Quote:

At one time, I got the wrong impression that when you open a BIAB file in RB, the tracks were "frozen" thus re-gen was not required.



This is one of those very tricky little things Ed. If you open a Biab file with RT's in Real Band those tracks are regenerated and then those tracks show up in blue in the first 8 tracks. Blue tracks are regular Biab tracks and will get regenerated every time. One little point I'm not sure of is if you froze those tracks first in Biab, then opened the file in RB are they still regenerated? This is a fine distinction between opening a Biab file and using the D&D function. I know you can D&D any Biab generated audio track to RB and nothing gets regenerated as long as they're not going to those dedicated blue Biab tracks. I never use those tracks and there's an option in the menu to move those to the bottom never to be seen again. All the other tracks are no different than those tracks would be in Cubase. Once you've recorded (or generated) something on a non-Biab track, nothing changes unless you specifically want to edit it. Another confusing point here is you can still generate parts on a regular RB (not blue) track by selecting a style, right clicking anywhere on the track and following the menu. Nothing is regenerated when you do that unless you do the procedure again.

It does take much longer to generate the same RT tracks in RB than it does in Biab. Someone said it doesn't but that's not true unless there's something wrong with my setup. The regen time depends on how long the song is and how many RT's are being used. Example, as a test I created a 55 bar song in Biab that was all RT's, 5 instruments plus a RT soloist going for 5 choruses. For some reason the RT soloists take at least twice as much time to generate as a regular RT. On my setup Biab started playing the song in 6 or 7 seconds. But to add more confusion it really had not finished generating, Biab has a system that allows the song to start playing while it finishes the generation in the background. That same song with 6 RT's literally took 7 minutes in RB. Yes that's minutes not seconds. It's a huge difference. Just doing one short RT, like 32 bars of one track only is fine, that takes 10-15 seconds or so but a whole 200 bar complex all RT song? Fuggettaboutit. You can go to lunch while RB generates that.

For me anyway I rarely use a Biab file to start things in RB. RB is just another standard DAW with some cool extras like generating Biab parts. I may start with a midi file or I may start with some live recorded tracks I did using my DPS16 digital recorder. But, I certainly see the usefullness of starting with a Biab created song too just don't create it in RB if you're using a bunch of RT's. After I have the bed tracks then like you described in your very good post I'll create a Biab solo using a bunch of takes and cutting and pasting, adding some Real Drums percussion tracks, maybe create an 8 bar RT guitar part, whatever just like you do. At that point I'm only working with one track at a time so the longer generation time doesn't matter much.

Bob

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