PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Can we talk BIAB Midi here?

You don't get it. What's the stated purpose of the Real Tracks? It's to capture the performance of a live human playing what again? A REAL PIANO, not some stupid controller. I have a room full of those already. You don't get the full ambient sound out of a controller because all the guy is doing is triggering a stupid synth. I feel like screaming here. Why don't people get that?? We're triggering synths right now and people complain the track has no life which is why the RT's are so popular. There's no synths involved yet you're asking for a midi file of the RT so you can go and trigger a synth with it. After you do that you'll be asking how do I make this sound more real because right now it's lifeless. This turns into a circular discussion real fast. RT's are Real, synths are not but I want to change the RT so I can use a synth but I want it to sound Real but that's what the RT is for but, but...

I said earlier this stuff is complicated. It's difficult to explain it without writing a book but here's some highlights:

1. Biab is a GM program.

2. GM has very limited controller functionality.

3. If you use a really good synth that last thing the developer of that synth wants to do is cripple it by using GM controllers so they develop their own proprietary system of controlling it. This is why most of the major synths both software and hardware don't even include a GM soundset. Pro's could care less about GM anything. This is also why the really big well known ones have a package deal. You buy their software PLUS their specific controller to use with it.

4. If you load in a beautiful midi file that was done using a $3,000 software synth with another $3,000 controller and yes expensive ones like that exist in major studios, Biab will ignore all the good stuff and all you get are the basic midi notes and a few basic controllers because it doesn't know from someone else's controller scheme.

5. Unless you're planning on buying all that stuff and taking a four year course in digital audio production, all you're going to be working with are GM midi files or tracks using Biab which is a GM program. Yes, you can set up a killer VST synth like Kontakt or something in Biab so you can play the much better non GM patches but even though you're getting a great basic sound you're still missing all the controllers that Kontakt is capable of using because Biab can't use them. Plus if you do that Biab is no longer a simple load the song and hit Play thing. No, you have to go into each track of the song and manually set up the instrument patch you want to use which gets old fast.

This is the reason PGM invented the Real Tracks. It's understandable when people listen to a great instrument RT they think, hey if I had a midi file of that RT all I need to do is change a few notes and I can make that RT fit exactly what I'm trying to do. Except you're not using the RT, at that point it's just another GM midi file we've all been using and basically hating for years.

I understand your frustration but you need to so some serious reading about midi and how it works. There's lots of YT vids out there, check some out.

Bob