PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist My thoughts regarding the future

"The future of PG Music is the DAW Plugin "

Over time the DAW plugin will draw in traditional DAW users including professional studios and audio/video production houses. The DAW plugin will develop into a plugin that does not have to rely on background tasks and helper apps. The plugin will continue to have a limited feature set as compared to the Band-in-a-Box program. The DAW plugin will continue to be part of the Band-in-a-Box packages.
This is because it needs PG Music content to be very useful

Rob, BIAB is NOT a DAW. Never has been, never will be.

The way of the future, as I see it, is to better develop BIAB as a plug-in, teaming up with Cakewalk by BandLab, Presonus Studio One and Reaper, maybe adding/developing features exclusive to each one's workflows of those three.

Presonus' Studio One would make more sense, as they already have the "Chord Track" feature, which could be developed further to blend with BIAB's Real Track and Styles features, turning it into the most advanced DAW/Composing/Songwriting combo on the market, in which BIAB VST could be offered as an paying add-on for the Prime (free) version, the Artist (limited)version and the Pro (full-fledged) version, making it compatible with their new add-on business model.

The issue with "working seamlessly with all DAWs" is each DAW has it's own method for communicating with plugins. So a simple goal reveals a complex issue.

An even larger issue is PG Music has not clearly defined the plugin set of features. What capability does PG Music expect the plugin to deliver? What does agreeing with the Band-in-a-Box Lite nickname mean in terms of PG Music expectations and the plugin feature set?

Once the plugin feature set is defined, what is required to work seamlessly becomes much clearer.

In the world of data and voice communications they standardised a model for how the different protocols fit together. For example, how one Ethernet card speaks to another. They did not say how the card should be made but how the signal enters the card and how it must leave.

I thought that is what the VST implementation was about. If a plugin uses the term VST it should comply to a set of rules. DAWs should also comply if they are “VST Compliant”. Maybe a Standards organisation is required in a similar vein to the IEEE lot that look after Electronic Communications. That way one can be sure if the have a VST it will work in your DAW.

My thoughts
Tony

However many programs, including Band-in-a-Box, do not support the use of VST3 since there are so many VST2 effects and developers continue to release new VST2 effects.

Hi Peter,

Let me quickly explain where I see the parallels and the integration potential for BIAB using ARA2.

Also the Melodyne plugin has to analyze the input coming from the DAW. It does so when applying the plugin to an existing audio track. The Melodyne plugin takes the song tempo from the DAW and analyzes the audio file for the played notes. After that it seems to share the file with the DAW. Meaning that all changes done within the plugin are directly available for playback and further effect processing in the DAW.

The main difference between BIAB and Melodyne is, that BIAB creates tracks itself, whereas Melodyne just uses existing ones. But that shouldn't be a big problem.
In case of the BIAB plugin, it would be necessary to do some assignment between one of the BIAB tracks and the DAW track, likely using the audio track in BIAB as a start. The full tempo map could come from the DAW, like in Melodyne. If not using your ACW function as equivalent to what Melodyne does, a chordsheet import could also be an option.

Within the Melodyne plugin, I can switch between the tracks or work on several tracks in parallel. That's pretty similar to what happens within the BIAB plugin already. But with BIAB I currently don't have the separate tracks in my DAW. I have to import them one by one, every time I make a change in BIAB. Creating a track in the DAW first, assigning the BIAB plugin and sharing the respective track in BiAB would be a more natural workflow.

With Melodyne, many DAWs offer an audio to Midi conversion, creating a new separate midi track in the DAW on demand. In case of BIAB, the equivalent would probably be to create and assign a Midi Super track to the new DAW track.

The good thing about ARA2 is, that all major DAWs I know already support it. According to the time it took to get there, it must have been quite some effort for the DAW providers to adapt such a standard. So it should be in their interest to make most out of it and to re-use it whereever possible.
What I don't know though, is the policy and willingness of Celemony to share this standard with other products. But if you are interested you should be able to find out. At the end of the day it might be a win/win situation for both companies and definitely for the customers.

Cheers
Roland

Can I just add my support to adding ARA support. first into the BIAB plugin - so Cubase and use and edit BIAB songs in the BB Plugin

but... also - now that the BIAB 2024 version of standalone is looking more like a DAW with the new tracks views - also to consider ARA support INSIDE BIAB standalone! - this is - for me - specifically - to be able to host the AI vocalist Synthesiser V. inside BIAB standalone - in ARA mode! this would allow one to create and edit AI vocalist tracks as if they were audio/MIDI tracks - and would be so powerful - say as a song demo feature before - say hiring a pro vocalist or submitting a song to a band/publisher etc.

ARA Baby!