PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist Suggestion: Selective Re-Generating

"Ram has very little to do with the time it takes to render/play composition because of re-indexing. Horrible approach...

If they were kept/worked in memory it would take much, much less time."




As one who never had a doubt, I already knew this, I'll skip ahead to what I think is the issue being overlooked. With the focus of this thread being on what the computer is doing, most of the comments say nothing about what BIAB is doing. It has been noted that the amount of ram is not essential which lead some to have concern about rendering time.

What some think is a "Horrible approach" is to me a brilliant design feature that brings the magic of quality, studio grade audio to many students, songwriters, producers, teachers and hobbyists that have limited resources so they can't have the latest $5,000 CPU running Protools highest level pro version and mixing to an SSL console. However, they may have the audio technical skill to write, create, arrange, produce and perform a BIAB song on an XP machine with a $20 Behringer interface or worse -- a usb Snowball Mic -- to create a quality production that is indistinguishable from any other song published in the Users Showcase. To me, that alone is reason enough to forego irrelevant and faster rendering.

BIAB technology is about creating audio and not about replacing Protools on your machine. If you think RealBand is useless, you probably need to spend some time over on the Mac forum. Many there would love to have it. Because you may not can get the results you want from RealBand doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means you can't do it. Even with its relatively slow rendering, you can create a BIAB song much faster, with less steps, than you can in a DAW.

Let's do a real life rendering comparison, for time and money.

1. Joe Gilder, Home Studio Recording website and YouTube

Joe is a Nashville singer/songwriter and session musician that has a popular YouTube presence for home recording and also creates tutorials for Presonus. Joe and four other Nashville session musicians also provide a demo service. Approximately once a month they get together at one of the players home studio and over the course of the day create 5-9 demos they've contracted to complete for clients. The client submits an MP3 and either a phone conversation or skype call to describe their vision for their completed demo. Once agreement is reached on the demo structure and general arrangement, Gilder's group offers a basic package of 5 instruments, Bass, Piano, Drums, rhythm guitar and lead guitar for $550. Does their package of 5 instruments sound familiar? Next, one of the group charts the song and they discuss and decide on the final arrangement. Then they record the song (it usually gets done in one take but sometimes they have to overdub mistakes. Joe states recording is usually done in 10-12 minutes.) Once all the tracks are properly recorded, WAV files of each track are dropboxed to the client for the client to mix/master in their own DAW.

That's a real scenario and we see that from the time the client submits his MP3, it may take up to 3 1/2 weeks or more to get their WAV tracks. If they decide to add additional instruments, there is an additional cost in time and money. If they want to audition additional instruments or split solo parts between instruments, there is additional cost in time and money.

2. Same Recording done in BIAB

In this story, the client is your next door neighbor. He comes to you with an MP3 Saturday night about six. After the third beer he's convinced you to create and arrange a BIAB demo for his song.

To chart his MP3 song to BIAB, you play the MP3 through the ACW (Audio Chord Wizard) With a few chord corrections, you have the BIAB chord chart completed, Part markers placed, the correct key signature and the correct tempo and time signature. You spend about 10 minutes with your neighbor in the StylePicker selecting a suitable style and set of instruments. You replace one RealTrack guitar with a selection you both like better and you decide on a lead soloist.
Using F5, you create your arrangement in about another 10 minutes. You generate the song and your neighbor is so excited with his demo he heads out to the convenience store to get you a 12 pack while you print his song to CD. If you want to experiment with auditioning other soloist instruments, you can do dozens before you and your neighbor consume the 12 pack.

To me, this sort of displaces the aggravation of a 25 second render.... It doesn't matter how many times you render before you are satisfied. A track will render before you can set up and complete a live punch in.


Another thing when one's focus is directed to only the single source of what the computer is doing and not what BIab is or can do, is it eliminates many, many analog recording techniques available for use in BIAB to accomplish and obtain results that some have spent thousands of dollars on additional software unaware that BIAB can do the same without ever leaving the program.

I'm probably alone with my thoughts here, but I'm not feeling the benefits of the computer architecture that I've seen in the thread.