PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Audiophile BiaB 2023 no wav Files in Artist Performance Set 13+14 [Resolved]

I am a bit disapointed!
This years update of the omni BiaB has no wav files and Lyrics for the vocals in Artist Performance Set 13 + 14.
Opening a song file, with big lyrics window open, results in a not responding program Build 1004.
It seams there are no Lyrics also.

The melodist jukebox still dosn't work for me.
Allow Style Change in Melodist gives me only midi styles eaven if use realstyles box is checked.
I'm shure there are some more fixing needed to be done.
I'm running win 11 pro with latest updates installed.

Workarround for the melodist realstyles:
Choose the realstyle every time manualy. The Program uses the wrong Path to styles folder.

Does nobody else have the same bugs with the melodist funktion?
I've purchased the Omni Pack 2022 and the update Omni Pack 2023. In both versions the bug is present!
PG doesn't fix it?
I've installed the whole Program on hdd F:/BB

I'm running Build 1006.
The Bug in Melodist isn't fixed since 2022!
Omni Pack 2022 included wave files for Artist Performance Sets 11+12.
Omni Pack update 2023 does not have wave files for Artist Performance Sets 13+14.
So playing the songs in Artist Performance Sets 13+14 with the jukebox feature is a terrible experience. All wma have to extracted first, that is resoulting a 30-40 sec break between Songs on a 8Gen I7 Intel CPU.

I can confirm that the .wav files are also missing from sets 13 & 14 in my Audiophile version.

My Audiophile just came today but haven't opened it to check.

I'll report that to the developers. Let's see if this can be resolved quickly.

* Wave files for AP sets 13-14 are not included by default. However, you have a good point that the songs can load faster if they are already present. There are a few different solutions.
(Option 1) If you want, you can fix this now by decompressing them. There is a handy utility located at C:\bb\Data\util\decompress.zip. Unzip this file and copy it to the Artist performance set folder - then, simply double-click on it - IMPORTANT: make sure that the .exe is INSIDE that one Artist performance subfolder. Do not put it in your main bb folder or in the RealTracks folder, as it will potentially decompress alot of .wma's in your folder that should not be decompressed, especially if you have the Audiophile version with the original never-compressed waves.
(Option 2) Contact us (email sales@pgmusic.com or use online chat) to request a patch to add the wave files (reference this forum thread).
(Option 3) (not yet implemented) We will be adding a setting that will tell Band-in-a-Box to keep uncompressed wave files, so that the second time you open the file it will be faster. Some people will want to leave this setting unchecked to save HD space, others will want it checked to improved song loading time.

* We are adding lyrics for all the Songs with Vocals to the Lyrics Documents window. This will be available in a free patch.

* We can duplicate the RealStyles bug in the Melodist and will fix.

Thanks to everyone on this forum.
Decompressing the wma files is just a workaround for the playback lag.

The fact that the artists performance sets 13+14 no longer have wav files is new this year, but was not mentioned.
Dear PG Team, I'm happy to pay for good products, but I'm also open to other solutions if my expectations are no longer met.

I have already contacted the support and they told me for copyright reasons these vocal files cannot be used for your own projects. Therefore the files are only delivered as wma.
That was also the case last year, but the wma were also delivered uncompressed as wav.

It was and never will be my intention to violate the copyright of others!
I wanted to use these songs to test harmonies and effects in Atmos mixes (a new territory for me).

16bit 44khz for music-software is not really up to date anyway. Atmos daw projects need 24bit 48khz!
A conversion produces, in addition to the sound not improving, artifacts (especially with effects).
I need an audiophile version with uncompressed wav files, otherwise there is no point in paying more.

@ Andrew, were you able to reproduce the melodist jukebox problem as well? For me, only one song is generated and played, then BiaB stops. But I can see that a new melodist is chosen, only the generation of the next song does not take place.

Last year I generated over 300 AABA-Form songs with only 4-5 styles using the melodist.
It's a fantastic tool for getting melody ideas.
It would be very helpful to get more information about this tool, because it's not easy to get really good results.
When regenerating parts of the melody, a lot of nonsensical melody parts are generated!

It seems to me, the melodist is changed when generating a new melody part?
If you then have generated a nice song, a large number of great melodies and songs will be possible in one go.
Only a major - minor could change sounds unsatisfactory again and requires manual correction.
Could this possibly be related to a bug? The behavior of BiaB is not always the same here.
On some days good results can already be expected after 5-10 corrections.
However, I have also experienced many days in which nothing satisfactory could be produced even after half a day's work

I'm sorry this got so long

This is even more reason for me to wonder why they bothered with this little demo side line.
It seems a waste of money and time to have invested in copyright material just for a demo.

There must have been a miscommunication because you are welcome to have the wave files or convert the existing wma's to wav as I described in the previous post.



Yes I can duplicate that. It's a known issue and happened in 2022 as well.



Not sure if I'm totally following you here, but yes if the Melodist jukebox was working correctly and you have "Change Melodists" selected, the Melodist should change for each song, choosing from Melodists in the specified range. As it stands we first need to figure out why it's not working at all.

@ rayc
Probably PG Music wanted to create a showcase for new styles and real tracks with these songs?
I use these songs to test harmonies and effects in Atmos mixes (a new territory for me in Cubase 12 Pro). They are perfect for that.
But If the vocals are of a different quality than the rest of the tracks, it becomes harder for me to learn. I would be happy if pg distributed the missing wav files.
For Atmos mixes I need to convert all wav files from 16bit 44khz to 24bit 48khz. A wma (compressed!) as a starting point means a clearly audible deterioration.
I can still fall back on the 2022 artists performance sets. (Because of these missing wav files I haven't heard all the songs yet. It's just not enjoyable)

@ Andrew wrote: Not sure if I'm totally following you here...

I was referring to changing part of the melody (a few bars) within the song.

The "Change Melodist" feature (part of the Melodist Jukebox) works for me.
The error is, the Melodist Jukebox does not generate a new song after the 2nd run.
When I reopen the Melodist, I can see that a new Melodist has been selected in the Melodist window. However, song names, chords and a melody are only generated in the first pass.
After the first pass song ends, the Melodist Jukebox stops.

I hope this can help. I love the Melodist unfortunately it is very underrated.
This forum sadly doesn't offer many information about the melodist.

Please let me know where can I get the missing uncompressed wav files.

Andrew, are you able to give a definitive statement on whether the artist performance sets are copyright, or whether we can use them freely in our own works?

I can't off-hand think of a reason why I personally would want to do so, but I also can't see anything on the product page that says one can't.

If one can't then there probably should be a statement to that effect on the product page.

TIA,
Gordon.

May need some clarification here, since 90+% of the Band-in-a-Box demo songs (which are included with each style) are instrumental chord progressions with no melody or soloist tracks. Certainly these Band-in-a-Box demo songs are public? Right?

This is only an assumption but they probably mean the songs with melodies of which there are some demos with melodies. But what do I know?

You would thinks so. I use some demos in my musings, however, I make a lot of changes in chord progressions and RTs used. I actually do turn those demo tracks into my own styles of music.

Thanks for clarifying. What you're saying makes a lot of sense.

@ Andrew
Can you please give me more information about how to get the uncompressed files?

From +++ Andrew's first response +++ in this thread.

Thank you Jim, I forgot.