142. I don't hear the RealDrums playing, or the RealDrums are too loud/soft. How do I tell if a style is using RealDrums?

Look at the instrument panel on the main Band-in-a-Box® screen (Combo, Bass, Piano...). If 'Drums' is green, that means that RealDrums are currently being used. If it is white (or yellow during playback), that means that MIDI drums are being used.

There are many styles that have been pre-programmed ("hard-coded") to use RealDrums. You can tell the difference between Styles with RealDrums, and Styles with MIDI Drums by looking at the style name. Styles with RealDrums have a minus sign in front of the style name. For example "STYLE.STY" would be a MIDI drum style and "-STYLE.STY" would be a Style with RealDrums. There is a "Styles with RealDrums" category in the StylePicker window, and the latest styles sets have RealDrums equivalents of the MIDI drum styles. MIDI drums can also be substituted for RealDrums in ANY style, based on the settings in Opt. | Preferences | RealDrums.

If you find that ALL of the RealDrums are too loud or soft relative to the other instruments, open the RealDrums Settings dialog (Opt. | Preferences | RealDrums ) and use the Global Volume Adjust setting. It is also possible to adjust the volume of RealDrums in a specific style by using the 'MISC Style Settings' dialog in the StyleMaker. To adjust the volume of the RealDrums in a specific song, just use the Drum volume spin control on the main screen and save your song using File | Save Song with Patches.

If RealDrums are not working at all ('Drums' is not green), make sure that RealDrums are enabled in the RealDrums Settings dialog. If that setting is enabled, and you are getting 'Cannot load drum style' messages, you probably haven't installed the RealDrums Sets. They are a separate install from the main Band-in-a-Box® program (unless you installed from DVD). Also, if you installed the RealDrums somewhere other than your Band-in-a-Box® folder (bb), make sure to choose this 'custom' location in the RealDrums dialog. If you want to hear RealDrums more often when playing any styles (i.e. you want MIDI drums auto-substituted for RealDrums), decrease the setting 'Substitute...' at the top of the RealDrums Settings window.

If RealDrums are working ('Drums' is green) but you still don't hear them, it is probably a driver setup issue. This suggests that you are using a hardware or stand-alone software MIDI driver for playback, rather than a DXi or VSTi plugin synth. We can assume this because if you WERE using a plugin synth, all sound would be routed to the same audio driver, set in Opt. | MIDI/Audio Driver Setup | [Audio Settings], so it would be unlikely that you would hear some tracks and not others. Check your audio driver setup there, and also check the Windows Volume Control settings to make sure that the wave volume is turned up and not muted.

There is also a small possibility that a DX audio effect Plugin you have selected for the Audio track is contributing to the problem (Audio Track plugins are applied to the RealDrums track in addition to the audio track). To check this:

  1. Open the DirectX Plugins window and select the 'Audio Track' tab.
  2. Set all of the pull-down menus to 'none' to disable all audio track DX plugins.
  3. Try playing a song with RealDrums.

Note that while you can use any MIDI driver with RealDrums, we recommend using a DXi or VSTi softsynth such as the VSC-DXi or ForteDXi. If you are currently using the GS Wavetable or VSC3 for MIDI output, consider using the Coyote Wavetable (included with Band-in-a-Box®) instead.

If you would like to use a hardware synth (for example, the soundfont synth on your SoundBlaster card), you need to remember that while your MIDI tracks will be playing through the synth, the RealDrums track is audio and will be played through the audio driver you have selected in Opt. | MIDI/Audio Driver Setup | [Audio Settings] | [Drivers].


Alyssa - PG Music