<< Charlie, honestly I am not sure how to take your "responses" on this topic. Very (very!) recently you personally were discouraging me and few other users from even wishing more tracks in the mixer. >>

Misha, it's my hope that you'll take any responses I've made in the past and will make in the future as being presented with respect and good intentions. From your post comments, it's my impression you thought the Utility Picker was new and it's not. To me, that is a separate issue from you and others suggesting improvements and changes for the betterment of the picker or to use the main RT Picker.

This conversation has drifted between those two elements making points not always clear. We've all learned the Utility Picker situation is technical and not aesthetics or ergonomics but with that, I know you've offered suggestions to improve the Main RT Picker. That's great and I support your efforts. My responses in this thread were prompted by my impression you and others were unaware the Utility Picker existed prior to the introduction of the regeneration feature of Utility Tracks and never intended to discourage suggestions to improve the picker or the RT process.

It's exactly the same issue with the Wish List request for more tracks in the BIAB Mixer. I never had any intent to discourage the request but in fact endorsed the request across several threads on the subject over time. I benefit the same as everyone with available tracks. My concern with additional tracks was solely it was universally presented to read that BIAB could not provide additional tracks which was a misrepresentation of the program and likely misleading thousands of forum post readers. I never thought that was intentional on your and others request, more likely just unfamiliarity and lack of experience with features and techniques with the BIAB software.

People that primarily or exclusively use BIAB as an accompaniment tool to create Karaoke or backing tracks to play along with are led to believe there are very restrictive limitations to the BIAB program. Every post made by accompaniment users for ways to bypass these limitations, (limitations which are perceived and not real ), are told more tracks are required and the only solution is to move tracks to a DAW. In 2019 and 2020, PG staff made significant enhancements to some of these features and from what I've seen in forum posts and User Showcase comments, these enhancements are not widely known or used so far. For years prior to the release of the 2021 version of BIAB, each BIAB RealTrack can accommodate the original instrument plus 10 more for a total instrument count of 11 RealTrack instruments. RealTracks can reside on any of the seven legacy tracks so a total of 77 instruments can be programmed to play consecutively or simultaneously in a single, first generation render. The addition of the new Utility Tracks mathematically increases the total instrument count of a first generation BIAB song project to over 1,300! I have no idea whether the software or Windows have a brick wall track limitation but if it's less than this minimum, BIAB can do it. If you and others knew of this BIAB capability, you never mentioned it.

Finally, here's a real example of what I mean about unfamiliarity: A new user made is first post on 12/5 with a simple request to change his song tempo for a single measure without hard-coding the song global tempo. The user was aware of bar settings and using F5 to access changing the tempo but explains why that doesn't meet his future needs for the song and possible re-rendering. He received correct answers from two forum members that have been BIAB users for decades. One answered No, BIAB can't do that in a project and the second answer was to complete the task easily in a DAW. Both of those answers are correct, but incomplete. BIAB can do exactly what the new user is requesting In BIAB without closing the current project or exporting any tracks to a DAW. I was able to accomplish his desired task in no more than a minute using the Song Medley feature and advised the new user of its existence and steps to complete his task.


BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.