PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Live Mode function in Sample tank 3.

Hi,
I've been considering getting sample tank 3, has anybody used the new Live Mode function, if so, how successful is it.

whats that?

To keep you from reading all this - I have NOT actually played with live function. Also from a sound prospective - you need to listen to demos and decide that on your own. But I will say, having both ST2 XL l and ST3, which comes with full ST2 XL sound set plus new ST 3 sounds, I WOULD NOT pay FULL MSRP for ST3 (I wouldn't pay it for Kontakt either) - wait for a sale (and you just missed the biggie holiday sale) .


Back to "live function" question, this will be no help so consider my post just frivolous and useless filler. I have NOT ventured into the Live function area yet except to play the demos - interesting but…..

To one specific use of Live: On IK forum - it was alluded to that between using Multi's and the Live function you could make a GM compatible set. However, when IK rep was pressed, no real info on how to do this has been made available (yet).

I've been meaning to take a few days and try to see how it could be done, but I have a real life outside of figuring out how to make SW do stuff that is not already built-in .

I think this use of Live function to make a GM set would end up like trying to do a similar GM feat in Kontakt. You'd have to pre-load 16 parts with 128 patches (2048 total) - that is a hell of a lot of system memory - and would probably grind even the most robust PC to a halt quickly.

Actually only need to pre-load 15 parts (channels) because part/ch 10 is GM drums and you could pre-load that with just 2 or 3 drum kits that would still be 1905 patches.

Even with judicious picking for the GM stand-in instruments/patches (ignoring FX sounds, nontraditional instruments, and general GM crapola sounds) like maybe: a few pianos (acu. and EP's), a few organs (B3 and Vox) , vibraphone (love me some vibes!), a few horns, woodwinds, reeds, guitars (2 or 3) , basses (2 maybe), strings (one solo, one ensemble) , etc. you might get it down to say 40-50'ish sounds so around 600 to 750 instruments (15 x 40 to 15 x 50'ish) - still a whole lot of memory tied up.

Clearly, marking ST 3 a GM sound generator should NOT be the reason to buy it and obviously not what IK had in mind for Live function. GM is not the end all for me either but when using BIAB having a VSTi/DXi that CAN BE used as GM it is a major PLUS.

Larry

Hi Larry,
Thank you for your reply.
Apart from the sample tank in biab, I haven't had anything to do with it.
4 / 5 years back I was using a complicated setup with Biab ,using Brainspawn Forte, which allowed me to pick and choose sounds from garriton, Kontakt, and whatever else I had all at the same time. All too complicated, but I had fun fooling round with it. It was a learning experience, that's about all.

The other option I had was my soundfont player, or forte Dxi. I was never that wrapped in the sound of forte dxi, so at one stage there, I started to swap samples, with better quality ones. At least my sound fonts and forte dxi, gave me the Gm sounds required and they were a direct plug in instead of having to use virtual midi cables etc etc.

I gave up eventually and started to use my keyboards as my sound source.
A couple of years ago I gave up my music hobby completely, now I'm back.

5 Years down the track, we've got all those great real track and super midi track styles, but for the midi styles I still need a sound source. I checked out the hi q instruments , but they only cover a few sounds, I want to use Biab independently
of my keyboard, so at this stage looks like I'm back to using dxi forte or my sound font player.
I was hoping the Live function in sample tank 3, ( I was only going to get the lite version for time being not the full one,) might work. I may have totally the wrong idea of how it works, but what I was planning to do was sort out the songs that used the same instrumentation into their own folders and have the sound setup for them. I got the impression it loads more quickly or something?

I wasn't really expecting it to work like dxi forte where the 128 sounds would be on hand.

I personally will not put any effort into using the Live Mode function as it is explained, or at least as I understand its intended use, because I have no need of that - song/sets for live gigging.

Again one of these days I might play around with trying to get it set up as a GM set.

But you do know that ST3 has a FREE version you can download? Supposedly all that stuff works. I've not tried it since I already have ST3.

Good Luck
Larry

Thanks Larry,
May do some more checking before I spend the money. Thanks for the tip on the free version.