many sounds less than 20 MB.
You can also pre-work with Bandstand in BiaB and afterwards use Kontakt with Realband to let the sound be much greater.
The second comment is the way to do it and here's why. Most of the best Biab arrangements using the new ability to use different VST's at once can also involve using different instrument patches in different parts of your song so for example you change from an acoustic piano to a Rhodes electric at a bridge. That means there's a program change in the middle of the song or several program changes. There's no way to set that up ahead of time using the instruments in Kontakt even if you've loaded the basic 5 instruments. When it gets to the program change Biab will lock up because using a GM synth, everything is already there to use instantly. If that program change takes even a split second too long to implement, Biab thinks there's no synth and stops. Biab has to have access to everything it needs in real time, as in right now. DAW's don't work that way but Real Band does if you have it regenerate a whole song rather than one part at a time. If RB is not regenerating anything then no problem because the midi tracks are already created. This gets very tricky.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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In the meantime I had some leisure time for experementing with BIAB and Kontakt. Now I can profit from version 2012's new feature of assigning only single instruments with a specific VST-synth.
(Thank you for that good hint, Rainer!)
So, my general synth is Bandstand, and I can replace easily 1 or 2 other instruments with patches from Kontakt. The result is great! The 'old' MIDI-files with their vast variety of styles and patterns are a new alternative to the RealTracks now! Sounds great and loads faster than Real-styles! The only thing is that I have to invest a few minutes for each song I want to add Kontakt-sounds to. But it's worth it.
I didn't work with RealBand yet. So I can't tell anything about working with RB and Kontakt.
Thanks again for your precious hints and advice!
Ulrich
By the way:
Rainer, I'm living in Baden-Württemberg, too. Near Bietigheim. Interested in sharing about BIAB experiences?
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Quote:
So I can't tell anything about working with RB and Kontakt.
Kontakt works great for me in RealBand. I just tell the track to use the Kontakt VSTi, load the instrument, match up the channels, and twiddle the dials or load a preset.
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
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