PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist 64-bit Version of Biab

+1

A must for Mac useres.

A BIG +1

Warnings messages from Apple now appearing when I load it up.

+1 from me too.

Surely it's just a matter of time?

We can only guess...

+1 to this please.

When I upgrade BiaB/RB, I'm usually not all that interested in "50+ new features" etc.
I'm more likely to upgrade for new & better Real Tracks and Styles, including midi.

Why not introduce a new 64-bit BiaB/RB for those who need and prefer 64-bit,
while continuing to keep the 32-bit version available with minimal updating.

Annual upgrades would make all new features and extras mainly available for 64-bit,
with minimal upgrades (if any) for 32-bit along with whatever extras are suitable.

SECONDED.


Given that one of the most commonly used plugins is likely to be NI KONTAKT - and given this plugin now - on OSX

ONLY works in 64 Bit mode.


and given that - as clever as JBridge is.... this is a giant - foul-smelling - KLUDGE...


given all this...

please PG - focus your efforts on putting out a 64 bit version of BIAB.


Maybe this requires moving to a new underlying cross-platform framework - and finally biting the bullet on dumping and rewriting all the legacy code in PASCAL from AEONS ago...

and maybe it would mean actually holding off from making a yearly release - just to concentrate on refactoring the entire codebase to something suited to 2020+ - so that next year upgrade is merely the same as 2018 but with lots more real tracks - whatever. I think a lot of your user base would understand having a hiatus in product updates - if they knew that the future of BIAB would be a lot better. Modernised - etc etc..

And if there just isn't a sufficient income coming in from yearly upgrades to justify putting in a huge amount of man-hours in order to totally refactor and rewrite the code-base to make BIAB 100% cross-platform and future proof
......
.....

.... then maybe its seriously time to consider selling PG music or its BIAB I.P. to another company with the financial resources to actually fund a proper major rewrite of BIAB.

Some company like... maybe.... YAMAHA ?

Their track record in successful takeovers of respected music software companies and pro-audio companies like Line 6 - speaks for itself.

Just saying;

After all
....... Imagine if there was seamless connectivity and interoperability between CUBASE and BIAB !

?? !!!


IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES !!! !!!

64Bit!


I just do not get it, why a company with such large following has such @%&&% (not very good) designers / programmers? BIAB feels to me like fine, 50 year old cognac (real tracks) that is served in rusty, banged cup.

How can you do a programming like that and look in the mirror with straight face? I feel that either they are deaf or simply leaching to the ones who do not have much choice.

I think they will switch to 64 bit in the next 2-3 years, simply because they will not have choice if they want to survive. And I am sure they want our money.

All they need is 1 smart engineer/designer with long flexible whip to supervise the ones who are just tinkering with ancient mummified code.

Programming and design is 10+ years behind schedule.

P.S. Dear artists that work for PG. Your contribution is just amazing to say the least. Stay alive and well! The rap above meant for people who supervise/ in charge of programming.

Not to mention the 8.3 naming convention for styles. 8.3 went out when they stop making Windows 3.11

NO ! that's not me under an alias
It might be hard to hear but he does speak the truth.

You should have stuck with your first thought, because it's a true statement of the facts. The day you present to us a program of similar functionality, is the day your opinion might make any sense to those of us that do understand what it takes to program it.

I can also be critical of the program, but being critical of people you know nothing about is being rather crass. I'm not saying that you don't bring up some good points, but it obviously is not that cut and dry for them.

Who even knows what the legacy code even looks like, but it's no doubt that they need to drastically update the core. I suppose you never heard the saying "You catch more flies with honey?"

"Biab is great for Auto Accompaniment, learning and songwriting, as that's what it was designed for, but for any professional use it needs to step up as not everyone uses it just for it's intended purpose. "


That's an interesting point but not a limitation I've encountered. I've encountered Biab limitations where folks have concerns with the final tracks created in BIAB but no concern has been from the way the program itself can manipulate audio.

I have had private conversations with three 'gurus' of home recording web based tutorial channels discussing why they haven't embraced BIAB to improve the quality of tracks the program would bring to countless 'average Joe's and Jill's' they target to teach recording and mixing skills to in cases where those folks don't have the skills or access to top quality musicians to provide tracks for instruments they can't or don't want to play. Cases where maybe they're unable to afford to hire a musician on an ongoing basis. Biab tracks can fill all of those needs.

However, all three rejected using Biab but for reasons that seemed to me to rely on the egotistical idea that a Biab track is cheating and not a real player. Another issue they say is Biab tracks are generic and predictable and the final generation of a track at 44.1/16 is not high enough quality audio to use in a home recording.

None of the three have reviewed and tested the program themselves and each responded generically with what I consider common misconceptions non users usually describe as weakness of the program. In my opinion, given the chance, I could quickly and easily disprove these myths because these experts have no idea what Biab can actually produce.

I can produce a 32 bar X 3 chorus Biab song in a single generation that is so complex that statistically even Dr. Gannon, Andrew, Kent, Deryk, or Ember can replicate it. The available audio, instruments, programming, and manipulatable parameters are so many to make the odds of anything but the most simple programmed generic chord chart unique beyond the point of recognizability as well as the Biab algorithm choosing the same audio phrases between two or more people creating the same song a near impossibility. Multiple generations would amplify those impossible odds. All this can be accomplished within the Biab program without the aid of any other outside program.

Saying all that, I'm interested in learning some of the unintended purposes you may use Biab tracks that can't be generated in it's current form. 44.1/16 is an obvious limitation but I'd bet if either of these three experts and most if not all of the average Joe's and Jill's had the opportunity to have Joe BonaMassa provide a track to one of their recordings but the track could only be in 320 MP3 format, they would use the track with that limitation....

CoolBreeze...

about the people "who I do not know nothing about"
I do not have to know them to see what they do.

For example if lets say you have a plumbing leak and you hire a plumber. While you are not at home your spouse lets plumber in, he puts a roll of duct tape over the leak. Does it mean he "fixed" it? You can say that... Is he a good plumber?

I think function wise BIAB is a fantastic program, but how those functions are implemented into design is just a nohow.

They should learn from Cakewalk, which I love dearly. I stopped using it some years ago because I felt it is not progressing with time. But as soon as they got right people like Noel, program became robust, clean, user friendly, not even to mention first "touch able" DAW (amazing track navigation) for Windows I jumped right in. With recent development with Cakewalk, I believe I will stick to it for years to come. I know they, Cakewalk and BIAB are completely different animals, but I think it is understandable the point I am trying to make.

To put it in another words, I believe that BIAB should not be frugal and hard headed and hire somebody who has vision and listens to user base and redo this unique program right way.

To me biggest drawbacks:
1)Not 64 bit
2)Slow rendering
3)Not intuitive arranger (song structure building especially, a big one for me)
4)Not dock-able /scale-able interface. I wish I can arrange windows the way I want it, and to show on the screen what I want. Cakewalk done a fantastic job on this. You can customize what you want on the screen and where you want it with great ease.

There is one more point we have to consider:

RealTracks may be still a cool sounding thing but this is a technology that is 10 years old. The next big thing™ IMHO will be that the progress machine learning made in the last time will make it`s way into music generating tools.

So it is really questionable whether it makes much sense to rewrite such an obviously mess of a code base.

[quote=Rustyspoon#]64Bit!


I just do not get it, why a company with such large following has such @%&&% (not very good) designers / programmers? BIAB feels to me like fine, 50 year old cognac (real tracks) that is served in rusty, banged cup.

How can you do a programming like that and look in the mirror with straight face? I feel that either they are deaf or simply leaching to the ones who do not have much choice.

I think they will switch to 64 bit in the next 2-3 years, simply because they will not have choice if they want to survive. And I am sure they want our money.

All they need is 1 smart engineer/designer with long flexible whip to supervise the ones who are just tinkering with ancient mummified code.

Programming and design is 10+ years behind schedule.

P.S. Dear artists that work for PG. Your contribution is just amazing to say the least. Stay alive and well! The rap above meant for people who supervise/ in charge of programming. [/quote


What HE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SAID.

( with bells on )

Well I don't think 64 bit is going to happen any time soon.

I think maybe if we put ourselves in the developers shoes we might understand why.

An analogy might be,

You have been fixing up your house for years and years, you are not getting younger and feeling a bit tired. You have it finally the way you want it, and it serves the purpose, will do you for the rest of your life.

A few friends move in with you and start telling you what to do, Knock the whole place down they say, start afresh, build up from the ground. What a job, you say, I'm too tired, it would be such a massive task, in fact I like everything the way it is. I'll wait until someone with more vigour than me comes along to do it, but in the meantime I'm happy enough to let things be. Some of the friends decide to move out, not to worry you think, its still a nice house, I have plenty of other friends that are happy enough with the way it is, and you invite them in.

So there you are, that is how I view biab and whether or not it will go to 64 bit.

Though I could be entirely wrong!

Although we don't know the real reasons, this is not an impossible or overly ridiculous interpretation...