PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums RealBand ReWire/RealBand ... comments wanted.

I guess when I read this I am starting to get confused on PG Musics vision and goals for their software. When I first started using the software it seemed to be the goal to allow musicians of all levels to have a simple to use music program that facilitated creativity and increased the enjoyment of the process. Maybe that was a misunderstanding on my part but that is what it felt like as a customer.

I am always amazed at the creativity of the software developed by this group when they focus on something. The whole concept of RealBand took software generated accompnient to a whole new level for an entry level price with a relatively small learning curve. It produces tracks that can only be obtained by purchasing keyboards or sound modules of significant higher pricing. The great thing about PG music is that it is one of the few software packages that has real strong support for acoustic based music. Loops are great but the control factor RB is starting to give is a pretty neat feature and lacking in the music software industry.

I am not sure what Rewire adds unless it is to expand the market available. I understand that concept and it is critical to any business. I guess my fear is you can try to be too many things to too many people. Is it time to take a step back and ask the question at a business level of "Who are we?" and Who do we want to serve in the music industry?"

To me Rewire would just add a level of complexity. I have all I can handle with BIAB, RB, PT and Sonar.

Please don't take this post as a negative to the PG software family. I love and use this software often and it has taught me a lot. I want nothing but continued success for the company. It is just sometimes in this age of information overload simplicity can be a strategic move in and of itself. Maybe since I am not Rewire user I am just missing the great features it could add. I will continue to read comments to see if my mind changes.

Thanks for asking though as that is a great trait of PG.

Terry

Not all users will be likely to use all features in a program such as this one anyway.

The real world scenario is that different users see the program in different ways and thus will use the program in different ways.

Some may not need a certain feature at all, others may demand it as a necessity, still others may *discover* it simply because it is there or be directed to it in order to solve a problem they have encountered.

The assumption that adding more features detracts from squashing bugs or better implementation of existing features is not accurate. If you have been here following development and beta testing as long as I have, you'd know that.

Musicians can be an emotional lot.


--Mac

With Reaper for example. You could Rewire Biab on a track and do everything you currently can. Next track you could open with any vsti. for example Jamsticks. Reaper handles so many tracks I cant even start to use them all. Each track could be another voice, synth or whatever.

Effects could even be added to the Rewire Biab track that wouldnt be available in its present form.

For one hting i do not think this is being done so one can benefit in Reaper, but would be done to benefit with the integration of BiaB and RB together. I douybt Adding BiaB as a feature inside Reaper ever crosses there minds. RB is a direct competitor to Reaper.

And i think the discussion here should be the benefits to PG's software with REwire. I get personally kind of tired of every forum on the net becoming a Reaper promotion. I get that those who use are almost rabid with desire for everyone else to jump on it's band wagon. I tried it and it did nothing but crash for me and that was several different builds.

Please focus on making RB fully VST/VSTi compatible first (I think it is a Rewire requirement?). If possible phase the implementation in - something like mid 2009 for full mVSti and Rewire during 2010. It would be great if the drum plugin programs could function correctly as well as programs like Waves GTR etc (the drum programs will supplement RealDrums so should not be seen as a threat to Realdrums).
RB will then be a fantastic application instead of an extremely good application!.
Roy

RealBand -> Rewire -> Program Host that handles those VSTi's well...

So I am still trying to see what the benefit to Rewire is. Is the idea to make RealBand the host? If so do you have to use Reason products as the slave program? I am sorry but I am just not getting it. Can someone take what Mac put up above and put some actual programs or VSTi's in the diagram to help understand the benefit?

Terry

There are tons of programs that support ReWire, including those not made by Propellerheads (the guys who make Reason). I Rewire Reason through Cubase all the time so I can use Reason's synths and still be able to handle VSTs and manipulate audio with Cubase. It's a great tool.

Here's a few... Ableton Live, Cubase, Torq, Sony Acid Pro, Renoise, ProTools, Fruity Loops, there's a more complete list (and more info) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReWire

So many people including me have been asking for the VST tempo lock issue to be fixed for so many years now that I'm beginning to think it just can't be done because Peter has said for a long time that they're working on it yet nothing has been announced. Something in the base code is preventing it.
Maybe that's the primary reason they're thinking of ReWire. It's a workaround for that problem as well as adding another wow factor.

Bob

Second-guessing a development team isn't worth the time, man.

We aren't privvy to *any* of the hard facts behind the scenes, all we know is that XX doesn't work with YY. Frustrating for some, so the emotions come out.


--Mac

Wow this is funny! I actually converted quite a few of the BB styles to midifiles to try out the gm bank of sounds I made for subtractor. I don't know how good they sound with the rhythms. But I can send you my gm subtractor bank. I intentionally don't make them perfect because arrangement of parts and studio recording wear seperate hats. I will test tomorrow and post my results. There are two seperate threads. BIAB is a practicing program to make you a great musician. Reason is a fun studio with lots of gadgets. They now have mimicked most of the various synthesizer models made. But your programs are really the core of music education. Yes people want the world. Would Biab work with Orion as well. A lot of reason type music is made with arpeggiators and delays and toys that most school trained musicians; ie my music program here is classical. The school owns Reason but they teach no classes that incorporate any of their software including Finale. So the people who are using it are wierdly enough not the music students. Who are extremaly sheltered when it comes to the Jazz and even classical traditions. They seem seperate. I also have over time practiced with the Pianist Series ( What happened there? Why was that not kept going?) and piano unlike guitar is a much more specialized hand instruments. I think peoples hands really allow them to play or not play a lot of things well. What about Sonar? How much of Dr T's KCS Level 2 is still not implemented in Biab or is it all there? I was 19 when I got that with no background. Did you folks play with that. There were no presets for anything Everything was like visiting Aristotle Galileo had not come along and combined the benefits of Aristotles endavors. That is no longer true. Your programs are made the best you can do. I love this company. I will blog about my sucesses or why I think things get hard and I lose my focus. There are so many persuits that how do developers keep their sanity. I am a disabled student with a somewhat solid grasp of the different lines of musical orginization and I drive the dedicated instrumentalists up the wall. They are so confused with what I do and they seem to make excuses for not making the time to respect their Foreign language tempo terms and marks and stuff like that we hate talking about it. but it conveys what we do to our friends. Developers should talk more freely altogether most programs are produced for a very fair price. Heck call Dr T ask him what he thinks? Anyways thanks for sharing Love

To add to this discussion, one could add a simple DAW as a slave like Cakewalks MC5, or Reaper to tempo lock the VSTi, and then send the midi data from RB to say MC5 thru rewire, and then out of jamstix.

Until MC3, and or Sonar 4 Cakewalk was also a DX based and therefore used a VST wrapper to make VST and VSTi plugs work as DX and DXi plugs, that was nice but kind of shakey.

And less CPU!!

This has been a big obsticle for me from day one. I love PG stuff but this takes me back to MC 2003 with cakewalk, and I did not use it much because of that.

Now I do use RB all the time, but not for original sequencing all that much. For me it is my backing "Real Band"

Rewire and the proper application of VST technology are two different things and IMO should be treated as such.

No reason we can't have both.



--Mac

I agree as well mac, but I also agree with RS fix what is lacking before adding a new feature. VSTi full implimentation would benefit far more people than Rewire, but ultimatey both would be very cool