PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Ultrapac Styles

Just upgraded to windows Ultrapac 2018 from Ultrapac 2012.5. When I go into the styles under all I so see up to rt300 so that seems ok; however as I look over all the styles I see each area has a note about the number in ultrapac and then how many were found. The numbers don't match. I would think they should if I have the latest Ultrapac (I do have the 508 patch applied) that the numbers would match. In all cases the number found are short by several. Not too many but some. For example, Country Classic [Ultrapac 1207] [Found 1011]. similar numbers for all categories. The What addons in the help menu show none missing.

Why the mismatch? Inquiring minds want to know...

PG Music offers Xtra Style Paks. These use existing RealTracks that you will have since you have an Ultra Pak.

The styles are extra and something they started a couple of years ago. In addition, they also offer the 49 Pak and other bonus paks (some included, some not) with releases.

The ones you are missing are probably from the Xtra Styles.

In the StylePicker, the best way to check if you have all the styles is to see if there are any listed as N/A (Other --> show styles that are found/not found) If not, then you have all the styles, around 6065 currently.

I also upgraded to the Ultrapac 2018 and only show 5363 styles. I ran the example you gave and see not only Xtra Pak but some bonus, bonus Pak and misc styles as N/A for a total of 703 N/A files.

That seems a lot for paying for the UltraPak upgrade???

Ok, what is the difference between Realtracks and Realstyles? The upgrade was supposed to include all Realtracks available. What is a Realstyles then?

RealStyles are selected and named groupings of RealTracks.

From the BIAB Help, technically the definition is more broad: These are Band-in-a-Box styles (.STY) that have at least one RealTrack.

In practice, by this point with so many RealTracks available, I think we consider RealStyles to mean a group of tracks in which most if not all are RealTracks, but that's just my opinion.

Styles versus Tracks

In BIAB, you can have up to five automatically generated tracks, with each track representing one instrument you might find in a band. By legacy naming convention, these are called Bass, Piano, Drums, Guitar, and Strings, although the instruments found on those tracks do not have to be those instruments (in other words, you can have a guitar on the Piano track, which can lead to confusion, but that's a discussion for another day).

Each of the tracks can be either MIDI or Audio, or some combination of MIDI and Audio. Originally, BIAB was a MIDI only application. In order to generate the tracks, you would use the StyleMaker to define the various riffs/phrases/rhythms/notes/volumes/panning/instrument for each of the five tracks. You would then save this definition into a "bundle" (for lack of a better word) called a "style". When you click Generate, BIAB algorithmically figures out an accompaniment part for each of the tracks based on the definitions defined in the StyleMaker.

Eventually, BIAB added a new concept called RealTracks. These are pre-recorded audio phrases that can be sliced and diced and transposed by the RealTrack engine to create an accompaniment part based on that pre-recorded instrument. They are called RealTracks, because Real Musicians recorded them on real instruments (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, violin, trumpet, etc).

When RealTracks first came out, there were only three instruments (we've come a long way since then). You would select one of the five auto-accompaniment tracks and instead of the auto-generated phrase from the MIDI style being played, the RealTrack would play on that track instead, also following your chord progression just as the MIDI tracks do. So you had hybrid of MIDI and RealTrack audio.

As time went on and more and more RealTracks were developed, BIAB started finding various RealTracks that worked well together (this bass, that guitar, a certain sax sound, etc) and as with the original MIDI styles, bundled them together as a RealStyle. A RealStyle just means that all the underlying tracks are RealTracks. But for the RealStyles to properly play, you have to also have all the underlying RealTracks that are referenced by that RealStyle (this is different from the MIDI style, in that all the instrument definitions were defined in the MIDI Style file, and as long as you had an appropriate General MIDI synth available, you could hear all those instruments and generated tracks).

BIAB also has "Styles with RealTracks", which are styles that contain a mix of MIDI tracks and RealTracks.

By convention, RealStyle file names all begin with an underscore (_)and "Styles with RealTracks" file names begin with the equals sign (=). You can also have "Styles with RealDrums", which are MIDI styles that have RealDrums substituted for the MIDI drum tracks. Those file names begin with a hyphen (-).

There are also "Super MIDI Tracks", which are a variation of MIDI tracks, but are singular separate tracks (much like RealTracks are), but can also be included in a style definition. Super MIDI tracks information are just referenced by the style file (and played back using a different engine than standard MIDI tracks).

So, if you only have style files (which are indicated with a .STY extension, and are different than, for example, the .STY files you get with Yamaha digital keyboards), for any style files that rely on RealTracks, Super MIDI Tracks, or RealDrums, you have to also have those Real and Super tracks available before you can play them properly.

When you by Style files, you are not buying the underlying RealTracks. That's why PGMusic says you need to have either the UltraPak or the AudiophilePak to use the new XTRA styles, since those are the BIAB versions that come with "ALL the styles" (another discussion I won't go into here).

General MIDI Tracks --> defined (not referenced) according to the five available tracks in a style file (fully self contained, ready to play with a General MIDI synth).

RealTracks --> referenced by one or more of the available tracks in a style file, but require the RealTrack to be available in order to hear the style as intended.

RealDrums --> referenced by the drum track in a style file, but require the RealDrum to be available in order to hear the style as intended.

Super MIDI Tracks - referenced by one or more of the available tracks in a style file, but require the Super MIDI Track to be available in order to hear the style as intended. These are processed by a different engine than general MIDI tracks, but can be played back by the same synth (or a different synth).

Clear as mud?

The Help file may be out-of-date on this. I would think a better definition of RealStyles by now would be a style containing all RealTracks. As John said, those RealTracks can be anything in any order, and do not need to conform to the old BPDGS order.

So...realstyles are a regrouping of realtracks and only realtracks. Trying a few I came up with a couple of error messages saying it could not find a .st2 matching. suggested reinstalling realtracks.

Got this message log:

This will check RealTracks installation. For a realtracks to work, there needs to be a ST2 file in BB folder, and a folder of WMA files in the RealTracks folder set in Prefs-RealTracks Settings.

RealTracks Configuration ERROR: RealTracks # 3041. RealTracks found here C:\bb\Soloists\RAcG176.ST2, but RealTracks folder not found here: C:\bb\RealTracks\Guitar, Acoustic, Rhythm Klezmer44Quinn Ev 130\. Use Prefs-RealTracks Settings to set correct RealTracks folder.

RealTracks Configuration ERROR: RealTracks # 3042. RealTracks found here C:\bb\Soloists\RBass225.ST2, but RealTracks folder not found here: C:\bb\RealTracks\Bass, Acoustic, KlezmerHora34Neil Ev 120\. Use Prefs-RealTracks Settings to set correct RealTracks folder.
Number of RealTracks ST2 found in BB folder = 2447
Number of RealTracks WMA folder found in RealTracks folder = 2445
This will check dates of Bt0/bt1 files compared to WAV and WMA files in RealTracks and RealDrums.
Drums WMA - no date errors
Drums WAV - no date errors
RealTracks WMA - no date errors
RealTracks WAV - no date errors

Well, no, that isn't the official definition. The official definition is it has to have at least one RealTrack.

Have you updated to Build #508 yet? There have been fixes in the later builds having to do with the location and count of files.

Also if you have installed any older bonus paks or run any installer made before BIAB 2018, then you should run the Cleanup utility again, even though the installer ran it. It's called BB_Cleanup.exe and it's in the /BB/Data folder.

Yes I have run the 508 patch. BTW, Download manager did find a set of realtracks it needed to download and install. I'll run the cleanup as well.

Cleanup ran and showed no errors; so might be good now. We'll see as we go along.

I somewhat disagree. The user manual states that RealStyles are Band-in-a-Box styles that use RealTracks only (and the file names are prefaced by an underscore). However, it goes on to call the styles with one or more Realstyles, "Styles with RealTracks", which are a blend of MIDI tracks and RealTracks. Style names for Styles with RealTracks are prefaced by an equals sign.

That definition may have changed, but that is how it appears in both the BIAB 2017 and BIAB 2018 user manual.

And of course, hybrid styles are "user" styles created by combining the various track definitions of multiple styles into a new style file.

Yes, it does get very confusing.

That makes sense. The definition I mentioned (blue type) was from the BIAB 2018 Help file, though, so I really don’t know. I just didn’t want to get quoted as giving some official definition that could be contradicted by the Help.