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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Does the sound card I use play a role in determining how good my Real Tracks sound? I have noticed that some tracks, particularly piano tracks, can't be stretched very much before they sound pretty bad. My latest example: I am doing an arrangement of "All of You" as a bossa. After playing around a bit on the keyboard, I decided on 110bpm. There are only 2 bossa piano Real Tracks: 1 @ 140bpm and the other @ 80bpm. Both sound quite bad at 110bpm. With the 140bpm bossa piano, I experimented with the tempo of the song. At about 136bpm, it starting sounding Ok, but it didn't really sound completely "clean" 'till about 138bpm, even though the notes for this track state that the usable range is 120-160. With the 85bpm bossa piano, I had to slow the song all the way down to 85bpm to get a "clean" sound, even though the notes on the track state that the usable range is 80-105. When I say the sound is not "clean", I keep hearing what sounds like echos or ghosts on the piano's notes as they're played. My sound card is a Realtek that is built in to the mother board. I have the audio options set to MME because I don't have any ASIO drivers. Any ideas, anyone?
Andy
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2007
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No sound card will help when you're outside the recommended range of the RTs. I've found that often even the outer range gives undesirable sounds. If you must stretch, try to stretch upwards and not downwards. Example at 125, you may find that a 110 RT sounds better than a 140. If you can get the track sounding fine at the recommended tempo, probably nothing is wrong with your soundcard. I don't think ASIO would help in your case unless you're doing some real time recording with an external instrument.
A piano has a very complex sound structure which is probably why you're having problems with it. I don't use the piano RTs because I play keys but have had luck stretching with the Acoustic bass RT.
R
Last edited by Rachael; 09/21/09 01:35 PM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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using the builtin chip is like racing the datona 500 in a prius!
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2025, Realband, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 9 32c , Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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PG Music Staff
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The soundcard wouldn't affect the stretching quality. It depends on various issues, like instrument timbre, stereo/mono (mono stretches better), pitch (low stretches better) and type of playing (percussive is better than legato playing).
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Use of a better quality soundcard would only let you hear those beat stretch anomalies more clearly...
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Kinda like when I look in the mirror wearin' glasses?
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I tried experimenting a litle more, and here is what I've found:
1. Real Track #487: Piano, Acoustic, Rythm Jazz Ballad Sw 085 sounds pretty good with bossa bass and drums.
2. Real Track #487 does not have the same stretching problem as Real Track #714: Piano, Acoustic, Rythm Bossa Ev 085. #487 sounds fine when stretched to 110bpm, but #487 sound terrible at that tempo - and virtually any tempo slower or faster than 85bpm.
I think there is something wrong with Real Track #487.
Andy
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There's nothing wrong with it, it's the nature of audio. You can only time stretch so far and like Peter said it also depends on the instrument and frequency range.
Everything in life has tradeoffs. The tradeoff here is the awesome quality of the sound of the RT's but limited tempo's for each one. The only answer is to create more tracks at more tempos and that is happening. BUT, another tradeoff: Storage. A complete library of RT's at all tempo's will probably fill up a terabyte hard drive but they're cheap enough it's worth it. At that point there will have to be some kind of filter system you can program so you're not looking at every RT you have on your system every time you want to use one.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Right now, Peter Gannon has requested our ideas for new piano and acoustic bass Real Tracks over on the Styles Wishlist forum. Here's your chance to specify exact tempos you would like, when stretching doesn't get you there. http://www.pgmusic.com/ubbthreads/showfl...ge=0#Post237826http://www.pgmusic.com/ubbthreads/showfl...ge=0#Post237825
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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My response is specifically to jazzmammal's reply:
You say it'sthe nature of audio, however, Real Track #487 stretches fine from its 085bpm tempo to 110bpm, but Real Track #714 does not. #714 sounds pretty bad at tempos as low as 90bpm. These two tracks are both acoustic piano, and actually sound very similar, except that the pianist's style of playing on #714 is latin with an even ryhthm feel, while #487 is a swing feel. Why would one stretch and not the other, unless there is something wrong with the one that won't stretch?
Andy
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Can't help you there except to say "it's audio". I've done a lot of audio editing using Adobe Audition and it has a highly regarded pitch change or time stretch algo in it and it's not as good as the one PG uses. A lot of people with more experience with this than me have commented on that. You didn't say if you have the pristine Audiophile version of the RT's. Maybe that helps. Most of us use the WMA's and those are compressed.
Just do a google search on audio time stretching and you can find plenty of technical articles about this. It's very tricky and difficult. You'll see that 5, 10 maybe 15% is about it and again it really depends on what frequency range it is. In Audition, I remember one file that I was trying to append to another file only required something like a 3% stretch and it still sounded glitchy. 3% for a 110 bpm file is usually no problem but I couldn't make it work. The track included drum cymbals and it was the high freq's that were glitching.
Someone commented in another thread that Melodyne has a superior way of doing this and maybe PG could adapt that but obviously, Melodyne would charge for the licensing if they choose to make it available at all. That's strictly a business decision, who know's what PG's thinking is on that.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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I loaded one of the two pgmusic demo songs for that Slo Latin Pno style and ran the Tempo up from the original 85-BPM for quite a ways before noting anomalies. The anomalies noted were more of the "playing" variety than being of degraded audio quality, however. Like the cat was overplaying for the tempo, which is the case after some point. Here is an audio example of what I heard at Tempo = 120-BPM, made using the BIAB Render function to Wav file and then converted to mp3 using Audacity and the LAME encoder at 128kbps: Slo_Bossa_Pno714_120-BPM.mp3 Perhaps you have a bad RealTracks file, that might occur. I would have posted a higher bitrate, but wanted something that could stream easily for most users. It doesn't really matter here, the file sounds great in the .wav format anyway. Perhaps you could do the same exact thing at your end, set the demo song to 1 chorus, then set the Tempo to 120, hit Play and then go to the Audio menu and do a render, convert to mp3 or use the Render to mp3 inside BIAB, then post it so we can hear what you're hearing, it might help sort things out? --Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Mac
Thanks for the post. Yes, the speedup from 85 to 120 sounds pretty good here. As mentioned, much of the strangeness is of the musical variety, where sped up playing sounds unrealistic.
Bass stretches real well, and the drums are recorded at lots of different tempos, so work well also.
That said, we are recording a 110 tempo bossa, since its such an important style. Then there'll be 85, 110, 140 and 190 (samba). That should do it for bossa...
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Quote:
we are recording a 110 tempo bossa, since its such an important style. Then there'll be 85, 110, 140 and 190 (samba). That should do it for bossa...
Hurray!
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Cool, that a sweet spot for a lot of tunes.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Journeyman
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I'm fairly new to Real Tracks, but I've discovered some ways of working with different tempos. I wanted a slow jazz waltz for Tenderly so I used the "expand chord duration by 2" feature in order to use the jazz Real Tracks currently available. Also, I've found that the various jazz pianos also work well with some bossa tunes at various tempos.
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THAT is how an audio engineer thinks!
Changing the tempo to halftime (or double time) to allow incorporating other realtracks is creative. May not always work due to intended styles, but it is a way to try things.
I've used this trick inside the ACW to make things work out better. Inside the ACW there is also a right-click option to half-time or double-time the tempo. Then I let it rewrite the tempo map.
This type of creative problem solving opens a lot of doors to new possibilities.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Mac's mp3 sounds fine to me. I have created the same thing on my PC, but I don't have anywhere to post it so that it could be accessed here on the forum. Any suggetions? Mac, could I e-mail it to you so that you vould post it?
Andy
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You've got a PM - Personal Message -- awaiting you Andy.
--Mac
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