PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows SampleTank DXi

Becoming a computer nerd (not exactly a programmer but a nerd) is EXACTLY what you need to do if you want to advance when working with digital audio. I know because your quoted comment is pretty much word for word what I posted here way back when.

A little history. First Biab HAS NO SOUND OF IT'S OWN. Digest that comment for a minute. It's just a program. It does NOT produce sound. What produces the sound you ask? Whatever midi synth YOU DECIDE TO USE. I'm not talking about Real Tracks now, only midi sounds.

PG wants to set customers up with some basic sounds so when they install Biab and hit Play they hear something. For years that was the Roland VSC. The VSC goes back to the 80's and Roland stopped updating it like 20 years ago. It only works on 32 bit systems while pretty much everybody now is on a 64 bit systems so the VSC is out. What could PG do? First they worked with Coyote to write some code that lets Biab use the very primitive Window's wavetable synth that is part of any Windows OS. Those sounds are very unsatisfactory though. What is out there that doesn't cost anything, as in FREE, that PG might use? How about SampleTank Free? Turns out ST allows anybody to write their own patches and link them up so the HQ patch set was born.

Here's the point though. PG has squat to do with IKM. Totally separate companies. PG can't log into IKM and set up an account for you, you have to do that and it's spelled out clearly in the installation docs that you apparently didn't read.

IKM gives away ST Free in the hope you will like it and then buy some of their pretty good sound libraries. Simple as that.

My point in explaining all this is when it comes to digital audio, the overall market is so small it's up to you to figure this all out. PG gives you a very detailed explanation of how to go to the IKM website and set it all up.

To get back to my main point though about Biab having no sounds of it's own. You're totally free to buy whatever software synth or hardware synth like the Ketron SD2 or maybe a Roland Sonic Cell you want. The sound part is completely up to you. All PG is doing is giving you two things, the Coyote Wavetable and instructions how to use ST FREE to be able to use the HQ sound set that requires that.

Otherwise you're free to go and buy any synth you want.

Bob

Jazzmammal,

I agree the weak link using midi with Windows is the funky sounding wavetable instrument sounds that Windows uses by default. I also agree PG Music has offered multiple free instrument sound upgrades including the Roland VSC and Coyote WT. However neither option requires setting up an account or registration. Neither option requires the user to associate a selected instrument sound with a midi channel. In comparison, Sampletank is much more difficult to set up or use than either VSC or WT.

In my opinion PG Music would have been better served by replacing VSC, a universal midi sound module, with it's successor the Roland TTS-1 which is also a universal midi sound module. That way those users that desire to use banks of discrete midi instrument sounds could use Kontact, Sampletank or some other multi channel midi player I've overlooked.

In retrospect, perhaps Sampletank was not the best solution for a universal midi instrument player.

Jim, SampleTank is not designed to be a universal MIDI instrument player. Only a GM (General MIDI) synth is a universal MIDI instrument player. Anything other a GM synth requires very similar setups as SampleTank. If you want really good MIDI sounds you have to dig down and learn MIDI.

Also it you are going to use a non-universal MIDI instrument player you should not use it in BiaB (this is my opinion only) and use it in a DAW. BiaB is a PITA when it comes to non-universal MIDI instrument players, but I will justify that by saying BiaB was not designed that way. It is designed for GM synths and I think they added SamplTank to help people move away from GM, at least those of us who use MIDI and/or want to learn MIDI.

This is just my opinion and yours may vary.

I can only speak from my experience and the only issue I had with the SampleTank install is I already had ST so it gave me 2 instances of ST and at that point BIAB had difficulty locating it. Since the BIAB installation program put ST in you'd think it would know where it put it while installing it. But then it was just a simple matter of showing BIAB where the install was. If you think registering ST is a pain you need to try installing Adobe Cloud products.....just saying. The only other issue I had which was my own boneheadedness was you can't replace sounds on a "Real" Track.....didn't dawn on me until I realized they weren't midi tracks. I also have the Roland TTS-1 which I use initially because the sounds are pretty good and only use ST if I am looking for something specific.

Incidentally I work as an IT specialist so registering and installing products are things I have to deal with daily.

I didn't have any issues with getting SampleTank to work and authorized.
But then "I didn't think" and I don't deviate too much from the standard install.

The more you take scenic and adventurous routes to reach your destination point the later you will get there and you might just be in the middle of nowhere when you need Forrest Gump to comment your situation.

The SampleTank DXi (as installed BY IKM and PG BIAB), actually 100% of ALL DX's and DXI's are ALWAYS in a KNOWN location by the calling application (e.g., BIAB, Sonar, Reaper) becasue (unlike VST's/VSTi's) it is a Microsoft DX spec'ed item.

Therefore it is installed INTO the registry and has to follow certain Microsoft rules, the first is WHERE (.dll's, exe.s', etc.) ARE LOCATED.

Note, for Win 7 Sp1 all MFx soft synths (aka DXi's) are listed:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\MfxSoftSynths

Specifically, Sample Tank DXi at key {85D864F5-8660-473F-894F-FE33611C1CA7}

and its .dxi installed location is listed in:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{85D864F5-8660-473F-894F-FE33611C1CA7}\InprocServer32

As a note to others if you have ALREADY installed ST2 from IK (free or full versions, BTW ST 3 has NO IMPACT AT ALL) and the DXi (not the VSti, the VSTi is immaterial) works in other application then when you install BIAB I would recommend you UNCHECK the option to install the IK SampleTank 2 DXi (again!)



Larry

Probably the best advice.....but what I wonder is when you select use a HiQ sound BIAB has specific ST files it uses and they are in the BIAB folder that is in the Instruments folder in ST. If you don't install the BIAB ST folder what happens when you select a HiQ sound? In my case when it couldn't find the BIAB folder I got error messages and the HiQ sound wouldn't load. Once I pointed BIAB to the BIAB folder then when I selected the load HiQ sound everything worked as it should.

The HI-Q instruments & samples (which are SampleTank formatted instruments and samples) are installed SEPARATELY from the SampelTank DXi application.

The HI-Q stuff even has separate INSTALLERS.


As long as the ST 2 DXi is properly installed, by either the BIAB install route or the IK MM install route, and it's working then, BIAB will know how to call up ST2 DXi. Then BIAB will "load" ("send over" to ST 2 DXi is probably a better way to say it) the selected HI-Q instrument (the .sti, .stip,and .sth files which are IK formatted files, that in-turn cause the actual sound [.STW or SAMPLEs to be loaded by SmapleTank)



The USUAL, annual, XMAS issue or SNAFU is that the actual sound files (.sti. stw. ...) are not found by the SampleTank application (aka DXi in this case) - until the path to ST sound list is refreshed. That is, the ST instrument library is updated using "Prefs" as you have already shown how to do a few posts back.

However, don't confuse where the ST SOUND libraries are installed (and where BIAB put it's ST HI-Q sounds) with where the ST 2 application (standalone, VSTi and DXi) is installed - by default the instrument libraries and the application(s) are separate things and installed in separate locations.

Larry

Mine for whatever reason installed the BIAB inside my original IK Multimedia folder in /Sampletank 2.5/Instruments/band in a box. I am guessing what BIAB installed was the SampleTank 2.5. I didn't have any input on where it was going to install as far as I remember. All I know is it works now.

Correct, to date, PG supplies ST 2.5 "stuff" - I'm lazy and easier to type ST 2 then ST2.5

Glad it's working for ya! (and yes that is where BIAB installs the HI-Q ST 2.5 files I won't further confuse issue for anyone)

Good Luck
Larry

Jim, you're not paying attention buddy. First, the TTS-1 is not free and second it's not available by itself, it's only available with the purchase of a Cakewalk product such as Sonar or Music Creator. If you look on the homepage you'll see that PG sells MC for about the same price as the Forte DXi and the loss of the VSC is the reason they started doing that. It's just another affordable option for folks who don't want to spend $400 for a sound module or a large software library.

If PG wants to give away MC just so you can get the TTS-1 fine, but then I'm sure all that means is the cost of Biab goes up by that much. And don't forget MC is a Cakewalk product, you still have to create an account with them and register it so you'll be on their email list just like we're all on IKM's list.

There's no free lunch here. The only free anything was the VSC and the current Wavetable.

Bob