PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows N/A's for most instruments in newly purchased RealTrack set

I have been using biab for years in a fairly basic way to create backing tracks. I have slowly moved over to mostly using RealTracks because they sound better.

A few days ago I purchased my first ever addon RealTrack set, #299 Rootsy Blues, for a project that I am currently working on. As far as I can tell the installation went OK but when I go into StylePicker and select just the new #299 set, all of the new styles have **N/A** along side a high percentage of the instruments and [RT n/a] is shown at the start of each style name. One of the styles _COOLEVE shows 5 instruments of which 4 are labelled ** N/A ** Understandably when any of these new styles are assigned to a song they sound pretty thin.

I have done a complete reinstall, checked all my directories, reset everything to default, rebuilt all the styles in the StylePicker and a rebuild in the RealTracks picker. I have also run a cleanup. None of this made any difference.

I chatted online with someone in online support a few days ago. Our communication was rather difficult but he suggested I had a technical problem and that I send an email with details to support. I did this but have not yet received any response other than the auto acknowledgement of my submission.

Installation has always been to default directories i.e. c:\bb\... I have looked extensively online and while the N/A problem has been raised on a number of occasions I have so far been unable to find a satisfactory solution to my problem.

It seems reasonable to me that if one buys an add-on RealTracks set it would include all the instruments required.

I am using Band-in-a-box 2019 (Mega) 64 bit with Windows 10 and latest update (build 644)

Any help with this problem would be appreciated.

wilsonts,

Welcome! Nice to have you in the forum after using Band-in-a-Box for years. Thanks for joining.

RealTracks set #299 include five RealTracks:

• Guitar, Acoustic, Rhythm BluesSlowSwingColin Sw 085
• Guitar, Acoustic, Rhythm FolkBluesSlowShuffleBrent Sw 085
• Guitar, Acoustic, Rhythm RagtimeBluesColin Sw 190
• Piano, Acoustic, Rhythm BluesStraightMike12-key Ev 085
• Piano, Acoustic, Rhythm FolkBluesSlowShuffleMike Sw 085

Verify the set # 299 RealTracks are installed by opening the RealTracks Picker window, sort on the set column and look for set 299. The RealTracks button is located immediately to the right of the Tracks label in the control bar. Note the RealTracks Picker button is the button with a Saxophone and red star. Click on the set column label to sort by set number. Click once to sort ascending and twice to reverse order.

One thing I noticed is even though set 299 has five RealTracks only four are listed with the set number. One of the piano tracks was also used to create a videotrack.

You can also check by verifying the RealTrack folders are installed under c:\bb\RealTracks. Each folder will have the same name as the RealTrack.

Thanks Jim,

Since making the original post I have been doing a lot of googling trying to solve the problem myself. The five tracks shown in the RealTracks picker are exactly as you have shown. I don't think there is a technical issue as suggested by the PG chat support guy. I probably didn't use the right jargon to describe the problem to him.

My current thinking is that the RealTrack sets only provide the instruments shown i.e. piano and guitar. The other instruments required for the style (accessed in the Style Picker) have to either exist or the ** N/A ** message is displayed on the track. In one of the new styles four out of five tracks were marked N/A. Obviously these styles don't sound great with all the missing instruments.

Possible solutions -
1) Purchase other RealTrack sets to supply the missing instruments. There are a total of 15 different missing instruments from my new #299 set. Providing these missing instruments would probably require the purchase of several other sets not to mention the time and possible errors involved in trying to figure out which sets to buy. The cost of doing this would not be much less than upgrading to the Ultra Pak which I understand contains ALL the Realtrack sets. This begs the question as to why PG Music are even selling these individual sets if they are incomplete.

2) Another solution is to replace the missing instruments with either existing RealTrack instruments or midi patches.

I have been trying to go down this second path but have run into problems. My Mega Pak version of Biab doesn't have enough suitable instruments for some of the new styles and I have also found using the style editor to be a real pain with frequent crashes.

3) The third and probably the most sensible solution is to upgrade to an Ultra Pack.

Any thoughts you have on these deliberations would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Wilson,

If you have found that BIAB is valuable for you, I encourage you to get the UltraPak. This has all Realtracks except those few that are provided in the bonus material (e.g. 49Pak). Eventually, these bonus Realtracks seem to find their way to later UltraPaks anyway.

Even though the UltraPak will give you tracks that you might not use, it certainly works out cheaper because there will be so many tracks that you will use. Also, PG Music, have a 30 day money-back guarantee and it's worth asking for your RT package that you recently bought to be credited against the UltraPak if you decide to go this route.

In 2006, I bought the MegaPak. Once I'd played around, though, I knew that it was worth getting the best I could afford. At that time, it was the UltraPak. I've never looked back since.

To keep the UltraPak updated with new Realtracks, Realdrums and MIDI Supertracks, it costs around US$100 each year -- if you buy when the Christmas sale is on. This is the PlusPak upgrade that's available for UltraPak owners each year.

At the moment, it looks like the MegaPak 2019 to UltraPak 2020 upgrade is US$279.

I hope that this information helps.

Regards,
Noel

I agree with you Noel

I think an upgrade to the 2020 UltraPak is likely to be the quickest and easiest solution and Biab is an essential part of my kit. I will contact PGMusic and negotiate with them.

Thanks for the help
Tim

WilsonTS,

Unfortunately the RealTrack set descriptions do not list styles that are included in each set. The descriptions just list which RealTracks are included in each set. So I have no way to know which styles are included in each set.

If you think about it, whatever styles are included almost have to use materials outside the set. If you look at set# 299, where are the drums or bass?

RealTracks set# 299 is part of RealPAK Jazz #14. RealPAK Jazz #14 was released with Band-in-a-Box 2018 and is priced at $79 US. RealPAK Jazz #14 includes the sixty jazz, blues, and latin genre RealTracks available in RealTrack Sets 294-300. My GUESS is the styles you received feature the sixty RealTracks included in RealPAK Jazz #14.

As Noel pointed out the least frustrating and most economical solution to getting rid of missing RealTracks is to purchase the UltraPAK.

Hi Jim

If you think about it, whatever styles are included almost have to use materials outside the set. If you look at set# 299, where are the drums or bass?

I guess the problem is that I didn't think about it enough at the time. I just assumed that you would download and install the set and automatically (in this case) get five new styles with similar characteristics to the accompanying demos on the web site.

There is a highlighted requirement message in red at the top of each set. For the #299 set it says Note: This RealTracks Set requires Band-in-a-Box® 2018 for Windows or higher. Nowhere can I see that it says anything about the fact that a set will require additional instruments that may not exist on a users current system. In my case a total of 15 instruments were missing. For the price of $US29 for a set it seemed to me reasonable to expect that the set would contain all that was needed to make it work properly and as demonstrated.

When you buy a car you expect it to come with 4 wheels and some sort of spare. If you bought a car and it was delivered with only two wheels and you were told that the other two were expensive extras that had to be purchased the dealer would be in serious legal trouble.

While it could be claimed that I didn't think enough about it, I make no pretensions to be a BIAB expert. I believe I did assess PGMusic's offer as a "reasonable and typical user of the product". It is my opinion that the way these RealTrack set products are promoted on the web site is highly misleading. At the very least there should be a prominent warning that they are incomplete and will require additional real instruments with perhaps a list of what those instruments are.

Thinking about it further, one could reasonably ask what is the purpose of offering these incomplete RealTrack sets at all ( I am assuming that other sets have the same problems).

Purchasing additional sets to provide the additional instruments appears to not be economically viable and there would also be the problem of determining in advance what other sets or instruments are required. If an upgrade provides all the sets and these individual sets don't work properly on the lower level systems, then what is the point in selling them?

I also attempted to supply missing instruments to the new styles from existing RealTrack instruments that are already on my system. The results were unsatisfactory. There simply isn't enough choice from those available from my 2019 Mega system. There is also a significant amount of skill required to select tracks that sound good when combined with others.

As an aside, I attempted to use the Style Editor to alter things like genre and description in my modified styles. I haven't attempted to use this editor for many years but found it about as user friendly as a cornered rat. It continuously crashed when I tried to edit fields and frequently failed to update fields when i tried to save them. I eventually managed to figure out how to do it but not without a lot of frustration and angst. I don't imagine many BIAB users would use this facility but it appears to me to need a major overhaul to make it more stable and work in a more intuitive way.

I think we all agree now that the easiest and really only viable way to get additional Real Styles is to upgrade to a higher level system. I have a support call lodged with PGMusic from last week on this matter to which I have yet to receive a reply. I will give them a few more days and contact them again and try and negotiate a reasonable deal.

Thanks everyone for your constructive input.

Regards
Tim

HI

I cant get my head around your problem
The set you downloaded only contains piano and guitars

RealTracks Set 299 : Rootsy Blues Guitar & Piano Video Demo
Get ready to shuffle, slide, sway, and shake with the tracks included in RealTracks Set 299: Rootsy Blues Guitar & Piano. This set includes three guitar and two piano tracks. The folk blues guitar is played by non-other than virtuoso Brent Mason, while the blues and ragtime guitar tracks are played by the renaissance man himself - Colin Linden. Add in Mike Rojas on piano and it’s a rootsy blues trio that’s hard to beat!
Note: This RealTracks Set requires Band-in-a-Box® 2018 for Windows or higher.

So what other instruments are you expecting?

Seems to me that what you want is a style that uses these realtracks
But I am a bit confused with calling them instruments and say some are missing.

Your original thoughts in post 2 about that’s what you get sounds right.
Mike

Hi Mike,

My problem is very simple. What I expected, which was based on the demos on the web site is nothing like what I got when I installed the set that I purchased. I am not a BIAB expert and it has taken me quite a while with help from others on this forum who did seem to understand what I was talking about to figure out what the problem was.

I believe my expectations were reasonable for a typical (non expert) user based on the information provided on the PGMusic web site.

You said
"Add in Mike Rojas on piano and it’s a rootsy blues trio that’s hard to beat"

Trio implies three musicians/musical instruments. With one of the new styles that I downloaded it had only one instrument- A guitar. The other four instruments in the style, Bass, Horn, Drums and Ukulele were all marked **N/A** and missing and as I pointed out in an earlier post it is not a simple matter or a workable solution, at least for me, to try and add other existing RealTrack instruments to those missing from the new styles.

All the 300 or so existing Real(No Midi) styles on my 2019 MegaPak system have all the instruments for each track. There are none that I can see with missing (**N/A**) instruments excepting these in the new #299 set styles.

It can hardly be said that the situation with this newly purchased set is normal.

Regards
Tim

Tim, I passed along your situation to the testers and developers.

Hi Matt,
Thanks very much, I appreciate it
Tim

Tim,

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm sorry my earlier response seemed that way. Actually I agree that additional information is needed about what is included in the set.

One other thing I noted is the set description lists the RealTrack instruments but does not mention which styles, or how many styles, are included. One thought PG Music might consider is to not include ANY styles with a RealTrack instrument set. Heck we don't even know if my earlier assumption is correct that the included styles use just the Realtrack instruments that are in sets 294 to 300, otherwise known as Jazz RealPAK # 14. If so then it would make sense to include the styles with the RealPAK, not the individual sets.

In my mind, the mistake was PG Music including styles that use RealTrack instruments outside of set 299. If they had not included the styles you likely would have been content to use the set # 299 RealTrack instruments with the styles you have.

One last point. PG Music offers a 30 day, no questions asked, money back guarantee.

Hi Tim
Thought it might help to see one that is working. I have BIAB2019,Ultra

In my style picker if I sort on the realtrack sets column and scroll to set 299
It shows 5 matching styles all of these work as expected and populate with the appropriate realtracks from set 299 as you can see from the green preview at the bottom.
COOLEVE style comes up with drums NA but still works ?
All the other 6 work fine.

Mike

Hi Jim,

Your earlier posts were very helpful to me. At the time I was trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

As I now see it PGMusic appear to have a significant problem with this range of add-on sets assuming that they all have the same problem as the one that I purchased and downloaded. As add-on products for Biab, they simply can't be used in any practical way and to my mind they are substantially misrepresented on the PGMusic website for what they actually are.

You said:
" If they had not included the styles you likely would have been content to use the set #299 RealTrack instruments with the styles you have."

This unfortunately is not correct. Having these extra five RealTracks on their own would be of little or no use to me or most other users. As I pointed out in a previous post, my experience is that it is no trivial task to effectively utilise stand alone RealTracks in other styles. While it can be done in a technical sense the end results leave a lot to be desired and it probably can't be done effectively, even by a suitably skilled person, with the limited supply of RealTracks instrumentalists available in the Mega Pak or a lesser package.

What I expected to get, based on the information on the PGMusic website was five new styles featuring the RealTracks shown as the leading instrumentalists, supported by suitable backing tracks. I expected these new styles, when installed on my system to be accessible in my Style picker and to work in the same way as the other 300 odd existing RealTrack styles that are a part of my standard 2019 MegaPack installation. When applied to a suitable song (i.e. chord sequence) I expected that the sound produced would be similar to its respective demo track. Nothing like this occurred. I don't believe that any of these expectations are unreasonable.

The #299 download installed 7 new styles on my computer. The demo tracks did not match those on the web site and the styles, when applied to a simple 12 bar blues chord arrangement sounded nothing like the web site demo tracks. I also noticed that all the new styles were missing a good many instruments and were marked [RT N/A]. There were 15 individual instruments in total missing from the seven new styles. None of the pre- existing RealTrack styles - Real (No MIDI)- appear to be missing instruments or are marked [RT N/A]. See the screen dump images below.

As you suggest PG Music could add a disclaimer to their web site which in effect could say that these sets do not include all the instruments required. The purchase of additional sets which in turn are then also likely to be incomplete will be required. Does doing this really make any sense however from a marketing point of view?

A second and much more sensible option in my opinion would be for PG Music to include in each and every set all the components needed to make it work properly.

A third option would be to withdraw all these add-on sets from the market.

I have been a Biab user for a very long time and have had a long and happy association with PGMusic and Biab. From memory, the first version I owned was V7. Since that time I have recommended Biab to many musician friends and many have bought it and now use it. This latest fiasco with the add-on sets creates a significant ethical problem for me. I don't want any of my friends or for that matter anybody to ever have to go down this frustrating and time wasting path that I have just travelled.

As you and others have suggested, the quickest and easiest way to resolve my own immediate problem is to request a refund for my #299 set purchase and then upgrade to an Ultra Pack. This is what I intend to do in the near future.

Regards
Tim

Tim,

The Pro and Mega packages differ from the other packages by breaking out the RealTrack instruments from the sets and assembling the individual RealTrack instruments into RealCombos or bands.

From the PG Music RealCombos webpage:

The +++ 2020 ProPAK Real Combos +++ have . The +++ 2020 MegaPAK Real Combos +++ have

Each "combo" or "band" has a style. PG Music lists the style and provides a demo audio file using the style.

PG Music lists each RealTracks included in the Pro and Mega PAKs. PG Music includes an audio file for each RealTracks instrument in solo and within a band. However they do not list which RealTracks set each RealTracks is pulled from or which combo each RealTracks is used in.

I have a close affinity for the ProPAK as that was the first package I had in the RealTracks era. It was given to me as a Christmas gift. Without carrying the weight of discovering and using all the RealTracks that were available I concentrated on learning how to use the program and the addons that were available. I still get delighted by laying out a song in "C" and then switching to other keys just because the program can do that. To me, that is the magic of Band-in-a-Box.

I'm really sorry you are not satisfied with your purchase of set # 299.

If you watch the information video you hear a demo of the included styles with the information which other RealTracks and RealDrums (!) these style requires. This goes back to the earliest videos.

Funny that someone went into the troubles creating text slides for a video but didn't put this information into the product description.

Masi

The RealTracks individual sets include .STY (style files) that use at least one RealTracks instrument from the set. They may also include RealTracks from other sets, that is definitely true. It would be very limiting and result in lower quality RealStyles if we limited the .STY files, and we have decided not to limit style making in that way. Some RealTracks Sets actually do contain an entire band that goes together, but alot don't. We will add a note about that to the website. Thanks for pointing that out.

There are various ways that you can end up with STY's in your installation that call for RealTracks that you don't have. One option is to substitute similar RealTracks that you DO have ("Find best sub"). Another is to not use those styles and set "don't show styles with N/A RealTracks" in the StylePicker.

Hi Andrew,



If I use the don't show styles with N/A RealTracks I don't get ANY styles with my new #299 add-on set. All the styles in the set are missing tracks so this makes my purchase useless if I try to use it in this way.

As already pointed out in a prior post, I already tried your other suggestion of substituting similar RealTracks with and without the "Find best sub" option. There were two problems.

In a number of cases the "Find best sub" option turned up zero examples of suitable substitutes and in most cases the number of suitable options was very limited.

Compared to the demo examples, all the styles in the original new #299 add-on set sounded decidedly thin as would be expected from styles with many missing or muted tracks. After spending quite a few hours attempting to substitute existing tracks the results ranged from disappointing to absolutely horrible.

Obviously I don't have the skills to do this effectively but I think the problem was compounded by the lack of suitable RealTracks in my Mega 2019 installation. I expect that this situation would be even worse with a lower level or older version of Biab.

I am pleased to hear that you intend to add information to the web site to warn others of this situation. Had this information been available to me at the time of purchase I am quite sure that I would not have proceeded down this torturous and time consuming path.

While I have been using Biab for many years, I am an unsophisticated user of this product. I tend to simply select and use styles "as is". I suspect that this applies to a fairly high percentage of Biab users. At the time of purchasing this add-on set, I firmly believed that I was buying five new styles that would perform in the same way as the existing RealStyles do in my current version of Biab.

Even with the benefit of hindsight I maintain that these expectations were reasonable and realistic based on the information provided at the time by the PG Music website.

I have recently been in contact with PG Music support and requested a refund on my purchase of the ill-fated #299 add-on set. I intend to purchase an upgrade to UltraPak. This appears to be the only viable way that I can achieve my objectives of getting additional RealTrack styles that work properly at a realistic price.

Regards
Tim

What's disappointing is that there are no MIDI equivalents for the RealTracks. Ok, PGMusic wants to sell them, but shipping incomplete styles with a RealTrack set is not really an encouragment to buy further sets. Better no styles at all, rather than incomplete ones.

Masi

Hi Jim.

I have been thinking about what you said in your most recent post and wondering if my problems with the RealTracks add-on has anything to do with not really understanding what RealTracks are or how they work in anything other than a very superficial way.

Until quite recently, I wasn't even interested in RealTracks. Midi has worked well for me for many years. When the end product is a printed musical score, with perhaps an accompanying demo or practice "tape", I don't really need much else. Now that I am attempting to produce music for direct use in live performances, the situation has changed. This is what has forced me into looking at RealTracks.

Up until now I have just accepted PG Music's marketing hype that you just type in some chords, select a suitable style and press the button for instant music. Perhaps this is the wrong way to look at working with RealTracks. I have been searching the internet including this forum for more information, I found what seems to be a lot of conflicting ideas and get the impression that I am not the only one who is confused. Is it correct to say that with RealTracks, the "old fashion" styles are now obsolete or at least redundant? Does the RealTracks Picker Dialogue replace the StylePicker? Is there a new or better way to work than simply selecting a style and pushing a button? If these assumptions are at all correct it would make what PGMusic are saying about their add-on sets much more understandable.

In my search for information I came across a couple of video tutorials on how to make your own RealTracks which I understand are called UserTracks. These tutorials didn't look too forbidding. I think I will have a go at trying to create my own RealTrack/UserTrack. In doing so I hope to increase my knowledge and understanding of this technology. It will probably take me a few weeks or even longer to produce something that sounds half reasonable but if I can accomplish this I will post a summary of my experiences on the UserTracks thread of this forum.

Regards
Tim