PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Get my keyboard working with BIAB 2008 - take 2

A week or so ago I posted about trying to get my ensoniq keyboard to be the synth for BIAB. I have since added a set of computer speakers and turned on the Roland GS. I now hear the BIAB through the speakers or headphones via the speakers.

At this point it seems to be working, however the keyboard seems to be delayed a tiny bit, perhaps 100-200 ms or so. Any way to tune that out?

It appears that the keyboard is coming through the Thru. The instrument for that seems to be selected by the song? IOW I select a song and the instrument gets set to guitar or something. How do I get it to leave the instrument alone (default to piano) unless I manually change it?

I was reading the book (gasp) and came on something mentioning a DXI Synth using ASIO drivers... so off I go to find the ASIO driver. I got hung in a loop. I tried to select the ASIO drive in the Audio Settings... except that there isn't one installed on my machine apparently so a ASI Audio Drivers dialog pops up which when I try to cancel it pops up a Message dialog "No ASIO drivers installed" (thanks for that) but then that takes me back to the audio settings dialog. There seems no way out without doing the three finger salute and closing BIAB. Sigh.

So once I do that, what are ASIO drivers and where would I get one?

More to come once I get this much straightened out.

TIA

I don't know if you need an ASIO to solve this but I d/l'd one called ASIO4ALL. It was free. Just Google it. Don't know if this will solve your problems. Mac will probably fix it for you. Sorry it's frustrating right now, been there. It is so fun when you get the bugs out.

Later,

Gene

*Soundcards that come built in to Windows computers do not have ASIO drivers at all, they use the Windows Sound Drivers.

*ASIO4ALL can be downloaded and installed (free) to convert your Windows Sound WDM drivers to ASIO standard. BIAB has been optimized for use with ASIO4ALL.

Get it here:

http://www.asio4all.com/

Word of caution: Check the BIAB MIDI Output window, too, if you are using the Microsoft Software Synthesizer, it will AKWAYS have latency when you try to play it in realtime. Install and use the VSC DXi synth (check "Use Dxi" below the MIDI output window in BIAB) instead, sounds better and can be played in realtime with the keyboard using the above drivers.

As for the Thru channel loading Instrument Patches with songs, that is by design. If the songfile was saved with a stored Patch on the Thru, that is what will come up. You can change that by selecting File->Save Song with Patches and Harmony after selecting your own preferred Patch, then hit the "Fill with Patches" button and resave that song, next time it will load with your favorite Patch on Thru ready to go.


--Mac

I think it would be helpful to me to take it from the top. The book provides very generic "install whatever driver you want" kind of help but this stuff has a lot of choices, not all of which match what is in the book pictures. Furthermore, us nubees simply don't have a clue "what we want". So...

Chapter 1. BIAB is installed.

The next step is MIDI setup (pg 8 of my book) . I have installed the m-Audio 2x2 drivers and have selected the correct port for the input midi.

The Output MIDI I assume I want the Roland VSC but it is not a choice. My choices are

None
MS Midi Mapper
MS GS Wave Table
and the two M-Aidio hardware channels.

How do I get the Roland VSC to show up so I can select it? This in the MIDDLE section for MIDI output Driver?

The Synthesizer / Sound Card has a rather extensive list of drivers, most of which I assume I do not have. Note to BIAB developers - where possible only present valid choices (I am a developer, I understand the tradeoffs).

So... Synth / Sound Card: there are six choices that are for the Roland VSC - DXI, DXI/GM2, DXI/GS, Midi, Midi/GM2, Midi/GS. What are all of these things and which would I reasonably want to choose?

Below that there are two check boxes - Use DXI synth (which I checked) and Route MIDI through MIDI driver (which is checked, I do not know whether I checked it). Am I supposed to check these boxes?

I ran the driver wizard but it was useless to me. As opposed to the picture in the book, there is only one single driver - MS GS Wave Table Synth. Where is the Roland VSC? I thought I have the Roland VSC installed? If I "play the piano test" it plays but is not an even tempo for the notes, but rather bursts of notes. The book says "This assumes that the correct windows sound drivers are installed and configured" but does NOT tell me how to do that. If the windows sound drivers need to be installed and configured, then logically that process needs to be explained BEFORE we get to this part of the instructions. I only have the one driver apparently, but (I assume) I want the Roland drivers, which I assumed came with BIAB since they are mentioned as "included with BIAB" in the book. Do I need to go get them somewhere?

I am guessing that if I get this section of the setup straightened out I will be a long way down the road toward using this beastie.

I am a "computer expert" for the world around me so I understand that things are pretty complex to the novice. Unfortunately the novice is ME when it comes to BIAB, MIDI, synths and so forth.

Oh, one last question (for now)... When I load BIAB and play keys on my DP I see the notes being played on the upper left keyboard and I can hear the keys I play but there are only two (well three) sound levels - off, soft and loud. How do I set BIAB to "hear" different key velocities from the DP?

Thanks for your patience and assistance.

I already told you how to invoke the VSC DXi synth -- please note that it is not going to appear in the MIDI Output Window because it is not a true MIDI Output to the computer, it is a DXi plugin.

Quote:

---

Word of caution: Check the BIAB MIDI Output window, too, if you are using the Microsoft Software Synthesizer, it will ALWAYS have latency when you try to play it in realtime. Install and use the VSC DXi synth (check "Use Dxi" below the MIDI output window in BIAB) instead, sounds better and can be played in realtime with the keyboard using the above drivers.

---

--Mac

Yikes!

The Roland VSC Dxi synth is a plug in, and you only need to select that for your setup. It's best not to check under the Midi options VSC (which is non Dxi.) That can cause some weird problems/error messages. Checking the use Dxi thing overides the other midi options.

Next figure out how to get into the Dxi setup box, it's there, and you can add other plugins like reverb, but the top one should be the Dxi synth. You have some volume controls stuff there too.

It would be simpler if there were no choices but some of, me included, have 3 hardware midi synths, and various software and plug in synths.

Band in a Box works fine with midi, but the quality of the sounds depends on the synth you use. Unless you use all Realtracks and then you are dealing with all audio and no midi.

Perhaps using google and finding basic information about music software plug-ins etc would be of value.

There is a learning curve, and it can be steep.

Took me a long time to learn how to cascade monthly spreadsheets and do advanced income analysis, table lookups etc. I think maybe 5 or 6 months to perfect it to the point others could use it and not mess it up.

On the other hand most of us with experience would sit down in front of your gear and hook it up in a few minutes and it would just work.

Patience! Not all the problems you describe have anything to do with the Software per se, you can't have a program recognize that you just plugged in a Korg to your usb device and have it configure itself for the right model. Maybe someday.

John,

The problem with that is that I have a keyboard that needs to have its keys processed and sound created to be output to the speaker. ATM the only thing that works for that is to select the MS Synth under the MIDI Out. If I select anything else I get no sound when I play my DP. Now... Mac says that the MS synth is the cause of my keyboard delay. This implies that I MUST have some choice other than the MS synth under the MIDI out section or I will have the delay forever, which is unacceptable. It is quite distracting to have to start playing BEFORE the song so that my keyboard "syncs" with the BIAB music!

I am currently in a no win situation here. I want to use BIAB with my keyboard, that is the only reason I own BIAB. It is currently unplayable as it stands so what do I do?

Mine will play the vsc dxi syth with zero latency no need for ASIO drivers.

Yours should too.

Just check the use Dxi synth and follow whatever setup stuff you see there. I have my wee harddrive hooked to my Vista machine downstairs, and to unhook it, use my xp machine and give you a step by step might be possible later today, but I have to get my 18 yr. old daughter at school for a post op checkup ..she had her tonsils out so she could get more air for singing,they blocked 50 percent of her airway on a good day.

Then some errands, home to make suppers. Meat loaf cupcakes with whipped potatoe dressing, chives on top. Little Hp sauce....and my daily new fav beer, 10W30 (no kidding Neutstat brewery!).

ROTFL. Sounds like a busy day.

Well, this just isn't working as indicated. I have USE DXI Synth checked and I unchecked the "Route MIDI through to MIDI drivers" but that had absolutely no effect on my keyboard. It is STILL being routed through the MIDI out selected in the center dialog. If I select "No MIDI" my keyboard ceases to sound. Only if I select MS GS Wavetable in that center dialog do I hear my keyboard at all, and even then the delay is anywhere from 100 ms or so up to a full second.

BIAB is playing just fine, always has. It is just my keyboard which is giving me fits. You may say that the USE DXI Synth disables the MIDI Out, but that flat is not true! That MIDI Out IS what is providing sound for the keyboard.

I can see the VST/DXI Synth Settings dialog if I press that button. The top "synth track" is the VSC DXi. I show 16 instruments down below. Of course 1,3,9 and 12-16 are all "Piano 1" but who is counting?
\
I have even "reset to factory defaults" and started completely over. Still the same. My piano is being played on the MIDI Out MS Wavetable Synth!

I found this in the FAQS:

Recent versions of Band-in-a-Box (2006 and higher) and PowerTracks Pro Audio (10 and higher) added support for ASIO drivers. The main advantage to using ASIO in Band-in-a-Box is that it allows you to play live from an external MIDI keyboard through a DXi synth with almost no latency. Previous versions of Band-in-a-Box supported DXi synths, but you couldn't play through the DXi synth from your keyboard because there was too much latency. If your sound card supports ASIO and you have ASIO drivers installed on your computer, you can use ASIO by selecting this audio driver type in Opt. | Preferences | Audio. See the Band-in-a-Box help file and manual for further information on setting up the ASIO audio driver dialog. If the manufacturer of your sound card doesn't have an ASIO driver, you may be able to use the ASIO4ALL driver.

Since Band-in-a-Box comes with the Roland VSC-DXi, you have the option of installing this DXi synth and using it for MIDI output through an ASIO driver. As long as you choose a sufficiently low latency/buffer size in the ASIO Audio Driver's Control Panel, this would resolve your latency problem.

NOTICE that it says that I can use the DXi Synth for MIDI output through the ASIO driver "to resolve my latency problem".

I installed the ASIO driver and selected it. However I now get an error message saying that the ASIO driver will be silent, and is not connected "likely due to using a soft synth (like GS Wave Table) for MIDI".

Now any time I play a song I get this same error message and NO sound comes out, not keyboard, not the song.

This is NOT FUN! 8(

Don't hold yer breath on my helping, my daughter in law is in labour, and my daughter hi-jacked the studio so she and her friend could finish a project on osteoporosis. I refused to sit on the table at the school as an exhibit. Smoking plus drinking plus coffee (never more than 20 a day) plus steriods plus 14 years out of the sun due to skin cancer resulted in painful hand getting xrayed and they said 50 percent lack of bones in it and 4 fractures. Now I can't golf. Couldn't before either though.

So I went to bed at 2, they decided she should take a break and try again this morning. Fion Kennedy Conley should arrive, not in a huff or wi a sorryful squal, but when he's born twill be wi' a smile, though we are far from Ballyjamesduff.

If you can see the VSC DXi orange control panel window, then it must be installed.

Hit the Volume view over on the right and make sure that all volume sliders including the Master are turned all the way up to the right.

If BIAB is continually using the Microsoft synth even when Use DXi is checked, something's wrong.

Try a Return to Factory Settings under BB's Opt menu. The second button there that resets even the soundcard and MIDI stuff.


--Mac

Hi,

I wasn't entirely certain - I might have missed it - if you want to have Band-in-a-Box play through your Ensoniq synth, or if you want to play Band-in-a-Box through an internal synth on your computer.

Let's assume that you simply want to use your keyboard for input to play into Band-in-a-Box, but you want to hear everything (including what you play on your keyboard) played by an internal synth. By internal synth, I mean something like a MIDI synth built into your sound card (which you don't have; M-audio cards generally just have a MIDI interface to allow you to connect external device, they don't have a built-in MIDI synth), the Microsoft GS Wavetable (included with Windows) or the Roland VSC-DXi (the General MIDI compatible DXi synth included with Band-in-a-Box).

On your system, your options for "internal" MIDI output are the GS Wavetable or the Roland VSC-DXi. The Roland VSC3 used to be popular with Band-in-a-Box, and it acts like a "regular" MIDI Output driver, however it has become less compatible with newer computers, and it is much better and easier to use the Roland VSC-DXi instead. So the VSC-DXi is installed with Band-in-a-Box, while the VSC3 isn't. It is available if you want to install it, in the \bb\vsc\VSC_installs folder. But most people wouldn't want to install it.

Your best option is the Roland VSC-DXi - so select the "Use DXi Synth" checkbox.

There is a piece of information that you may be missing, which might be useful for you...

When you play your external MIDI keyboard, you hear the sound played by (it is routed to) either the MIDI output driver or DXi synth. That is, even if you have a DXi synth selected, when you play your keyboard, it might be routed to your MIDI output driver depending on some settings and whether song playback is happening. Here are the settings:

--
--if you are using "MME" audio drivers:

-If you have the "Route MIDI thru to MIDI driver" box checked, then it (live playing) will be routed to the MIDI driver (e.g. GS Wavetable) all the time.
-If you have the "Route MIDI thru to MIDI driver" box UNCHECKED, then it will be routed to the DXi synth while the song is playing, and to the MIDI driver (e.g. GS Wavetable) while there is no song playing.

--if you are using "ASIO" audio drivers:

-If you have the "ASIO Always On" box checked (in the ASIO Audio Drivers dialog), it is routed to the DXi (or VSTi) synth all the time whether the song is stopped or playing.

-If you have the "ASIO Always On" box unchecked, it is routed to the DXi synth while the song is playing, and through the MIDI Output Driver when the song is stopped.
--

So if you had been using MME driver, playing your keyboard and trying to determine the effect of the route MIDI thru... checkbox, you would have always been hearing it play through the GS Wavetable unless you happened to have a song playing while you were testing.

There are reasons for the way it works... the "DXi synth" usually has much more latency than the "MIDI output driver", and with that much latency it doesn't make sense to use it as your output for live playing. In your case, the GS Wavetable has alot of latency and happens to be your only available internal "MID driver".. This is common with many newer computers, but wasn't always the case. The GS Wavetable had far less latency on Windows 98 than XP, and has far less latency on XP than it does on Vista. In addition, many people have soundcards like the SoundBlaster series which have built-in MIDI synths with no latency. Other people have external synths like you do, but they're using them for output in addition to input, and that has no latency.

The latency problem of soft synths is generally solved with the use of ASIO drivers, although it is often more difficult to get ASIO drivers set up on specific computers. "ASIO4ALL" is an excellent solution and works great on most people's computers. One problem is that on some systems it can conflict with the GS Wavetable. The solution is to make sure that the GS Wavetable isn't selected anywhere in your setup.

Note that it is possible to inadvertently "select" the GS Wavetable by choosing the "MIDI Mapper" or "No MIDI Output". In general, you should ignore the MIDI Mapper, which was useful on Windows 95/98/ME, but is no longer useful/functional on newer versions of Windows, as far as I know.

Here is what I think should work for you...

1. Install ASIO4ALL

2. Reboot your computer to make sure there are no problems.

3. Run Band-in-a-Box. Select the M-Audio device for input, and ALSO select the M-Audio device for your output. The purpose of this is to just make sure that something other than the GS Wavetable is selected for output.

Note: the synth/soundcard setting is mainly useful for non-GM compatible synths and specific purposes. But you can select the VSC from that list, or just select "General MIDI Instrument Misc."

4. Check the Use DXi/VSTi synth box. If already selected, click the DXi synth Settings button. Either way, this will open the DirectX/VST Window. You should have the VSC-DXi selected in the top slot (synth plugins). Don't worry about the bottom three slots, which are for audio plugins, although you may wish to select the PG Peak Limiter plugin in one of them if your volume is low. Close the DX window.

5. Click on the Audio Settings button (or Opt.-Preferences-Audio) to open the Audio Settings window. Select ASIO, or if already selected press the Audio Drivers button. This will open the ASIO Audio Drivers window. Select ASIO4ALL. For the input and output ports, normally you can leave the top ones highlighted. This would normally be your computer's built-in audio device. If that one isn't working you may need to experiment, as it isn't necessarily obvious what all the different ports are for.

6. Check the ASIO Always On box.

Note: The ASIO Driver Control panel button will open the ASIO4ALL settings. The main purpose is normally to adjust the latency ("buffer size"). Leave this at default, or around 512, until you get it working. When you have sound etc. then you can try reducing the buffer size if you're finding that there is still some latency between when you hit a key on your keyboard and when you hear it play. How low you can set the latency depends on your computer (processor, etc.).

Note: While other dialogs in BB display latency, when you are using ASIO drivers the ASIO control panel is the only dialog that you can use to change the latency.

7. Ok to exit all the dialogs. Press Play once (if you haven't yet since you started BB), just to make sure ASIO is initialized. You can stop playback now if you wish, ASIO will remain on for the rest of your session.

Now try playing your keyboard and playing a song, and see if it works. If it does, you may want to close Band-in-a-Box, open your bb folder and make a backup of the file "intrface.bbw" Then you can restore your settings at a later date if you need to (BB2009 has an option to do this under the Opt. menu).

If that doesn't work for you, describe what happens and what doesn't work about it, and hopefully there is a solution...

Andrew,

Thanks for that detailed response. I am trying to get everything working through the computer sound card at the moment. I am using the onboard sound of the motherboard, AFAICT it is the Soundmax integrated digital HD Audio.

I was originally trying to play everything through the synth in the Ensoniq ZR-76 keyboard but I had a ton of problems getting that to work so I decided to try using a software solution. That has not been trivial either.

To be honest I would prefer to use the synth in the keyboard if it could be done. I am building a piano system with other software as well for my kids (and I) to use to learn piano however BIAB will be used only by myself really.

As for your instructions, I have downloaded and installed the ASIO4All drivers and am trying to get them set up. I reset to factory defaults, then went through your ASIO instructions step by step. I selected the M-Audio as the Midi Out and I selected the General Midi Instrument as the sound / synthesizer. In the Audio dialog I selected ASIO, then went in to the ASIO Audio Drivers dialog. The ASIO4All was already selected, I checked ASIO always on, selected Best for resampler quality. The Input Port only has (0, 1) Soundmax and it is selected, the output has 4 groupings - (0,1), (2,3) etc. (0,1) is selected.

But I am getting a warning that

"the audio or DXI Output will be silent. The ASIO4All driver is disconnected, likely due to your using a soft synth for midi"

I was previously using the soft synth for MIDI out simply because unless I did I could not hear the DP at all. However per your instructions I have switched and selected the m-Audio as the MIDI Out so I think the message is lying to us. Or there is a setting somewhere that is still hosing us up.

Having said that, I can now play BIAB songs where yesterday it truly was "silent" (no sound at all), however the keyboard still does not sound, though the keys show as playing on the upper left keyboard. This is exactly the reason that I was selecting the GS Wavetable in the MIDI out section, because with that I could hear the keyboard, though there was a delay.

Hmm... I just went back in to the sound settings and this time when I closed the dialog I did not get the "will be silent" warning" so it seems that THAT issue is gone. Now to get the keyboard to sound.

Thanks again for your assistance on this.

Andrew,

Well... it seems that the keyboard is now working. I do have to click the Play to start any song, but after that the keyboard plays with or without a song playing.

Now, I have to ask why the song being loaded gets to decide the instrument and more importantly VOLUME of the Thru track. I am playing one specific song and for whatever reason that song fiddles with the settings, changing my piano to 25 Nylon String Guitar at volume 90. I really need the volume of the piano to be a 127 to be able to hear it over the song.

I guess from the perspective of the soloist using BIAB to "back them up" being able to determine what instrument your keyboard is going to be and what volume would be appropriate in each song. You set up in advance and then just play. It does seem though that people like myself who just want to play a piano piece to all songs starting at max volume, it would be nice to have a simple "override" checkbox that if I check that box then BIAB would wrest control away from the song and play it at MY permanent preset.

At any rate, thanks a million for helping me to sort this thing out. My keyboard plays, all is good. Now I just have to learn the other 99.9% of BIAB.

Hi again, jwc,

First, congratulations on getting that part working!

As for the Patch selection, the song has likely been saved with whatever Thru patch as part of its songfile settings. Somebody else liked that patch with their synth or whatever.

If you want the songfile to load with your selected patch and volume setting, it is easy to change that parameter.

Under the File menu, find "Save with Patches and Harmony" AFTER changing the patch to what you want and adjusting the volume. This can be done while the song is still playing.

In the Save with Patches... window, locate the "Fill with Patches" button and hit it, the Patches will then be filled with your current selections.

Also check the Volume box over on the RightHand side so that the songfile will be rewritten with your selected Volume adjustment.

When you hit the Save button in that window, you will likely be prompted by Windows as to whether you want to overwrite the existing songfile or rename yours slightly. Either way will work, your call. But it will likely be less confusing to simply overwrite the existing file. From then on, when you press Play or load the song, your own changes should be there.


--Mac

Mac,

I understand that I can resave the song with my setting but I really would LIKE to have the ability to tell BIAB that the Thru is my piano, and I want my piano to be volume XYZ. I quite understand that a performer who uses BIAB to accompany him would want to save specific settings for his keyboard (or whatever is on the Thru), but think about this...

I have a treasure trove of stuff done by others. The thru track is going to be all over the map, maybe even turned all the way down or using some instrument that I despise, simply because that happens to be what the person who created the song left it at when they last saved the song. There are hundreds, thousands, TENS OF THOUSANDS of songs that I would have to go into to "reset" the thru to my piano at a specific volume.

There should be a way for me to capture a specific Thru setting, and then check a check box saying "use my personal thru setting on all songs." If I want to use the Thru embedded in the song, I uncheck that box. If I want to be able to play a piano part to every song in my library, then I just check that box and play. No having to futz around every time I find a new song.

You can see how IN MY CASE, that would be a godsend. Yea sure I can "set up each song and then save it", but why? At this instant I just want to play the piano to every song I find.