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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Nov 2002
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OP
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Or is it possible to still use Real Instruments on a net book? Would I be better off trying use one of my older versions?
Thanks ahead of time for you time and knowledge.
The harder I work the luckier I get.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I have a msi wind and have put in 2Gb of memory and everything runs great, Real tracks, bandstand, etc...
Works like a charm
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I'm running an Acer Aspire and it has no problem with Band in a Box, I'm running that on an external hard drive that was shipped by PG music. I backed up the hard drive and it's contents to another 500 gig hard drive to be safe, but have had no issues. I have an HP big media box downstairs with 1 terabyte of drive space on two drives, 8 gigs of memory and vista, the acer is running XP.
I also have a Sony laptop that runs Ubuntu or XP media edition and the only thing I have not tried is to get the thing to run under Ubuntu and wine. It's on my to do list, but I have 2 concerts in the next 10 days so I'm concentrating on that.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I run on an old ThinkPad notebook without real instruments and it works just fine.
Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Quote:
Or is it possible to still use Real Instruments on a net book? Would I be better off trying use one of my older versions?
Thanks ahead of time for you time and knowledge.
This question is better answered if we knew the specs of that netbook, CPU, OS, ram, hard drive size, soundcard, etc.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Mine has 1 meg of memory, XP (vanilla), 120 gig hard drive and I use the usb external Ultra Pak. It's actually my wife's but don't tell her lol. She leaves for work at 7 a.m. and comes home at 6 p.m. so I've all day to put in back on the table beside the couch. She hated having to use one of mine. I have a son who's living here until May 1 until his new apt. is ready, and he has a killer gaming box, custom made with Vista.
And I have an HP desktop with BIG screen and sound system for music downstairs.
And a laptop the batttery died in and I'm not trying to get to do much anymore.
And a laptop that runs fine but is OLD and has a broken hinge.
My daughter has a Sony Vaio desktop in her / my office.
And my wife has the netbook, it's great for travel, fits in her purse, has wireless, I can dowload my photos etc.
So right now we have 6 computers on the home network...for 4 people. YIKES, I gotta downsize!
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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The least powerful netbook for sale today blows the doors off my 2002 Toshiba laptop, which runs everything. The Toshiba is just slow.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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But we have no idea at this time of the age of this netbook either...
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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How old could it be? But you're right, it would be helpful to hear from the OP.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Oct 2008
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Expert
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Expert
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I have a Toshiba sat 105 laptop and it's working fine. I have the real tracks on an ext Iomega 500GB harddrive. I have Carbonite set to backup my BIAB songs and other music stiff as well. I do a mirror back up, using Acronis, to yet another WD ext HD once a week. All is working well so far.
Cornet Curmudgeon
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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OP
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Looks like I needed to give more info. I don't have a netbook but am considering buying one. I want something very portable to take to Italy with me this summer. I'd like to be able to use Real Instruments but can settle for using midi if needed. What do you recomend I look for?
Apologies and further thanks
Donsta
The harder I work the luckier I get.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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1. Don't get a Linux system, not yet anyway.
2. The Acer comes with an SD slot. If you can find an Acer with Vista, then you can stuff an 8 gig SD card in it, and it will ask if you want to use the card to speed up the computer. Just say yes.
3. I don't know your situation, but there is no DVD or CD drive on a netbook. 'Tis too small.
4. I see no great speed difference in genterating songs with ALL Realtracks between my souped up 10 gig memory Vista HP media box and the Acer other than a few seconds, like maybe 6 or something, but I 'm willing to run a speed test.
5. Band in a Box on the external hard drive is cool. I added all the thousands of band in a box music files I have, plus the 3 Norton books for Mantooths chord changes, and it works great on my accoustic piano with the wee Behringer mixer, line out to the mixer and if I'm using midi I either stick the JV1010 or the Ketron between the system with an Edirol Midi cable. I'm not doing midi in with the accoustic piano of course, but I usually set the system to transpose the music so I can play horn watching the netbook on the 2nd verse and use the piano for verses 1 and 3 out of the music books on the piano.
6. The netbook is great, lookup how to tweak speeds etc. And if using live disable the network stuff.
7. Right now I'm not able to sleep, just back from brass band practice so I'm a bit jacked up, a rye and water will cure than in 30 mins, but I'm typing this on the wife's netbook on the home wireless network, and my son is downstairs running some interent game, while my Ubuntu system is helping out with some great math problem related to a health network, cause if I'm off it for more than 30 minutes it fires up and runs pieces of some program that is running on thousands of computers to achieve mainframe type supercomputer results using distribted computing....and I see no slowdowns.
8. We took the netbook to Cuba and I took 1200 photos, mostly of old cars (wow) and dowloaded them daily to the netbook and took it to the bar, amazed the heck outta the help. Got rid of the bunch of horn oil I took and gave away.......
9. I'd buy 2 myself, one running linux and the other Vista. With the sd slot the thing runs great....and you can add a hub to boost the 2 usb ports.....
"Have Fun!" ..the quotes are due to plagerism of Mr. PG himself.
Oh and 10. I can unplug the usb hard drive with the ultra pack and in seconds start band in a box on our netbook, my hp desktop, my old laptop, or the old desktop upstairs. I can take to a friends house and run a demo. That's beyond cool because the application does not need to wright to the registry...amazing that...
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 134
Apprentice
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Put this on a thumbdrive and use it to test prospective laptops in stores. http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtmlIt's not foolproof but it will give you an idea. I'm betting some netbooks work fine even with realtracks. I'm not sure where in the world you live, but Costco here lets you pick up a PC and try it for 90 days, and return it if it doesn't work out. I don't know of any other place to buy with such a handy return policy.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 8,333
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Ok, someone who's not so tired as I am now pick a standard song, with all Realtracks.
Let's post our systems and times to generate the tracks and post them here. I at a bit of a loss what to do but maybe we need to take a standard song that came from PG music, not a classic like Satin Doll, unless we agree on the number of bars and verses.
Then I test the netbook on my USb ultrapak, and my huge new Vista Hp system with 10 gigs of memory and my Sony laptop, and you put yours against mine and we decide if we can live with the numbers. I suggest start a new thread....and when I get mobile later today I will post my times. Maybe Satin Doll with 3 verses is the ticket, it's good enough for a work out.
Or if he want's country someone else jump in...my country is limited to Canadian stuff more or less though I did play in Bands doing some 'merican country. \
Funniest thing I ever heard, we were going to play a 'casino'. So they wanted a 6 piece band, 200$ a night each. OK, so the bass guit player complains I'm stepping on his riffs. Can't help it I'm a solo keyboard guy and the left hand just goes there. So he's in a huff and I try to play with one hand but that won't work at all, don't know why, tried sitting on it, never could do it. The right hand and the left hand work together eh? So he quits in a huff, my left hand was blowing him away and I'm not really that good, but he was that bad. We did the audition, got 2 gigs, but they wanted more for less cash and I hate working past 11 anymore, so I got out.....
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 8,333
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Test of HP vrs Netbook
System 1
HP Intel Core Quad CPU @ 2.33GHz
6 Megs of ram
8 megs of fast chache via 8 gig SD card used by Vista 65 bit
2 500 gig hard drives
1 external hard drive with Ultra Pak provided by PG music with usb 2 connection
Test 1 Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses zzjazz style press play, starts in under 3 seconds with stick count in one Realtrack Drums
Note: midi is Ketron SD2 for both systems via Edirol usb interface.
Test 2 Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses Dream Jazz Ballad Quartet, all realband except for melody, 18 seconds to start from clicking play.
System 2
Acer Aspire Netbook 1 gig memory windows xp Home sp3 @1.6 GHz
120 gig hard drive
1 external hard drive with Ultra Pak provided by PG music with usb 2 connection (same as above just moved the unit.)
Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses RealDrums only realtrack 5.5 seconds to start (about 2 seconds slower)
Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses Dream Jazz Ballad all Realtracks 28 seconds to start (about 10 seconds slower)
NOTE: 1. I have not installed the software on the system it just resides on the external usb hard drive in both cases.
2. Having the song files on the computer vrs the external drive makes no difference in load times.
Question for support? Where are the audio files written, if it's back to the external hard drive via usb that might be a configurable option to override and have a temp folder elsewhere?
3. I cannot boost xp's performance via SD card the way Vista does, so with 6 gigs of memory and 8 gigs of cache boost on the desktop you see the numbers and be the judge!
Note in both cases I did use RealDrums and Satin Doll was in a directory on the Ultra Pak hard disk.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Mine writes to C: Temp, John, no matter where BIAB and the RealTracks reside.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 615
Journeyman
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Journeyman
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 615 |
For XP - I suppose there is something similar for Vista.
Right-click on My Computer, and click Properties. Click the Advanced tab. Click the Environment Variables button. Edit the location for the TEMP and/or the TMP environment variables.
Jan - 12 Core AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
32GB DDR4
Win 10 64-bit
Samsung m.2 SSD Boot drive,other SSD internal and USB drives.
MOTO 2
Ketron SD4,SD1000
Yamaha RX-v381amp
VB-Audio virtual cables
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 134
Apprentice
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Posts: 134 |
Quote:
Test of HP vrs Netbook
System 2
Acer Aspire Netbook 1 gig memory windows xp Home sp3 @1.6 GHz
120 gig hard drive
1 external hard drive with Ultra Pak provided by PG music with usb 2 connection (same as above just moved the unit.)
Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses RealDrums only realtrack 5.5 seconds to start (about 2 seconds slower)
Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses Dream Jazz Ballad all Realtracks 28 seconds to start (about 10 seconds slower)
My system is a few years old. Asus Pundit.
3 Ghz (Pentium 4 single core), 2GB Ram, 2x250GB hard drives.
Software is installed on the first internal hard drive.
Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses RealDrums only realtrack 4 seconds to start.
Satin Doll 32 bars 3 verses Dream Jazz Ballad all Realtracks 44 seconds to start.
I can see a netbook in my future!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Be advised that there are likely other variables besides just the brand, model, etc. that come into play here.
For example, the hard drive's housekeeping and how fragmented the realtracks files are will certainly have an impact on the loading time. There can be other reasons why two seemingly identical PCs would load the realtracks in different times also.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Ya, fragmentation. So I have left all the software alone on the portable usb drived it shipped in. So I should have no fragmentation. If your system was old (I mean experienced like me), and you loaded Realtracks and they went all over the place on the drive then a defrag might be in order. Or adding a second hard drive and doing a clean install.
The system takes getting used to, but I usually play with big pockets in a suitcoat, and the netbook fits in your pocket. I was always paranoid about losing a laptop at a gig, especially when afterwards I'm thirsty and well.....put off cleaning up.
I find I use firefox a lot and being able to zoom with ctl + so I can see the wee screen without spectacles.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
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Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows Special Offers End Tomorrow (January 15th, 2026) at 11:59 PM PST!
Time really is running out! Save up to 50% on Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® upgrades and receive a FREE Bonus PAK—only when you order by 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, January 15, 2026!
We've added many major new features and new content in a redesigned Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®!
Version 2026 introduces a modernized GUI redesign across the program, with updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, and a new Dark Mode option. There’s also a new side toolbar for quicker access to commonly used windows, and the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, making it easier to customize your workspace.
Another exciting new addition is the new AI-Notes feature, which can transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI. You can view the results in notation or play them back as MIDI, and choose whether to process an entire track or focus on specific parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
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If you need any help deciding which package is the best option for you, just let us know. We are here to help!
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® Special Offers Extended Until January 15, 2026!
Good news! You still have time to upgrade to the latest version of Band-in-a-Box® for Windows® and save. Our Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® special now runs through January 15, 2025!
We've packed Band-in-a-Box® 2026 with major new features, enhancements, and an incredible lineup of new content! The program now sports a sleek, modern GUI redesign across the entire interface, including updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, a new dark mode option, and more. The brand-new side toolbar provides quicker access to key windows, while the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, creating a flexible, clutter-free workspace. We have an amazing new “AI-Notes” feature. This transcribes polyphonic audio into MIDI so you can view it in notation or play it back as MIDI. You can process an entire track (all pitched instruments and drums) or focus on individual parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
There are over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
When you order purchase Band-in-a-Box® 2026 before 11:59 PM PST on January 15th, you'll also receive a Free Bonus PAK packed with exciting new add-ons.
Upgrade to Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® today! Check out the Band-in-a-Box® packages page for all the purchase options available.
Happy New Year!
Thank you for being part of the Band-in-a-Box® community.
Wishing you and yours a very happy 2026—Happy New Year from all of us at PG Music!
Season's Greetings!
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy holiday season—thanks for being part of our community!
The office will be closed for Christmas Day, but we will be back on Boxing Day (Dec 26th) at 6:00am PST.
Team PG
Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: The Newly Designed Piano Roll Window
In this video, we explore the updated Piano Roll, complete with a modernized look and exciting new features. You’ll see new filtering options that make it easy to focus on specific note groups, smoother and more intuitive note entry and editing, and enhanced options for zooming, looping, and more.
Watch the video.
You can see all the 2026 videos on our forum!
Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: AI Stems & Notes - split polyphonic audio into instruments and transcribe
This video demonstrates how to use the new AI-Notes feature together with the AI-Stems splitter, allowing you to select an audio file and have it separated into individual stems while transcribing each one to its own MIDI track. AI-Notes converts polyphonic audio—either full mixes or individual instruments—into MIDI that you can view in notation or play back instantly.
Watch the video.
You can see all the 2026 videos on our forum!
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- MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
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- Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
- Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
- Playable RealTracks Set 5
- RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
- SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
- Android Band-in-a-Box® App (included)
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- 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums with 20 RealStyle.
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- Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
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- RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
- SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
Learn more about the Bonus PAKs for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®!
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