PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Can I upload an audio instrument sample into BiaB

I have been away from music for a while so I have some newbie questions. Can I upload an audio sample, that I get from the Internet or other source, say a trumpet or piano sound into BiaB and then have it sound when I connect my midi keyboard to my computer. Assuming so, I would think that I would have to specify the pitch of the sample and then would BiaB change the pitch correctly as I played the instrument? Would a piano sample consist of a sample of every note or would one note be sufficient.

Hi Barry,

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

How I'm interpreting your post is that you'd like to obtain some instrumental sound from the internet and then, loading that sound into BIAB, you want to use a keyboard to change the sound's pitch, as determined by the keyboard, so that the sound can play a melody, etc.

BIAB does not do this natively. To accomplish this you could convert the sound into soundfont format using appropriate software or use BIAB/RB to save the sample with acidized information and then load it into a suitable program like SFZ (found HERE). In theory, the VST could then be loaded into BIAB and the instrumental sample played.

I'm just giving this a test run at the moment. I'll be back with additional information and whether or not it worked ok.

Regards,
Noel

Barry,

I have installed and tried the SFZ player I linked to in the above post. I loaded the 32-bit version of the player onto one of the BIAB tracks, opened a soundfont file and used a BIAB midi style to play it. It worked fine.

While I haven't tried it using an external keyboard (mine isn't running at the moment), by loading the 32-bit SFZ player into the Thru slot in the VST/DXi set up, you will be able to use it with the keyboard. Whether or not lag between playing the keyboard and hearing the sound will be a problem, I do not know.

Regards,
Noel

Noel, You understand my question perfectly. I gather that a sample in a soundfont format would load into BiaB. Are soundfont samples/files readily available?

I tend to think that for a good sound, each note of a piano, for example, should be sampled and then all of these samples converted into a soundfont file.

I thought that maybe a single note could be sampled and then BiaB could do a pitch shift on the sample to generate the other notes. Using this method would not give very realistic sounds I wouldn't think.

I need to more fully understand the MS wavetable synthesizer included with Win 10.

BTW, is there an option for replies to this forum to send me an email alert? I do not see this option as yet.

No, not natively. BIAB is not designed for this. As mentioned above, it is possible to use the VST I recommended, load that into BIAB and load the soundfont into the VST.

If you search for soundfont or sf2, you'll find many files. Some are great, some are good and some are not so good. While they were good in their day, technology has developed since they were first conceived.

What you need is a good software synth - Native Instruments, Miroslav Philharmonik, etc. - that can be plugged into BIAB. These are much more powerful and versatile.



As far as I'm aware, and I might be wrong because my experience is limited, soundfont players would not be able to hold that many samples.

Regards,
Noel

P.S. I don't think this forum supports email alerts like some do.

I noticed that when I installed my ASIO driver that I could select from a number of synthesizers such as Casio, Yamaha, Roland, and etc. The one recommended in the you tube video I watched was a Cayote WT. How do these relate to the synthesizers you mentioned above, i.e. Native Instruments.

Also. It seems that when I plug my midi keyboard into my computer, the channel is always ch 5 even though I set my keyboard to another channel. What is going on here?? Also, when I look at the patches in the selected synthesizer, if I change channel 5 I get a different instrument.

Casio, Yamaha and (almost all) Roland refer to hardware. In this case, it means using your keyboard as input to BIAB (best with an ASIO driver) and possibly using your keyboard as the output sound source.

Coyote WT is intended to connect a computer running BIAB on a 64-bit version of Windows to the (poor sounding) built-in software synth of Microsoft. Almost any other solution is better.

Native Instruments is one of many companies making software synths.

Does that help?

barryjo,

I'm not fully understanding your post. I'll do my best, to address your questions, though.

1. Casio, Yamaha, Roland are most likely hardware synthesisers. That is keyboards that plug into computers via midi.

2. Native Instruments is a software synthesiser and operates as a VST/DXi that loads into a digital audio workstation (DAW) or music software like BIAB and Realband.

3. Coyote WT is the most basic of software synthesisers that can be used to drive midi sounds in BIAB. It's called a VST/DXi synth and BIAB uses it for sound production. It comes with BIAB and is always the best synthesiser to get the system running with. Once Coyote WT is up and running, and we know BIAB is working properly, other setups/soft-synths can be used. Your keyboard will use Coyote WT to play sounds in BIAB until other soft synths replace it.

4. BIAB/RB offers two ways to get music information into BIAB/RB, from (say) an external electronic keyboard, and out of BIAB to the computer speakers so that it can be heard. These two computer drivers are MME and ASIO. MME drivers usually have more lag associated with them than ASIO drivers.

5. BIAB is automatically set to receive midi information from an external midi device on channel 5. This can be changed but because BIAB uses a number of midi channels, it is usually much easier and less problematic simply to change a midi keyboard to output midi information on channel 5.

6. I'm not understanding your last paragraph fully. I'll interpret it as best I can. Changing patches on your keyboard will not effect the sound that comes out of BIAB. BIAB provides the sound you hear (most likely via Coyote WT). You keyboard is only sending digital information to BIAB through MIDI OUT and BIAB receives that information through MIDI IN and interprets it with whatever software synthesiser or soundcard is loaded.

Hope this information is useful. If you need to post again because I've missed some things, can you please give me an outline as to what you want to accomplish. That will help.

Also, please know that I am just a user like you and all others on the forum. I am not a PG Music employee.

Regards,
Noel

P.S. I've just discovered that Matt has also replied while I was typing. Both our posts should help

Matt, I thought Cayote WT replaces the MS wave synth, yes/no?

Noel, Thanks for the info. I have a Roland digital Piano FP8, a Yamaha DX7, a Windows 10 computer with Biab 2016. I also have a Sound Canvas SC-55 but not hooked up as yet. I connect my DX7 or FP8 midi out to the computer via a M-Audio USB to midi interface. All hardware seems to be working.

I thought that I could set up a different instrument for each midi channel so that I could change the midi out channel on my keyboard from one channel to another and hear different instruments. I must be thinking wrong here.

There is a midi monitor in BiaB. It always shows channel 5 receiving data even though I can set my FP8 to transmit on channel 1,2 or any other of the 16 channels. When I open my Cyote channel screen, I can change the instrument for channel 5 to various instruments.

Coyote WT doesn't replace the Windows sounds. What it does is it "wraps" the Windows sounds and presents it to your host as a DXi softsynth. That lets you use those sounds (which aren't great) as a soft synth, to include being able to directly render to WAV without having to record the song through your sound card. It allows you to do those things with a basic Windows system (if that's all you have), but most folks move along to better sounding soft synths.

I see I need to do a little studying on soft synthesizers, DXi, and etc.

Noel, Matt & John,
You've collectively put together an absolutely perfect summation of how these fundamentals hang together, something that dispels the confusion often associated with MIDI channels, software synths, and hardware equipment interfacing.

This should be a feature in the Tips and Tricks section.

Thanks to you all for your valuable input.