As time allows I have been going thru all the styles, trying out rests, pushes, etc, and am finding some disappointing things...
1. A lot of the distorted guitars have VERY uneven timber when switching chords. For example, RT is going along cranking out a nice, fat sounding A, and then when it goes to E it gets Thin & Wimpy.
2. On a lot of newer styles, when I want to do a ^^, the pushes switch to Mono.
There are other disappointments that I am running across, and as time allows I will give examples. But compared to how all the older tracks were even sounding across the entire track, no matter what chord or extensions that were used, it makes creating a full & complete backing track difficult.
Has anyone else ran across this? One of the styles that has these problems if I remember right is RealTracks Heavy Metal Trio. Pan the guitar to one side & then do some pushes. I don't have Internet at home, and here where I have access I don't have BiaB, so I can not be 100% sure of the RT title, but I AM sure it was a heavy metal trio style.
I will start writing these down in the future, so it can get resolved.....I hope!
i5 3.20GHz, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD OS, 12tb HDD, 4gb gForce vid card, 32" monitor, Audient id44, Win10 x64, BiaB/RB 2023, Reaper 6,IK Multimedia Total Studio 3.5 MAX, Waves 10
This might not be the answer you want, but..... when I audition a style and it doesn't fit the job or just doesn't sound good, I look for something else or some other way to accomplish the job.
Quite often, I find I have to think out of the box to get things done like I want. That's where a good DAW and editing comes in handy.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
VideoTrack, one of them might be it....I will have to check when I get home.
Guitarhacker, I do the same, but that is not the point of my post. The point is that the ORIGINAL tracks are flawed, there are artifacts,etc in the product.
Can it be worked around? Yes!
SHOULD I have to work around? IMHO, not really. There is a reasonable expectation that all the files will "play nice" with each other be correct in timber, tone, pitch, etc.
Is it bad enough to ruin my experience with BiaB / PGMusic to the point of not buying any products again? No, not in the least!
I just thought 2 things as I ran across these problems...
1. Maybe I got a bum copy. It DOES happen, no problem, I know PGMusic would make it right.
2. If this is happenings to other folks, then maybe we have found a bug / glitch / "a file that slipped thru" that can be fixed in a future update.
And this is why I love Reaper, I have never used a DAW with such an easy way to edit files. I try a few others every now & then to edit a sax solo, or a bass line, etc to work with my track, but I just feel Reaper is quicker AND more logical to me 'lil 'ol mind....
Thanks for taking the time to reply folks, it is appreciated!
i5 3.20GHz, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD OS, 12tb HDD, 4gb gForce vid card, 32" monitor, Audient id44, Win10 x64, BiaB/RB 2023, Reaper 6,IK Multimedia Total Studio 3.5 MAX, Waves 10
About this, "the pushes switch to Mono", that sounds like a bug that should be reported to PG Music. It might be the recorded sound sample, but it could just be a programming instruction.
Are you up to date with the March RealTracks patch? Tons of fixes were made.
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.
I know what you mean about sometimes a stray chord creeps into a generation that can interrupt the flow of the progression. Because I always take my tracks to a DAW and dress them up there, this is not something that bothers me. That said, though, if BIAB is used in a live setting, which many people do, it would be much better that the progression is kept as smooth as possible.
Program settings which are worth investigating and which might help obtain smoother chord progressions are found under "Song Settings". For those who read this and don't know what I mean, this is found by right clicking on the chord sheet and selecting "Song Settings" from the menu that pops up.
I've labelled the relevant settings on the image below.
'Force...simple arrangement' (#1) can be effective as it reduces BIAB's decision making when choosing chords.
'Ignore slash root...' (#2) can help but only applies if you have chords such as G/F# (which is saying 'G chord played with an F# bass).
'Avoid transposition...' (#2) is one that I nearly always use. Having this selected reduces BIAB's freewill and forces it to look for exact chords and not 'close' chords that are then transposed with elastique.
'Natural arrangement' (#2) is new to BIAB 2017. By selecting this option, BIAB's decision making is increased such that it looks for ways to create the best sounding chord progression.
I don't know how these options will work with the tracks you mention but they are worth experimenting with.
It could be the style itself. The reason I say that is because I don't think Metal musicians are being used to record the Metal RealTracks. I make that assumption based on I used to play hard rock and some metal and still listen to some of that music and the Metal and Heavy Rock Real Styles, in my opinion, are simply not done very well. I wonder if there just wasn't enough attention given to them. And, it's probably a very a tough genre to cover and get it right.
Hey Matt, I just updated at the start of the month, but after you mentioned that I went back and seen that there was a new update. This update fixed the problem of the shots-holds, but not the audio problem.
I brought an example over, but the whole flash drive got corrupted somehow, including a few full tunes I had to upload (it REALLY sucks not having net at home!) I will use my potable HDD next week....
I think I am not making myself clear on the problem....
It is not a styles issue, or a chord issue, it is an AUDIO issue. All you guitar players, get a sound you are happy with and record a 12 bar blues. Now record it again, turning up the mid's about 1/4, drop the bass 1/4, and kill any presence in your settings. Now, place this track beside your original one, and do this...
On every 4 chord, switch to the adjusted track...JUST on the 4 chord. Make sure it is volume matched. It is this type of audio glitch that I am talking about. I have heard it on mostly guitar, but the example I brought over also had a B3 doing it. I have also noticed that it is mostly on distorted - overdriven sounds that do NOT use Amplitube for effects.
I WILL get an example to post by next weekend, and I DO appreciated all the suggestions & help, you folks rock!
i5 3.20GHz, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD OS, 12tb HDD, 4gb gForce vid card, 32" monitor, Audient id44, Win10 x64, BiaB/RB 2023, Reaper 6,IK Multimedia Total Studio 3.5 MAX, Waves 10
))) 1. A lot of the distorted guitars have VERY uneven timber when switching chords. For example, RT is going along cranking out a nice, fat sounding A, and then when it goes to E it gets Thin & Wimpy.
That heavy metal guitar issue is solved by using the avoid transpositions checkbox as Noel has illustrated. This assumes you are in a guitar key to begin with like E,A,G,D,C. If not, Another approach is to use the DI direct input guitar version and then apply the distortion via amplitude or another guitar amp simulator in biab or your DAW.
Thanks for the info Mr. Gannon, but it is just not the metal that is doing it, standard rock, etc also has a couple. I will make it a priority to get examples up next weekend.
I tried to load BiaB on this system where I have net access, but this laptop just don't like it for some reason even tho it's specs are well above what is needed.
Thanks Again everyone for the ideas & help.
i5 3.20GHz, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD OS, 12tb HDD, 4gb gForce vid card, 32" monitor, Audient id44, Win10 x64, BiaB/RB 2023, Reaper 6,IK Multimedia Total Studio 3.5 MAX, Waves 10
Try having Band-in-a-Box build the complete song file prior to begin playing the song file.
You can change the program's default behavior by selecting "Options", "RealTracks" (or Ctrl-E) and removing the check marks from "Speed up generation of RealTracks" and "High Quality Tempo/Pitch Stretching". See screenshot below.
Is the "High Quality Tempo/Pitch Stretching" just for the preview and not affecting the rendered tracks? If checking this box means a higher quality render, then I would want it checked before rendering, so I wanted to ask to make sure.
Also, where is this DI choice located? (I happen to be on a Mac but just wanted the thereabouts as I haven't found it yet). Thank you!
Is the "High Quality Tempo/Pitch Stretching" just for the preview and not affecting the rendered tracks? If checking this box means a higher quality render, then I would want it checked before rendering, so I wanted to ask to make sure.
It affects everything when set.
Also, where is this DI choice located? (I happen to be on a Mac but just wanted the thereabouts as I haven't found it yet). Thank you!
di choice is a checkbox in the RealTracks picker. When you select a RealTracks that has DI available, you can select the checkbox to force it to generate a DI version (no effects, just raw guitar input)
OK, I ran across another example of what I was trying to describe. Give the following example a listen-to and pay attention to the following areas of the time line...
The clip is DI rendered and at it's native tempo, from a song I was playing around with, which utilized the following RealTrack...
Dreamy Pop Electric Guitar RealTracks Demo BBGuitar_Real 1529 Guitar, Electric, Rhythm PopPowerBrightA-B Ev 120_SingleRender_DragDrop
The following track that was used in the same song was also exhibiting the same problem, but not to the extent of the example....
Dreamy Pop Electric Guitar RealTracks Demo BBGuitar_Real 2752 Guitar, Electric, Rhythm RockHeavyShuffleChopMurray Sw 120_SingleRender_DragDrop
It sounds like a phase problem, or a mic has been kicked, etc....but it is NOT about chord voicing's, or timing, etc. This is plainly an audio problem within the raw track recording itself that IS noticeable during mixing, or listening to the full song.
I hope this helps!
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Hi bass333 and welcome. Every once in awhile we users find something like this, and it's most often some mislinked file (among the thousands of RealTracks with tens of thousands of files). We report it and it gets fixed in a subsequent release, usually the next one right away.
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.
Yes, like Matt mentioned above, don't put too much gravity on this. There's a big team of very dedicated users who all work cooperatively to resolve issues. It will get sorted out.
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About this, "the pushes switch to Mono", that sounds like a bug that should be reported to PG Music. It might be the recorded sound sample, but it could just be a programming instruction. A re you up to date with the March RealTracks patch? Tons of fixes were made.
Some differing RTs i noticed also jump to the same old "hold" files, sometimes really noticeable. Just reported another RT, 2675, with PG that doesn't cope right in an arrangement, when set to half-time. A quite often needed feature IMO on styles above 140 BPM when you import a RT with a lower BPM count. If you set one bar to 2/4 count, and then back to 4/4 after it this RT one (or all?) skips a whole measure. Annoying ... -F
I am sure that the issues WILL get fixed, PGMusic has always been on the ball once a problem is pointed out.
The fix I installed a few weeks back seemed to to fix a majority of the problems that made me start this thread, so it is only a matter of time. What we as users need to do is when we find a problem, try to grab as much info as possible to give the crew.
Tho I am not glad I found this example, I AM glad that I can post a real audio demo of that problem....it is hard to describe sound in words on a forum! LOL!
i5 3.20GHz, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD OS, 12tb HDD, 4gb gForce vid card, 32" monitor, Audient id44, Win10 x64, BiaB/RB 2023, Reaper 6,IK Multimedia Total Studio 3.5 MAX, Waves 10
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There is a reasonable expectation that all the files will "play nice" with each other be correct in timber, tone, pitch, etc. 
(it REALLY sucks not having net at home!) I will use my potable HDD next week....
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