PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Not Buying Another Upgrade Until BIAB is 64 Bit.

PUMPS2 Sound "quality" involves a lot more than bit depth and compression levels

Exactly what I was saying..!

PUMPS2 When I take BIAB tracks into a DAW where I can use the full palate of tools..

Do you mean you can use 64 plug ins...?

PUMPS2..I can create a much higher impact product

For if and when you are a producing artist the radio stations would turn it to mp3...what bit rate then...?

PUMP2..In short, the sound coming out of BIAB today might sound pretty good compared to the days of tinny sounding GM softsynths. But it is an UNPOLISHED sound, clearly inferior in a world that raises the bar every year

What bar we are going back the way with recordings not tinny synths...No to the way we listen to music...android ...ipad ...cmon you know fine what im saying.


And for the same reason, I have very little use for the PGMusic realtracks. Give me great MIDI lines and I can run that through the best VST instruments out there.

PUMPS2..And for the same reason, I have very little use for the PGMusic realtracks. Give me great MIDI lines and I can run that through the best VST instruments out there.

Can you put your chords and do all those things we do in BIAB..THROUGH your VSTI out there...


PUMP2...This sounds a bit dated your own words.... Give me great MIDI lines and I can run that through the best VST instruments out there.

pipeline +1

Yea thanks Matt its like the microwave against the conventional oven. Only worse...

Take care

I mean when I want something to actually sound presentable -- something better than I would use for strictly basement practice purposes, I either pull MIDI from BIAB or else I render WAVs for EACH INSTRUMENT from BIAB and then run it into a full-blown DAW environment. And yes, these DAW environments are almost exclusively 64 bits these days -- have been for most of a decade.


I don't think you understand what I am talking about, or I am doing a very poor job of explaining it. MP3 is irrelevant. I can give you a great sounding MP3. Chances are it will be 320 kb/sec. I don't often use anything less these days, and increasingly people are using FLAC, which has no bit loss at all. The losses over the radio waves are far greater than any fidelity loss from MP3 at those bitrates.

Nonetheless. I can take a file coming directly out of BIAB and put it into MP3 @ 320. And I can take that same material through a DAW and mastering tools, also ending up in MP3 @ 320. It will be night and day. I am not joking here. If you have not experienced that, I really recommend that you do that. I think you will find that a very educational and rewarding experience.


No, I really don't know what you are saying. I think you are confusing the speaker fidelity of the device with the content of the music file. As I said above, I can give you an MP3 that sounds great -- and I can make a big improvement on any file that comes directly out of BIAB. Yes, obviously, if I try to play that file on an Android phone, it won't sound like much. But with good headphones and/or a nice stereo Bluetooth speaker, the quality will be evident.


Yes. I can generate MIDI from BIAB and run it into a DAW, then render it with VSTis. I would far prefer to use Addictive Drums, for example, than any of the drum audio that comes out of BIAB, because I can control that sound to an gnat's eyelash. If you have not worked with these tools, you should try it.

Or I can render each instrument in BIAB and move each instrument's WAV file to the DAW. I do both techniques routinely. I would rather use MIDI because then it is easy to align the bars and beats in the DAW, which is useful for many things, such as synchronizing a delay each to the beat of the music.

In addition, I often take MIDI from BIAB into a notation program -- not to notate the MIDI, but to include a rhythm section bed in an arrangement, for example. This is why I say the MIDI output is far more useful to me than the RealTracks.

I think the fundamental issue is that BIAB started as a practice tool. It gradually evolved to something higher quality, but the authors and majority of the user base were comfortable with the walled garden. During that same time, we have seen an explosion of tools that really do work together, and BIAB does its best to not play nice. There is a certain percent of the BIAB user base that is very much committed to this broader music technology world and finds PGMusic's insular approach to be out of line with what is happening in the broader space. It is a shame that PGMusic looks at it this way because there really is no reason why they cannot excel in both market segments.

Pumps2 - I use MIDI for the same reasons as you.

I think there is a great misunderstanding when it comes to MIDI. Some think all MIDI sounds like the inexpensive GM sound source that comes with BiaB. Some find it to hard to work with while I find it much easier to work with than audio. But on the down side good sounding MIDI sources has an extra cost factor and MIDI has another learning curve.

99% of my work involves MIDI. The other 1% is RTs that I use for other peoples songs.

YMMV

+1 Same here

TBH, I reckon a lot of people should listen to a lot of the real tracks in isolation to hear just how clumsy a lot of the recordings are. Metronomes in the background, chair noises, audio artifacts,human noises etc can all be heard. Of course when in among other tracks (especially drums) these are not really audible, but when trying to use guitar tracks in isolation for simple piano/guitar tunes it can be annoying.

I only write this to suggest that there are far more important things (including incorrect chord generation - maj for min, min for maj etc-, real 6/8 RT instrument tracks, proper compound time chord sheets and so on and so forth, that need to be done before we worry about getting 64 bit. For the record I too think the code should have gone 64 bit ages ago and bridged 32 bit plugs (not bridge 64bit plugs to 32bit OS) to run. Which is the way pretty much most modern audio software does things.

+1 for me also

Thanks MJames for starting this thread, over 45,000 views, correct me if I'm wrong but I have not seen another topic in the forum ever with this much interest.

Pretty sure Our forum member Don Gaynor has the record which I believe exceeded 1,000,000 before it was taken down.

What was the topic about ? "before it was taken down." Free Po#n ???

Jokes, jokes and more jokes. One or two of them was actually funny.

Jokes from the Internet, otherwise known as jokes taken from copyrighted sources with no attribution.

this thread isn't isn't even close - and less useful

There's a lot of Reaper users 32 and 64 but they don't fight, I wonder why ?
There is even a Linux version coming. That guy that made WinAmp must be crazy.

REAPER is just fantastic programming. Using 64-bit version of REAPER you can load 32-bit vsts without any issue. I think it works the other way round too loading 64-bit vsts into the 32-bit version although I can't see many people doing that. I have loads of 32-bit vsts operating just fine in REAPER 64-bit. I don't see the big concern about BIAB needing to be 64-bit as I don't view it as a DAW. I tend to use it to output the song backings and drum parts which I then load into REAPER and work on further.

I don't think we fight I think we have:

One group that doesn't care or need 64-bit BIAB and this makes the 64-bit group distraught for some reason.

My assumption is; if I purchase the audiofile edition of BIAB it uses .WAV files for RealTracks instead of the claimed lossless .WMA files in the budget version that I can afford. My assumption is also a much higher quality end result, uh, dependent on the user, of course. Perhaps sound quality-wise I would have no desire for 64 bit version. But, only for compatibility issues.

There have been many views expressed on this subject and it is fair to say that most have some merit
I have been with Biab since the floppy stage and thought at the time that is was the "LAST WORD"
Since then it has improved rapidly year by year astonishing me with the advances made meaning we can ENJOY our music with near studio like results
PG Music and its staff love music and also throughout the years have made good business decisions and re-invested their profits in to making bb the force it is today
Everyone has the right to buy or not to buy but should acknowledge that PG Music is one of if not the best companies to deal with and I have always found them to be highly responsive - courteous and approachable right up to Peter himself
Whether as a former beta tester or a regular user my suggestions/problems have always been dealt with promptly - efficiently with a resolution
PG Music, is at the end of the day, a business and I trust them to progress this wonderful program forward to the benefit of the company and us the user knowing that suggestions we make will be listened to and acted upon where appropriate
I am a better musician because of BiaB and the PLEASURE it gives me in music terms keeps the technology part in its rightful place