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RealBand
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OP
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I had a large number of BiaB 2009 songs I wanted to bring into RB 2009 for detail work. Some have made it okay, but a few lost a lot of data in the process. I figured no big deal, at least I still had the original MGU files to play with in BiaB, right? Nope! Even though I didn't save anything in the aborted RB import attempts, the original MGU files are now corrupted. When I play them back, some chords toward the end of the song are now sour and no amount of regeneration helps (the chord notes were fine before). Even worse, in a couple of MGUs I am hearing overlapping instruments, as if some tracks are duplicated but offset a bit!
One of these songs was perfect before I tried to bring it into RB and now it sounds ruined. Yes, I should have backed it up first but stupid me I didn't.
Has anyone else encountered this? Is there a way to recover my screwed-up MGU files?
UPDATE: on further examination, it appears to be only piano segments being messed up.
UPDATE 2: on one song in particular, chords in bars 1 thru 4 and 79 thru 92 of a 92 bar song all sound flat. It looks like there's some midi info "stuck" in those bars that is generating flat notes (there are no flat chords used by design) and I can't figure out how to "shake it loose".
Last edited by Texrat; 02/10/09 09:57 PM.
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RealBand
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Joined: May 2003
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Just bringing an *.mgu file into RB will not touch the original unless you resaved it. I have reported some peculiarities also. Like changing chords are bar 33
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RealBand
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Joined: Nov 2008
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OP
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As I said, I did not save the files in any way from RB. After noticing the lost data, I exited without saving. But after trying them into RB, saved or not, the next time I opened them in BiaB they were corrupted. The behavior is fairly consistent; it has apparently happened to the majority of songs I tried. I also found that it affects SGU files as well.
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RealBand
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Joined: May 2002
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PG Music Staff
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PG Music Staff
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 7,729 |
Hi,
RealBand can't save as .MGU or .SGU, so even if the songs sounded messed up in RLB, the MGU files themselves would be unaffected. i.e. if you opened them back up into BB, you would find that they are still the same as before...
Andrew
PG Music Inc.
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RealBand
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OP
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Okay, I found one song that had not been brought into RB that is exhibiting the same problem, so maybe it was coincidence. It looks more and more like BiaB is at fault. In the song I'm looking at now, chords for bars 5 thru 8 (solo dreamy electric guitar) are now corrupted and I cannot fix the problem by regenerating.
Andrew, could you move this to the BiaB section, or should I start a new thread and close this? Either way, any idea what's causing my real problem? The affected chords sound "sick" (and not in a good way).
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RealBand
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Texrat, have you tested your hard drive for errors?
I had a very similar thing happen to me a few years ago with some Sonar files. It turned out to be a failing hard drive. Luckily I had everything backed up. This could be the culprit here.
Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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RealBand
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OP
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I test it periodically, but I will do so again. Thanks for the tip.
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RealBand
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Quote:
The affected chords sound "sick" (and not in a good way).
Ok, now we're finally getting down to it. You have to be very specific when describing a problem as in exacty what did you do and how did you do it. This almost certainly is you using a Real Instrument outside it's recommend tempo range. If that dreamy guitar has 165 in front of it in the file name, that means 165 is the recommend tempo. You can stretch it maybe 20-30 bpm faster and maybe 10-20 slower, beyond that it starts sounding "sick". Remember these are audio files.
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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RealBand
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OP
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I understand Bob and that's not the case. I'm no more than 5 bpm off in any of the songs. Also, it's happening more on midi piano than realtracks. The passages affected occur at the beginning or near the end of songs, if that helps.
As for specifics, this problem is so sudden and bizarre that it caught me by surprise and I do not know what could have contributed (RB seemed to be the culprit only because so many of the affected songs had exhibited other problems in it). The BiaB problem manifests after a song has been successfully generated and saved (no problem), and then re-opened days later (problem).
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RealBand
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Quote:
Also, it's happening more on midi piano than realtracks.
What are you using for MIDI synth? Check that out, also check the latency timing of it carefully. There's a timing wizard. Look at the tabs in the Prefs. in RB.
Check BB and make sure you are invoking the same MIDI synth, same Audio drivers and same latency figure in both programs.
--Mac
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I'm using the Forte DXI for midi synth in both programs.
I solved the problem though: the extra sounds still showed up in BiaB when I muted ALL instruments (some midi some real tracks). I realized the "sick" sounds were occuring on bars where this phantom audio and the current song had slightly different embellishments.
I noticed there was an mp3 file in the folders where the SGU/MGU files reside ( a former rendering I'd made). AHA! BiaB is autoloading that and decompressing to WAV. Based on a post to another visitor here, I realized what was going on. Moving the mp3 and WAV files to subfolders solved the problem!
Thanks all and sorry for confusing everyone.
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RealBand
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No problem.
I’m glad you resolved your problem.
Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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That's a tricky one especially for someone new at this, glad you figured it out. One question though, if there was an "extra" wav file, didn't that show up on the RB track screen? I would think if you heard something like that, you would start soloing each track to isolate which one is causing the problem. If I heard something like that, I wouldn't even think about it, I would erase that track and simply generate a new one by right clicking on the track and either pick a Real Track or if you want a Biab midi style to be applied, select a style, right click the track, click midi and then pick the instrument. Problem gone. I'm somewhat aware of all these kinds of things but this is a major reason why RB is rapidly becoming my primary program now. Remember, RB has the same chord grid, you can set all the same part markers, access all the same styles and Real Tracks/Drums. Something like this is easy to fix in RB and I really don't care what I may have done in Biab to create the problem in the first place.
Something that still may get you is when you save in RB, it will save either as a .seq if there's audio tracks or a midi file. Since we're all using RT/RD's there's basically always at least one audio track in there so it will be an .seq. That won't open in Biab only RB so you now have a separate version of your song. I keep those files in a separate directory from the Biab ones.
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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RealBand
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The real problem was in BiaB, not RB after all. I had rendered an mp3 for each song before I had tried loading them into RB, and BiaB loaded the mp3 files automatically each time I opened a song. Differences in some bars between the mp3 and the current song gneeration caused dischordant sounds in bars with embellishments.
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Expert
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I decided to give RB a try today. I made a midi file in Sibelius and opened it in RB. I then tried to add come real tracks and was able to with some difficulty. I was unable to preview any of them using the button on the RT screen. The same was true for RD. Things didn't sound right but that was because I posted the RT's and RD's from the intro rather than at the 1st bar of the chorus. I couldn't figure out how to move each of the RT''s to the chorus bar so I decided to chuck the whole thing and do a song in BIAB instead. Guess what? When I imported the midi file the rt's and rd's were in it. I never pushed any save buttons in RB so I don't know why they were added. Fortunately I still have the Sibelius file which I can export to a new midi file. Hmmmmm...It looks so easy in the demo video. My antivirus pgm stopped a bunch of RB files going to some library, but I unstalled and reinstalled with the antivirus pgm and firewall off. My, my, my....I think that I'll stick with BIAB until I cool down.
Cornet Curmudgeon
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