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Hi all I could use some help.
I get the yellow error box when I try to load hq midi sounds into a song. Basically I get the, "Can't find at" then list direcory path. I am reluctant to copy or move these files for fear that:
1) I will never be able to keep this all straight, copying folders to multiple directories,(which already seems to be getting a little tedious, as it seems that Sampletank already has redundancies in the patch list, possibly put there by me during adding the Omnisynth library)
2) if I just move this instead of copying, will the parts that seem to work now get lost to Band in a Box.
I like some of the features of Sampletank, but parts of its implemenation, along with some of the issues I have with it comunicating with Band in a Box, are frustrating. If PG is going to bundle these two together, they should have it work smoothly,i.e. call up the patches from BIABs GUI and be done with it. This digging through the directories to patch things together to make things work is counter-intuitive. Anyway , if I do this ,will it be ok? Where do these sounds need to reside, and how do I get ST2.5 and BIAB to both see them? I am not a Noob to this, I use Sonar x3 and have a pretty good knowledge of how things work, but this also gives me insight to how things SHOULDN'T work as well. Anyone have any experience with this, and what did you do?
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Hi,
Well with Omnisynth are you loading the patch map every time you open biab and wish to use Omnisynth? That patch map should be in the Omnisynth folder I believe, Just copy the 2 maps to a more convenient place.
If so then its straight forward enough to change the various instruments from the main biab GUI.
Does take a bit of messing around to get the Hi Q sounds set up. I have got that error myself a few times, I think there are a few threads on the forum about it.
Musiclover
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Hi tconnelly. Here's one of the posts that musiclover mentions. Sampletank 2.5 - Omnisynth & Default DirectoryIn this post, there are instructions on how to successfully use Omnisynth as a general midi synth in Sampletank 2.5. Also, further down the thread, this post explains about how to set the default path for Sampletank sounds. Hope this helps, Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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Thanks guys, I'll take a look and monkey around with it tonight. Part of the ongoing pro vs con of having synths that are native and VST/Dxi. Sometimes they want to read info from different places, especially if you use them in standalone mode. I had to go through the same type of thing with Native Instruments stuff. Part of what makes this a headache is you have the "teaser" sounds in one folder and the stuff you purchase for real in a different one. I wish they would just get together and incorporate the products as part of a bundled release instead of "hey, you might like this, so we'll give you this limited functionality/library product and you can buy the real version for $X." They could probably find a way to integrate them more seemlessly if they were truly playing ball together.
Enough of my rant, thanks for the help.
Tim
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I've farted around with this, manually loading my patches for awhile now. Every time I try to load one of the GM maps for Omnisynth, the whole program crashes. It's weird, because some of the time it starts playback, and I can see that it has changed the patches inside Sampletank, but then the whole thing freezes and I have to go into task manager and kill all the processes. Back to my rant. If you are going to offer a product, make sure it really works with your core program. PG dangling the sampletank carrot in front of you is not cool if they don't have the bugs worked out. If you need to load the GM map every time you want to use it, that is a red flag right there. I can work without it, loading my own patches every time, but that seems kinda stupid to me. Sampletank 2.5 omnisynth is the perfect solution for a program like BIAB that is so reliant on 1) 32 bit VSTs 2)general midi. They need to make it air tight though. It's one thing to have to develop a strategy on delaing with Realdrums vs. GM, it's a whole different thing when the whole program buckles because you load IK's GM map into it. Support should figure this out and give implicit step by step instructions to resolve. Noel, they already have a good start with all that you have done to figure it out. This wouldn't bug me if I didn't feel I was "this close" to making it work.
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Win10Pro,i9,64GB,2TBSSD+20TBHDDs,1080TI,BIAB'24,Scarlett18i8,Montage7,Fusion 8HD,QS8,Integra7,XV5080,QSR,SC-8850,SPLAT,FL21&others,Komp.14,IK suite&others, just a guitar player-AXE FX III &FM9T, FishmanTP, MIDIGuitar2, GK2/3'sw/GI20
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No insult taken. I am about 95% sure that I am loading the VST.
I do have some confusion with that post that shows a row of buttons.Record, Record Audio , VSTi and a yellow X. I don't see that at all on the toolbar, but I do see the Dxi plugins, when I access it's dropdown list I can see exactly what is in that post, namely Dxi and VSTi instuments, plugs , etc. I choose the VST version. I am using 2014 , I noticed that post is from 2012, did they change some of the buttons?
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oopss I take it back, it is the VST plugins button on the top toolbar that blows down into instruments and effects and you can select the vst
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Larry, you win the prize! Somehow I didn't have the VST version installed! I downloaded, authorized, threw in the map and voila! I knew if all of you were having luck with this it had to be something dumb and it was, me! Thanks to all! When it's working right , it's so much easier.
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It's good to see you've got it working. When it comes to midi, Larry is one of the best on the forum!
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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Thanks to you as well Noel, for troubleshooting and being a sounding board for my growing angst. 1 more question. I tried to call up one of the HQ MIDI sounds on a song, and it gave me an error message DXi Sampletank not installed.(When I chose to install the VST version , I failed to check the Dxi box and it appears to have overwritten it with nothing) I am now confident that I can get that going as well(same process), but is it even worth it? If Sampletank is the source of the HQ instruments is it easier to just grab them and load them in, or is there something extraordinary about these patches that makes them "wonderful"(special or large sample files, special efx processing, etc,)My thoughts are: 1) once I start down that road I might as well just audition a few sounds and pick the ones I like and add my own effects. 2)even if they are good, they are kinda like presets on plugins, you always end up tweaking them to your liking anyway, so might as well start fresh.Your thoughts?
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The Hi-Q patches are PG's way of helping folks easily access ST without having to open up ST and manually load those patches onto the instrument tracks. ST allows a third party to create custom patches and link them up in some way.
All you do is right click on an instrument like guitar for example and about halfway down the list is "select Hi-Q MIDI synth patch". That opens up a window that lists all those patches, you select what you want and that's it, done. Biab remembers your patch selection so they're there with you reopen that song. Whether you think those sounds are good is up to you. Since PG is able to do this I'm pretty sure us users could create our own patches and link them up but I've never tried it.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Hi tconnelly,
As you will find out by using Sampletank (ST) sounds is that the more money you put into MIDI sound sources the better the sounds will be out of the box. The ST that comes with BiaB was the free one that IK put out as a sampler: that is if you liked the sounds you would upgrade, but they are a sample of the identical sounds used in the more ST expensive programs at that time. Having said that you will find that the ST sounds are much better than the GM sound source that comes with BiaB and Forte. Note that some people based their entire bias on BiaB's free MIDI sounds, well actually they were a Microsoft GM set, and thus said MIDI sucks. Not true. I use mostly all MIDI so you may want to listen to some of my songs in the User Showcase forum and in fact some users have commented on how some sound like RTs.
Thus out of the box your MIDI mixes will sound a lot better using ST. But they still may sound stagnate. However you can make MIDI sounds come alive and/or more emulate acoustic instruments by using MIDI CC commands, effects, subtle timing and velocity changes etc. Think of using MIDI as an instrument in that it takes practice and time to get a handle on it.
Even though ST will sound better you can get better sounds out of more expensive sound sources like Kontakt, which I have, SampleTank 3 (note that ST3 is 64 bit only), and other sources. In fact the Kontakt Player is a free version of the full-blown Kontakt and is much like the ST sampler that comes with BiaB, however the sounds are much better.
Your thoughts are right on: 1-pick some sounds from ST and listen to them then 2- experiment with some of the suggestions I made above.
Ps - I have found the BiaB and good MIDI sound sources are excellent companions. You can do a lot with MIDI with a little work.
I should note that using better MIDI sound sources like ST also means that you are not using GM sound source in most cases. That is it is not as simple just loading a file and listening. You have to set up each channel so the bass goes to a bass sound, piano to a piano etc. The best GM sound set that I have heard is Cakewalk's TTS-1, however I don't believe they sell that separately.
Also if you need any help there are a number of us here that know about MIDI.
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Thanks guys. I was just wondering if the HQ sounds were anything super special.I bought the omniynth sounds so I could have a complete(32 bit)GM set.I like them a lot better than Coyote. I usually tweak BIAB songs to my liking , then dump the midi files into sonar X3, where I start with the TTS (Cakewalk/Roland) and refine from there adding guitars, sometimes replacing the drums or bass, changing instruments ,adding vocals etc. I too have Kontakt and Reaktor and all that , as well as Dimension Pro , Rapture , Zeta +2 more sounds than I can shake a stick at. My question is, based on the given that I have Sampletank and Omnisynth2 library, and I have to go load the DXi version of Sampletank in order to access the HQ sounds (at least that's what the error message told me)is it worth the hassle, or are the Omnisynth sounds pretty darn close already?
I just don't want to download and authorize a second version of Sampletank(Dxi) just to find out there is little to no difference in the sounds.
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tconnely,
You have another option you may not have considered, why not set TTS-1 as your default software synth? You already have it and use it with your Sonar software. You can always use patch selections to overwrite the TTS-1 default selection.
I should also point out the British magazine, Sound-On-Sound, has a 2005 pdf article about using many of the lessor known features of TTS-1. The Cakewalk website has a nice video tutorial. Both are pretty easy to find by performing a websearch.
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Tconnely, Jim beat me with his TTS-1 suggestion! I will add that with what you have now I would not even bother with ST. Those ST sounds are dated compared to what you have in Sonar and Kontakt.
Principal: Your child always causes trouble in school.
Me: My child causes trouble at home, do I ever call you?
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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some people based their entire bias on BiaB's free MIDI sounds, well actually they were a Microsoft GM set, and thus said MIDI sucks Just as a bit of info, the MS GM sound set was licensed to them by Roland long ago, so they are actually a Roland set. Much like the old VSC DXi synth (which had better samples), this sound set was cast aside by Roland (long ago after being 'dummied down' for the OS use). They continue to let MS continue to use it. Also, this default set of samples can be tinkered with (within the OS), but as Mario pointed out; the basic free set that comes with Windows is from the W95/98 era and pretty basic. If'n you use your imagination you can almost here the intended sounds. That's Windows fault, and not BiaB. /the more you know!
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Jim,
You got me thinking, I was operating under the assumption that because it wasn't installed in x86 directory that it must be 64 bit, but I looked and it's a DXi. I thought BIAB should be able to find it, since DXi is more of a Windows thing than VSTs, but I'm going to try and load it and see if BIAB can find it, once it knows the path. If not, I'll copy it to the same folder as all of the DX plugs that PG can see. I'll keep you posted.
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Epic fail. I can't get it to load. Add VSTi is the closest thing I can find to search for it. I can find TTS-1 but can't get it to load into BIAB it says ,not a valid VSTi.
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The tts-1 that I have loaded on my system and that works fine in BIAB is a DXi (not a VSTi).
Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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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!
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