PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows I really need help in getting my guitar into my PC

without PROTOOLS!!!! I have an XP P4 w 2 Gig and protools 8 barely runs and I have to turn off every service except windows--I even have to turn of restore points to save CPU space.

Look, all I want to do is get some BIAB track into RB then add my guitar and maybe add my steel too. Is there ANY reasonable solution???

I can't dedicate my Pc to this. I'm just a hobbyist and I'm playing for myself. Surely there's something I can do. Maybe record in BIAB then add steel In RB?? something.

Please!!?!?!?!?!

how about an M-audio delta 44 with its breakout box. would that work??? I'm ready to go back to my little Korg Pandora recorder and kill myself!

All the more reason for the ease and simplicity of stand alone digital recorders. As a hobbyist, too, I can't imagine fretting and worrying over computer based recording. I simply bounce BIAB to a stand alone recorder, then add guitars, vocals, etc. Works beautifully. All that valuable time is spent on recording and mixing to CD, not chasing problems.

"I feel your pain." I have just come through the same difficulties and was on the verge of giving up. My PC matched the limited specs you give above; see full sys info, below. I had been trying to use the same machine for Internet and recording, it wasn't working, and I was gonna go postal.

What worked for me after all was the dedicated Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)--a PC devoted to music production. It's the same four-year-old machine, but with a clean install of XP Pro on a new fast hard drive and nothing else but other music apps on board. After sorting out numerous issues, mainly drivers and getting programs to talk to each other, it works beautifully. Note that my XP is so stripped down that it almost looks like Windows 95. There is no eye candy whatsoever.

I can tell you from recent experience that music and non-music apps (read: antivirus, firewall, antimalware, printer driver, instant messengers, scheduled tasks, system utilities, MS Office Fast Find, program updaters, screen savers, etc., etc., etc.--anything that stays in memory and is likely to take up processing cycles unexpectedly) don't play well together and aren't going to, no matter the tweaks. A Word From The Wise.

It sounds like you've been to blackviper.com to see about unnecessary services and followed those pointers. Try this: If you have Spybot S&D or the free Glary Utilities, look up either's Program Startup manager, which allows you to de-select unneeded programs from Windows startup. Doing so immediately removes them from memory and keeps them from starting with Windows. (Notable exceptions are QuickTime, HP printer drivers and Java update and a handful of others; them you have to tell a few times.)

If you really can't afford $300 or less for a machine to dedicate to Internet ops--a refurb or a Wal-Mart emachine, say, with a KVMA switch so they can share the same keyboard, mouse, monitor and speakers if necessary--consider a dual-boot system. Two installs of the same or a different OS on two partitions of the same drive. Maybe a $3 Ubuntu Linux for the Internet side, if you're any kind of a hacker and feeling frisky; maybe two installs of the same XP. There are people here who have done that and can tell you how.

But the best advice I can give you from my own experience is to dedicate a PC to the purpose of making music.

R.

Hi,

Quote:

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Look, all I want to do is get some BIAB track into RB then add my guitar and maybe add my steel too. Is there ANY reasonable solution???

I can't dedicate my Pc to this. I'm just a hobbyist and I'm playing for myself. Surely there's something I can do. Maybe record in BIAB then add steel In RB?? something.

---

You can record audio in either Band-in-a-Box or RealBand, but RealBand offers you much more flexibility, one advantage being that you can record multiple tracks of audio in RB and only 1 track in BB.

You could generate an automatic arrangement using either Band-in-a-Box or RealBand. If you decide to use Band-in-a-Box, you can still open that .MGU or .SGU file (Band-in-a-Box song file) into RealBand. Then you can record your audio tracks.

It sounds like you are having trouble recording audio. At the very least, you could just plug an audio cable into the 1/8 inch stereo line-input on the back of your computer, then select a blank audio track in the Tracks Window, and press the Record Audio button.

If that's not working for you, then we would need to go through some steps such as making sure the correct recording device is selected in the Windows Mixer, and making sure the correct audio input driver is selected in RealBand. It would be best if we new what part of the process isn't working...

I use a Line-6 Guitar port(Hardware) along with their Software Gear box or POD Farm. I record pedal steel into Real Band. It can be used as a stand alone amplifier with decent reverb etc. I listen to the wet output and record dry and add what I need on mix.
I use the line-6 ASIO. I have a good set of speakers hooked to the output of the guitar port and use this for all of my computer sound output. I also have a decent headset plugged into it also. I like this for recording amd practicing


I paid a little over $100 at guitar center.

I have a gateway laptop Vista Home Premium,

2G RAM

533 mhz CPU

160G Hard drive (40% Free)

I put my internet in standby and turn off anti virus while recording.

I have no problems with the system. I recorded into BIAB before Real Band

Ron

Chappy,
I would recommend reading the reply in your other two posts on this forum, I've laid out a pretty good answer (in my opinion) that I think would be helpful to you.

Gary

Yeah, if the computer is straining, just bang it over to a standalone digital recorder and multitrack. As long as BIAB will work, get the basics down in there, record to another device, and mix away.

Gene

For what it's worth...

I have been using this configuration to record multiple instruments, multiple tracks (typically 8-24) on the following configuration.

HP Pavilion with AMD (Athlon) 64 X 2 Dual Core Processor 4400+, 2.19 Ghz Processors, which is about 3 years old
2 GB ram
Windows XP Media Edition, Service Pack 2
Dual internal disk drives (500MB ea, one for O/S, applications, and one for audio)
Cakewalk Sonar Studio 5 (latest version available is 8)
Presonus Firepod (firewire), ten ch, Edirol FA-66, six channel(firewire)
Several soft synths, a pair of hardware synths/keyboards

I use BB to lay down ideas, and export that (midi/audio) to Sonar, and do all my instrument recording, mixing, etc. in Sonar. One can certainly use BB or RealBand (or PowerTracks Pro) to record instruments, mix, etc. However, I find that for my projects, I like the ability to bring in any number of synths, instruments, etc. Sonar provides me with that ability. Not to say you can't do it with BB, Realband (but you are limited to one Synth at a time), or others, but this is what I use. And, I can also run Sonar on a lap top (1.25 GB ram, single processor under 2 GHz.

I also have hardware multitrack recorders I use for live situations, and they afford other benefits, such as hands on multi-channel controls, etc. But for studio, I use my PC. I like the additional graphic views and more powerful/easier to use editing than most hardware recorders affort.

Depending on the other specs of you PC, you should be able to even use RealBand to do what you want. A suggestion, is to make sure no other applications are running, including antivirus/spyware utilities, as they can really hog system resources.