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RealBand
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Joined: May 2005
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Well, I've been advised to try RB instead of BIAB for playing VST instruments along with the generated accompaniment. First off, it's confusing to me which button to click on - both the "DX Plug-Ins" button and the "DXi Synths" button open up to a dialog called "DirectX/VST Window". But I went ahead and chose one and somehow managed to add a couple VSTi's for testing: NI's Akoustik Piano and B4-II. I generated a little song in style "=FPKE120" (Straight Country - Style Disk #94), which creates six tracks - one is MIDI (rhodes piano) and the rest are RealTracks. Here's what I've found, and maybe you guys can make a suggestion:
1: First, in order to play a VSTi along with the song, I right-click (or double click) the next available MIDI track, then choose "Specific DXi/VST synth for MIDI track", and then select my VSTi (Akoustik Piano). So far so good. But I can't hear anything yet because I've still got "Re-route MIDI to default DXi synth" checked in the MIDI Driver dialog (which apparently results in my keyboard controller's signals being sent to ForteDXi on some channel with no instrument loaded, cuz I can't hear anything). So I uncheck the "Re-route..." box, and voila!, now I hear my Akoustik Piano as the RealTracks play. But of course now there's no longer any sound coming from the rhodes piano MIDI track. So I choose that track, right-click and again choose "Specific DXi/VST synth for MIDI track" and choose ForteDXi, forcing that one track to resume using Forte. Now everything sounds right.
Question: Is this the way it's normally done? If I had had several generated MIDI tracks in there, would I have had to go through the same procedure four or five more times? I tried Ctrl-clicking and Shift-clicking several un-used midi tracks, just to see if RB would let me send multiple tracks at once to Forte, but when I went to choose "Specific DX/VST synth for MIDI track", it only changed it for the one I actually clicked on, and not all of the other selected tracks.
2: Also, if I make adjustments in my VSTi, like, for example, turning the rotator on in B4-II, as soon as I stop or re-start my RB composition, the rotator turns back off. I tried unchecking "Zero continuous controllers" in Prefs>MIDI>MIDI Out, but that didn't help. Neither did unchecking "Send most recent Patch/Wheel/Controllers".
Anyway, I'd welcome suggestions on either issue. Thanks.
- Bob K.
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RealBand
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Joined: May 2000
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" If I had had several generated MIDI tracks in there, would I have had to go through the same procedure four or five more times?"
No, just above the the 'specific DXi synth' option is one that will 'assign all midi tracks to Forte DXi' or whatever synth you have selected, so you would select the synth you want most of the midi tracks to play, then use the 'assign all midi to that synth' selection then go change the new track to whatever you want to hear.
Making adjustments in a DXi and not saving it as a preset will result in lost data sometimes.
There is likely a way to write that message (rotator on) with a control change, but if you haven't done it the 'send previous controllers' will not owrk. Somehow you have to save the rotator on message..
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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RealBand
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You are headed for more problems if you insert a DXi/VSTi into individual tracks. There is a known confirmed bug. Each time you close a song and open another RB is SUPPOSED to unload the previous sample set but it doesn't.This shows up real quick with the Forte as it's sample set is very large.You could never use this live as after you've opened a number of songs you'll get an out of memory error. here is my lenghty post. Andrew confirms replication in the next to last post. To my knowledge this is still not fixed. My suggestion is use the VSTi/DXi in your tracks as needed but then convert them to audio tracks with the "convert midi track to audio track" command and the unload all of the VSTi/DXi instruments before the final save. http://www.pgmusic.com/ubbthreads/showfl...part=1&vc=1
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RealBand
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What John says is true but only for Forte DXi as far as I know
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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RealBand
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Rharv you're not correct on that. It's not a Forte problem it's a PG Music issue. It'll happen with other VSTi/DXi but not as quickly as most don't have the large sample set that Forte has. At the time I was in email contact with Norm (Forte) & Andrew (PG Music ) about this and it was determined that it was indeed not Forte but PG.
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RealBand
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Interesting
I've never had this issue and I run multiple DXi/VSTi's quite often.
Maybe I don't load enough songs in a session; I tend to work on a single song for a period of time.
I do agree it's a good idea to convert the softsynth to audio once it's ready. Makes things move along.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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RealBand
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AFAIK, the problem of the thing reloading into ram again *every time you visit its settings window* only occurs with the Forte DXi and PT or RB.
--Mac
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RealBand
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As I said my last email conversations with Andrew and Norm determined that it's not just the Forte it's anyone but as Rharv noted with the smaller DXi/VSTi instruments it would take quite a few songs in a single session for the problem to pop up. With the Forte it's about 20 songs.
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RealBand
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OP
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Thanks for pointing out the 'assign all midi tracks...' option, Rharv. That's just the option I needed - sort of a "Re-route Lite", since it does route signals to the chosen DXi but doesn't then prevent me from choosing a different DXi for another track, like the actual "Re-route all..." checkbox does. At first the 'assign all..' option just had my sound card as the only choice, but somewhere above that option it said something about a Port, so I went into that, and there were all sorts of choices, one of which was the Forte, so, that solved that.
I'll have to fiddle with my VSTi's settings later and see if I can save the 'rotator on' as a preset...
Interesting little read there regarding memory and VSTi/DXi/Forte/PG. Hope it gets resolved.
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
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