PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist Right, PG Music, a request for YOUR benefit

True, bug reporting is a tough thing to manage well in any software I use. But I see the BIAB Wishlist as something different.

We generally discuss bugs in two places that aren't here. One place is the main BIAB product forum. Before something is called a bug, we fellow users first try to rule out user error or lack of knowledge. The other place is a beta testing area in active use by a smaller group.

Many of what some may call bugs are not bugs, but a lack of knowledge of how to get to what you want. One should find out first if something works or not before calling it a bug. Lots of things have been called bugs in this forum only to turn out to be user error.

Much of the philosophy behind great UXD (user experience design) is that you design so that the product is usable by your average user without extensive studying of documentation. If your average users consistently fail at a task...that is generally considered a design flaw (bug) and needs to be corrected.

BIAB is a huge program. Many different uses for many different players. I don't think there is a program like BIAB that covers so many bases. For my purposes I've haven't run into anything I could call a bug. When someone runs into something they can't do or make work, a question should be posted on the BIAB forum before they call it a bug. There are knowledgeable users on the forum who can find out if something is a bug or not. (not me!) There are over 24,000 registered on the forum and who knows how many thousands who aren't registered on the forum. Those who actually participate and share info on this forum are just a few dedicated knowledgeable users.

Yeah I agree most users are probably not qualified to set status but when I see something that is plain wrong I will still report it as a bug! For example, I found (and reported) that changes in the mixer are saved with the song but changes you make there do NOT trigger the Save warning. Since obviously the intent is to warn me of changes I have made, and it does not work that way for mixer changes, then that is a bug!

You must be the only person in the world who runs BIAB 100% bug free. Congratulations!

What is a bug? Ah, a rose by any other name, etc.

To me a bug is when an advertised function does not work as advertised. That's it.

Things can be sloppy. Fine, but not a bug that's a suggestion for the Wishlist.

The help files don't help much. That's been a big one for me but it's not a bug, just a suggestion to clean them up.

The really old well talked about VST tempo sync issue. Not a bug because they don't advertise that. Another suggestion for the Wishlist.

Biab is a very complex program from a musicial pov because it does so many very sophisticated things that good musicians have wished for over the years. It takes time to figure out how to make it do what you want or what you think it should do.

Many times you realize that while it won't do what you think it should do it actually does it in a completely different way that you simply hadn't thought of until somebody points it out to you. That's not a bug either and it's not user error it's just a non intuitive way of doing something. All kinds of software is like that. Don't get me started on Excel...

Bob

How quickly we forget....

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=273165#Post273165

Thanks.

It's very tiring to explain the same things over an over.

A "wish" for a dedicated "Bugs & Issues" section has been made many times before, by myself too. Whether those were seen by staff...well, that's unfortunately anyone's guess. My suggestion, if you go back to page one (which I'll excuse you for not doing, since the system apparently defaults you to the last post), was to address just that by having a simple checkbox, thumbs up/down or what have you, for that sort of thing without having to waste time in hefty discussions.
It would even have benefits for users too, if implemented properly, for how often haven't people seen something in this section which they found rather a pointless idea but resisted the urge to go in and say so, to avoid tedious confrontations or arguments. I know I have (in which cases I usually just skip to the next thread). A handy thumbs icon, up & down, and we'd have a much clearer view of people's views (certainly a faster one, not having to go through loads of reading - unless of course we choose to).

Right, maybe now this thread will get back on track

No, no, no, no...How quickly we forget what? That thread is a joke.

Jeesh, where do I start? First I'm not about to answer all of these so let's just start with the first one.

The transpose up a half step function. Did you not read Peters answer? Do you not after all this time and use with the program understand how RT's work? It's been explained only 99 thousand GAZILLION times. The RT's take time to generate. Period. Time, you know? Like ticks on your watch? How can you expect the program to generate INSTANTLY a constantly transposing RT woodshed session? Peter told you, use midi for that or buy yourself a $3,000 high end top of the line Intel i7 with a fast SSD so the RT's can generate in a split second. Not a bug.

The next thing is ASIO4ALL. It does NOT work well with everybody, just check out other DAW forums. And besides ASIO4ALL is a completely separate and FREE 3rd party program that you use at your own risk anyway and it most definitely is NOT an advertised feature of Biab. It's merely something to try if you're having latency issues. What serious home studio musicians do is spend the money for a good guality audio/midi interface that has a well known ASIO driver. That's the driver you use. ASIO4ALL is for people running old and slow machines and won't spend the money for the right stuff. I use a Roland Sonic Cell with the Roland ASIO driver. Works fine. People revere and miss Mac. He posted many times he was getting under 10ms of latency with these programs but it took some work which he described in detail. Not a bug.

Third, is all the crabbing about display issues. Most of that is your screen resolution which Cerio glossed over in that so called bug thread. This is the way it is in the modern world with all kinds of software. Programs get more and more complex and they require bigger screen real estate. If you insist on running a small screen then you have to increase the resolution to the point you need a big magnifying glass to see anything. That's all there is to that. If all you have is a 17" laptop well, good luck...Not a bug.

Then all this constant stuff about menu organization and all that. Yes, that could use some work but is that a bug? Of course not. PG doesn't advertise that we'll all love the menu system. Not a bug.

Want to mess with menu's? Try using Word to crop a picture or embed something or work with columns and boxes if you've never done it before and you go menu surfing. Absolute nightmare. Talk about unintuitive.

Since I haven't gone through and analyzed each and every one of those items in that thread, maybe some are true bugs but I doubt it.

Oh, Save and Save As. Do you know what Save As is for? It works as it should and is different from Save. Calling that a bug when apparantly you don't understand this basic Windows function is ridiculous.

Another one the VST save thing. That was recently answered in detail on the forum. Not a bug, you just don't understand how it works.

I using the word "you" generically when I think I should be referring to Cerio because that thread is all him or mostly him but, whatever.

Yes I know I'm coming on strong but when I see ignorant stuff like this it just....well you know.

Bob

A lot of us do not think that thread is a joke and we wish many of those issues or bugs or whatever you wish to call them would be addressed in the software!

Maybe you failed to read the very last post in that thread?




Not sure about this item from that post but I can tell you two ways in which the Save/SaveAs functionality is buggy!

First, things that are stored with a song when you save are supposed to trigger a Save/SaveAs when you have made changes and then try to quit or open a new song. But the mixer settings fail to trigger that warning. So you can save your song and then change mixer settings and close BIAB without getting a warning. That is about as clear a bug as I could think of!

Second, in Windows, when you have saved a file, subsequently made changes and then try to close that file you are supposed to get a warning. BIAB does this so so far so good. But, if you accept the warning by saying you do wish to save, the system is supposed to then save the file without further warnings just as if you had hit the Save button. But this is where BIAB does not follow the well established Windows convention. Instead it throws a SaveAs dialog which is wrong. And ,of course, when you try to save the file with the same name (as you ALWAYS do in a Save request), BIAB recognizes that the file already exists and prompts you to save as a new file! Confusing and annoying and...a bug!

Follow up on my second Save/SaveAs point above. I am unable to verify this in the latest version so maybe it was fixed. I'll look up my report in the Wish List from some time back to see if I can duplicate the problem.

...

JohnJohnJohn: I think the save - save as (bug / problem / issue / thing / whatever) was finally fixed in build 429:

[i]Summary of Changes for Version 2016 Build 429 (Dec 18, 2015)
[...]
Fixed: After editing a song, when asked if you want to save your song, the [b]Save As dialog would always appear even if you had picked a file name for your song previously.
[...][/i]
[/b]



Bob: that thread can be a joke for you, but it's not a joke at all for many users who participated on it, including Peter Gannon, who finds it very helpful:

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=273165&page=all

It's obvious that you didn't made any effort to test the (bugs / problems / issues / whatever you wish to call them) reported on that thread. If you had, you'd realize (for example) that using the "Transpose song each chorus" feature is not working at all when working with Realtracks. And the main problem is NOT the silence between choruses, but the fact that the transposition algorithms are completely wrong. The details are here:

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=228461#Post228461

(Just for your information, in 2014 I sent an email to support reporting that thread and they confirmed the bug)

So, it's obvious that you didn't test the problem for yourself. From what you say, it's obvious that you haven't tried the other problems either. And you say, literally, that you "haven't gone through and analyzed each and every one of those items in that thread, maybe some are true bugs but I doubt it."

Why take the time and effort to really understand and test what was reported on that thread, when is much easier to just insult the person who made the reports the bugs calling him an ignorant?

Bob: all programs have bugs, and bug report is an important aspect of the software development process, not an attack to the software company. PGMusic (like any other software company) thanks the users who reports bugs and other issues. Please, don't feel the need of defending PGMusic against bug reports. You really don't have to.

And please, stop insulting.

Better yet, stop using MY thread for arguing about ANOTHER thread!

Yes, you're right. Sorry.

I agree, this is wish list for product improvement. An email to PG music or a phone call should be done outside of this site for something you believe is a bug. Possibly PG is unaware of the problem.

Thank you, Dr. Gannon!