Would it be possible to have BIAB 2021 to automatically select my favourite Piano Plugin on every time midi file that uses pianos is loaded?
I know that if I save a song in BIAB, it automatically remember the plugin that I associated with that track, but I would like it to happen every time I load a classical piano midi file, as I don't want to change the original file and if possible, also not to start having unnecessary duplicated files.
The plugin is the Art Vista's Virtual Grand Piano, which I currently load it in BIAB through Kontakt Player. Man! I love this piano!
Globally Band-in-a-Box bases midi patch selections on the General MIDI standard, commonly known as GM. Kontakt and Art Vista's Virtual Grand Piano do not meet that standard.
The GM standard is multi-timbrel specification that specifies how to access 128 sound patches. The free Kontakt Player does not follow that standard so there is no way for Band-in-a-Box to globally access the player or direct the player to load specific content.
When you save the patches with the song, you have manually made those connections. You specified (1) for this song (2) on this track (3) don't follow the midi standard (4) instead load this plugin (5) and use it as a player (6) and tell the player to load this soft synth patch.
However, you may be able to create a UserStyle that loads the applications and use that as your default style.
....However, after a lot of googling last weekend, I think I found the best solution yesterday. At lest for us Kontakt owners. I guy over in the NI forum had did a great job, making a Kontakt substitute for Bandstand, calling it Handstand. It's a GM/GM2/GS/XGLite bank with 632 instruments bank, loaded it on each slot. See here; https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/kontakt-general-midi.225353/
I downloaded it yesterday, and it was easy for me to replace many of the instruments there with my best Kontakt instruments and save it as the default Kontakt library. It takes a little time to load it, but, when loaded, it plays everything in BiaB now with a LOT better general sound, EVERY TIME I load a new midifile...
There may be hope for this, however the free version of VSTSynthfont which comes with BIAB does not allow these types of file to be loaded, but the new $15 version does.
Quote:
What is new in version 3.421 of VSTSynthFont / VSTSynthFont64? - Version 3.410 did not let you assign different SoundFonts or Presets to tracks sharing the same MIDI channel. This is now possible again, although it violates the MIDI standard. - You can now assign a VST2 Instrument as a "Sound source file". To do so, change the "File type" in the file open dialog box to "VST2 instruments (*dll)". See images below. NOTE: VST2 Effects also have the extension "dll" but cannot be used.
Remember the 64 bit soft synth uses a custom instrument patch to provide GM compatible midi instrument patches in Band-in-a-Box. Great thought though.
Jim, while this applies to Sforzando used by BIAB, I don't think this applies to VSTSynthfont 64 when used in BIAB. But don't take this to the bank. If someone has the paid version of VSTSynthfort it would be nice for them to give this a go.
As I remember it, the (original) version of Synthfont64 provided by PG Music includes a custom set of patches that is GM compatible.
If you upgrade Synthfont64, as long as you have the GM patches all current versions of Synthfont64 will automatically load the GM compatible patches inside Band-in-a-Box. I'm not sure if it works the same way in RealBand64 as I haven't tested it.
I don't use Synthfont64 as my default DXi/VST soft synth. I've used Cakewalk by Bandlab's TTS-1 since it was originally released as a Twelve Tone product in 2005.
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