PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Audio Chord Wizard not working

Note the differences in the save locations in the screenshots below.

One is the screenshot for Saxfred's 'Frontier'

The next is from PGMusic help file demo of 'Frontier'

The last is where my TEMPMAIN.WAV files is located.

This leads me to believe the problem is where the ACW is saving and the searching for the TEMPMAIN.WAV file.

Charlie,

That's a great observation!

My experience is that TEMPMAIN.WAV is created in whatever directory the audio file comes from and not the x:\bb\ directory.

With this in mind, I wonder if any of the people experiencing this problem have tried loading a file in from other directories?

Regards,
Noel

more information...

Charlie,

From your above images, I noted that the song being opened was Frontier.mp3 found in \bb\Tutorials - 2007. (Fred took this screen shot from the PG Music tutorial.)

When I tried opening that particular file, or the Frontier.wma file, I got the below error. This error seems to suggest that there is a file called INPUT.TXT that is also required for ACW.



The good news is that when I navigated to another directory and opened a different WAV, the ACW opened fine.

I've reported this error to Support.

Regards,
Noel

P.S. It seems that I can now no longer open any mp3s in ACW

even more information...

It seems that the reason that I could no longer open mp3s (as noted above) was because BIAB or ACW created a file called INPUT.TXT in the \bb directory.

When I located that file and effectively deleted it by renaming it, I could once again open mp3s. Interesting!

With this in mind, Fred et al, have a look in your \bb folder and see if there is a file called INPUT.TXT and, if there is, rename it to INPUT.TXT.OLD. Now exit and restart BIAB and see if the ACW works. (Forcing a new INPUT.TXT to be created would seem to be the equivalent of a factory reset for ACW.)

Frontier.mp3 (in \bb\Tutorials - 2007) now opens fine for me also.



P.S. Thanks Charlie for giving me a new direction to work in

Troubleshooting... still no luck.

After loading the audio file with ACW within BIAB. The audio can be played within BIAB with great quality.
The problem is ACW would not launched automatically to generate Chords to be sent to BIAB.
I located "ACW.exe" in my hard drive and manually launched it. I finally can get access to ACW after all these times.
ACW is now active and generate chords.
The problem now is ACW cannot Send the generated chords TO BIAB NOW.
After I "set to bar 1" .
click "OK-SEND TO BIAB".
ACW is off and BIAB has not received the generated chords.

Still experimenting.

Sounds kinda like a permissions issue. Maybe try running BB as an administrator (?)

I have just discovered that Audio Chord Wizard (ACW) creates both an INPUT.TXT (as mentioned above) and an OUTPUT.TXT.

I tried renaming these to INPUT.TXT.OLD and OUTPUT.TXT.OLD. Then I exited and restarted BIAB. When I reopened ACW, all worked well and new INPUT.TXT and OUTPUT.TXT files were created.

Also...

When an audio file is loaded into ACW, there are two temporary files created in in the directory containing the audio file. These are...

• TEMPMAIN.WAV
• TEMPMAIN.BT1

In relation to rhav's post above, it seems possible that if there are problems associated with overwriting the WAV file and/or the BT1 file due to permission barriers, running BIAB as administrator may overcome this.

It seems to me that if the audio file being loaded is from one of Window's protected directories, there could also be permission issues.



Given all the preceding posts and combining them with what I've learnt along the way, how I would now set about solving the ACW issue is as follows...


1. Close BIAB. Now restart it in administrator mode by right-clicking on BIAB's shortcut and selecting "Run as administrator".

2. Copy one or two audio files into a folder that's directly off the root drive (e.g. C:\Songs).

I suggest only using WAV files at this point in time because working with compressed audio files such as mp3s adds another layer of complexity to using ACW and during the problem-solving process, it's better to work on one step at a time.

If a couple of WAV files are needed, simply put a few chords into BIAB or RB (say, 8 bars), generate the backing and save it as a WAV. Copy or move the generated WAV to the C:\Songs folder.

3. Try loading a WAV from C:\Songs into ACW.

4. If #2 above doesn't work, locate INPUT.TXT and OUTPUT.TXT in the \bb directory and rename them to INPUT.TXT.OLD and OUTPUT.TXT.OLD - this will force ACW to create new versions of these files.

5. Check C:\Songs and if TEMPMAIN.WAV and/or TEMPMAIN.BT1 are present, rename them to TEMPMAIN.WAV.OLD and TEMPMAIN.BT1.OLD. My experience is that it's always better to rename files rather than to delete them. By keeping the new name similar to the original name, it makes finding the files easier if they need restoring or deleting.

6. Try loading a WAV file from C:\Songs into ACW.

Does the above solve the problem?

NOTE: Whenever starting BIAB during this problem solving investigation, always right-click on the shortcut and select "Run as administrator".

Regards,
Noel

Hi Noel

I have tried what you said but it is still the same

I have had the chance to get the PG Music Support who ask me to install BIAN 2016 on an internal drive and at the root of the drive (e.g. D:/bb) instead of H:/PG Music/dd perviously)
I did the installation (only run the installer the RT remaining on the former drive H)and it finally worked but ... after restarting the Laptotp it behave the same as before

I have uninstall the program from D:/bb and remove (delete) all the files and restart the laptop

I am now trying to install the complete thing from scratch to a new Drive (Samsung SSD 500Go) in a INATECK enclosure (USB3.0) to see if there is any improvement

By Chance I did not touch the original HD I have received from PG Music whne I did purchase the BIAB 2016 UltraplusPak last December so I am moving all the files to the new drive and I will rn the installer whe done.

I want to keep the program on the External drive in order to use it with the Laptop and my Desktop to have axactly the same thing on both

Thanks
Fred

Hi Fred,

Thank you for the update. This is a most perplexing problem. It would be easy to conclude that \bb needs to be off the root directory for ACW to work properly but such a conclusion doesn't explain why ACW worked for you when you had the program in \PGMusic\bb.

I have to say that this issue leaves me baffled.

I'm glad you got it working again, though.

Regards,
Noel

Thanks Noel for your effort trying to sort my problem
I am in relation with the PG support I think I will have no other choice than starting a new install on a new drive.
I will let you know

I do not really like to do this as my insallation folder as been updated all along the year and the Install program is missing a huge amount of Styles I got all these years in the Bonus Pack therefore it is a big job to get them back to the new drive as they are all ion the root folder of BB

anyway I don't think I have the choice.
Thanks Again
Fred

PROBLEMS SOLVED
if you used an external drive you must installed BIAB AND RB in the root directory .
For example D:\bb

Thanks for adding that extra information ejrene.

Glad you got it solved.

• my latest song : That's What I Believe

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick correction on that post from ejrene. On his system Band-in-a-Box was installed on an external drive with multiple volumes in the directory J:\PG Music\BB. I tried all the methods suggested by Noel (great posts by the way) to no avail, so I then tried installing just the Band-in-a-Box program to his C drive. On the C drive the Audio Chord Wizard was able to run correctly. This seems to suggest a permissions issue on the external hard drive that running as administrator can't fix. My guess would be something to do with drive ownership but that's a bit beyond my expertise. I suggested that as a solution he could either look into the permissions over that drive or just go ahead and run Band-in-a-Box from the C drive as there was more than adequate drive space to support a full install.

If anyone else runs into the same issue a fresh installation of just the Band-in-a-Box program would be a great thing to try as it would essentially cover all the other steps at once.

Thanks for clarifying, may be handy to know in the future..

Kallum,

Thanks for the update..... very useful.

So for both Saxfred and ejrene, the set-up was very similar in that \bb was one step further removed from the root directory (than the default BIAB installation), both lost ACW functionality and re-installing the program to x:\bb solved the problem.

That's bound to come in useful one day.

A thought that just occurred to me for the development team is to check to see whether the temporary files are being written and read to/from the same folder. For example: what if the programming writes the temp files to the correct path (e.g. h:\PGMusic\bb) but reads from an anticipated, and incorrect, path of h:\bb?

Thanks again for taking time to update the thread.

Regards,
Noel

Hi Noel,

I just dragged my BB folder into another folder on an external drive, and the Audio Chord Wizard still works fine. In Errol's case, the issue appears to have to do with permissions issues on the drive itself, and installing to the C drive fixed it.

Lots of customers install Band-in-a-Box to subfolders on external drives, and haven't run into this problem, so at this point the folder issue could simply be a coincidence. I'll keep an eye out for this in the future though.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Thanks for testing it, Kent.

Mine was install as follow
H:/PG Music/bb
so not exactly the root but this as been like this for years without any issue (I think Since 2014 version) so why is it not working anymore this way?

Many thanks to all

Hi Fred,

We're really not sure what went wrong with your installation, but deleting the BB folder and reinstalling will likely fix it right away. You won't have to reinstall your old versions, just the 2016 UltraPlusPAK, 49-PAK, and Xtra Styles PAK. This should take about an hour.

If there are any songs in the BB folder, be sure to move them to a different location first.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Mine was fine also.
I am guessing, it stopped working after I upgraded to windows 10.
Did you upgrade your operating system?
Try the re-installation as suggested in this forum.