Hello to all my old friends. Life has been a bit up and down over the past few years. A few years ago, I lost almost everything, became homeless, etc. Coming up on two years ago, I was fortunate enough to go to work for the State of Washington, and I am still employed there, albeit for a different agency Money is really tight for me, as I'm sure it is for many of us right now. Having said, that I'm not really able to purchase a new computer right now, but I'm not sure the computer is my problem.
I have four hard drives in this computer, and I had BIAB installed on the E drive, and it's been stuttering, really bad. I can't get it to play a song because it keeps stopping and starting.
So, I had an inexpensive sound card in there with digital S/PDIF Optical in and out. That card was giving me other troubles, so I just put a Creative Labs Z SE card in there. There is no change in the stuttering.
I went ahead and copied the BB folder from the E drive to the C drive. I wanted to copy it because I have all my songs in there, aftermarket styles from Norton Music, and I just wanted to make sure that everything got copied over. I did a clean install to that directory, but the stuttering continues.
Now, my computer is old, it's an Intel i5 3330, but it's 3.3GHz, has 12 gigs of RAM, so it should meet the requirements. My laptop is ancient, it's like a Celeron 2.4GHz, and has 8 gigs of RAM in it. I installed BIAB 2021 on that, and it works fine.
I'm pretty sure the issue isn't in the computer, but if anyone has any ideas on how to proceed, I sure would love to hear them.
I'm guessing what I'm going to have to do is to copy everything that I want to save out of the BB directory to somewhere else, and do a complete reinstall to a clean BB directory, but I really don't want to do that.
I'm open for suggestions, please.
Thanks in advance,
Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
The problem may be manifesting itself in multiple ways.
Start Task Manager (right-click on the task bar), then select More Details (at the bottom of the form), then select the Details tab and click on CPU to see what processes are using CPU Time. See if you can identify any programs unexpectedly using high CPU.
Click the performance tab, select Open Resource Monitor (at the bottom), and scan through various items to see if you can identify something that is hogging resources.
You might also try downloading and running a program called CCleaner. From their website: "CCleaner is the number-one tool for cleaning your PC. It protects your privacy and makes your computer faster and more secure!"
Unless you have a highly fragmented disk, I don't think moving BiaB to another drive will be the solution.
Hope this helps in some way.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Definitely try MME and/or WAS drivers. If it's only for playback purposes, MME should give you very good results.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Good advance thus far. I would also shut down anything that is running in the background. Occasionally and I have the same problem when I don't shut down all running background programs. I disable my Ethernet card, anti-virus, anti-malware, cCleaner, and VPN. Also sometimes I have to increase my audio interface's buffers.
I hope this helps and good luck.
The bumper sticker said "I'm a veterinarian, therefore I can drive like an animal". Suddenly I realized how many proctologists are on the road.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
I don't think it's the audio card. I have had two. I JUST installed the current audio card on Friday. Both use Optical S/PDIF out. I have tried MME, ASIO and WAS and all three exhibit the same issue. I'm going to assume that it is not the audio card, although I won't rule it out completely.
With a brand new install, clean install to a new directory (a freshly created C:/BB directory, I am still having issues. I haven't copied anything into the folder, no songs, no extras, not even the latest build and it is still having problem.
I'll keep you informed
G
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
Alright, I downloaded and ran CCleaner Pro Trial. No difference. I changed out all three audio drivers. No difference.
What I DID notice was this. At the very top of the BIAB window, you'll notice the line that shows you that BIAB is generating the back tracks. Usually playback doesn't start until after that is complete. However, in my case, we have the situation where playback starts up while that is still generating and every time to stops or starts to stutter, that generation process is still running, or has started again. When I press play, it starts to generate the tracks, and it takes a long time, but then you'll hear the song to start, but it stutters like crazy, and you can watch the track generation continue on. Finally, it will settle down, run for maybe two bars, and then the track generation messages come back. It'll stop generating, and then play for another two bars and the track generation comes back again.
I thought that it might have been related to RealDrums and RealTracks, but the same thing is occurring with a file that is all MIDI generated data. You would think that even with just MIDI data, it would not do this, it should be an easy lift. The song I'm using currently as my test bed is only 3:30 minutes long, and whether I use a completely MIDI based file or one with a combination of MIDI and RealDrums or all RealTracks, it does the same thing.
Mario, I've shut down extra stuff, but I don't think that's what it is, since there isn't any difference. I wish it would have been. It's somewhere in the way that BIAB is actually generating the tracks, either MIDI based or RealDrums/RealTracks.
If I used the DAW plug in inside of Cakewalk, all of the tracks generate correctly and I can drag and drop them to the tracks and there is no problem, inside the DAW. But, I don't/can't use that as I'm trying to test out certain styles and I need to be able to do that in BIAB. I don't want to use the laptop for this, although the way things are going, I'm going to have to.
Last edited by Gary Curran; 07/03/2205:15 AM.
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
Go to Song Settings ( <Ctrl>N ) and check this box:
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
I wish it had been that easy. When I click that box, you can see that the song doesn't start until all four instrument tracks have been generated, but it STILL gets one or two bars into the song and it starts to generate the tracks again.
I'm thinking now that this might be a Registry Problem. While Live Help is unavailable today, I have sent them a message and referenced this thread, so maybe they'll be able to shine some light on the problem.
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
Gary. questions. 1. when your running cake by itself recording and playing back traks, with no bb running...do you still get stuttering. 2. are you doing music production/trak generation on the same drive as win resides on ? i would advise to always have win reside on its on drive, and music production on its pwn seperate drive.
there are many possible causes of stuttering just google music production 'audio stuttering'. also google 'disc contention'.
finally there are many guides on not only the net but also here on pg on 'optimising a pc for music production'. such guides can be rather lengthy.
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs (90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
This is not an audio problem, of that I'm sure. I don't have issues with Cakewalk, I don't have audio issues with streaming services. This is a track generation problem, I'm more sure of that now than ever before. Band in a Box, as you know, generates the tracks for each song, and it chooses from a wide variety of track data. If you don't understand how BIAB generates a track, it looks at the chord progression and the style. For a major chord, depending on the style, it may have five one-bar, five two-bar, and five four-bar 'phrases', for lack of a better word. It chooses a phrase, and transposes it to the chord you're playing. So, for a one-bar phrase, the original phrases may have been written in C, but if your chord is F, it will transpose the notes of that phrase up to F. If you have a C chord playing for four bars, BIAB will normally select a four-bar pattern. However, if you drop a 'C' into the beginning of each bar, then you will have four one-bar patterns of C. Now, if there are five different phrases of that instrument and style, depending on the weighting, you may get four different phrases, one for each bar. BIAB analyzes the song and the different parts, and will generate the parts before the song begins. This is why BIAB can't be used as an 'auto-accompaniment' system in real time, it wouldn't know what was coming up next and wouldn't be able to give the variety that it does.
Okay, so after looking at what's going on, I've come to the conclusion that there is a problem internal to the program, or somewhere on my computer, but not an audio problem. BIAB should generate all of the data before the song starts. If I use the check box for generating the song part before hand, it in fact DOES generate parts for all four instruments, and then starts. But, somehow, for some reason, those parts are either not being generated correctly, or, they are being regenerated once the song starts. As the regeneration of the tracks begins, it causes the playback to stop or stutter. This is the problem, it's not an audio output problem.
I had BIAB on a drive that was not my boot drive, and it exhibited the same behavior there as it does now on my boot drive. I believe that I'm going to need to fully and completely remove any instance of BIAB on my computer, which means doing a clean of the registry, something I'm not happy about doing because I don't know where all of the registry entries may be. Once I do that, then I can go back and re-install it, and I'll put it back on the other drive where it was.
I DID do a complete new install last night/this morning, and the problems still exist, so it's somewhere deep in the system, and I don't know where. I did install from the hard drive, so unless there is an error/corrupted file on the PG Music supplied hard drive, there shouldn't have been any problems for this.
But, there are problems, and I don't know how to fix them.
Gary
Last edited by Gary Curran; 07/03/2206:50 AM. Reason: added info
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
Gary. with great respect fyi i'm aware how bb works haveing done more than 90 songs with it.
the only thing i might suggest is what i always suggest on these forums. ie post pics of your bb driver settings. and your win audio recording and playback settings. includeing advanced tab. otherwise the rest of us trying to help are flying blind. it helps pg tech support to diagnose also.
also if win is set to 48k/16 try 44.1/16 bit and see if its a solution. bb seems to like 44.1/16 is my experience.
ntn/ymmv/all the best. om
Last edited by justanoldmuso; 07/03/2207:29 AM.
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs (90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
I occasionally get stuttering on my little old notepad PC. It's about a decade old, though does have in SSD.
The first thing I usually do it turn off WiFi ... it can sometimes perturb things. I second looking at task manager ... when I get my stuttering, I almost always find some Microsoft background task using quite a bit of resource ... anti-malware; update checker; auto-defrag; and so on.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
OM, Ninety songs is great. However, there are people who use BIAB for what it provides and don't necessarily understand what is going on.
Let me see if I can get a version of Camtasia, if it's still available, and that might help to show the problem.
Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
Gordon, thank you for the suggestions. I've already done all of that.
This is a problem that is not audio, since it does the same thing for all MIDI files and styles. If it were audio stuttering then the MIDI generation wouldn't stop and stutter as well, but it does.
G
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
And to anyone else reading, Gary is as qualified as it gets for a user to be diagnosing a problem, better than most of us especially at MIDI.
I read through the thread and have a couple of questions or comments.
First, I believe you said you have BIAB 2021 on the laptop, but what version do you have on the desktop? What build, and of course is it up to date?
You said this: I believe that I'm going to need to fully and completely remove any instance of BIAB on my computer, which means doing a clean of the registry, something I'm not happy about doing because I don't know where all of the registry entries may be.
BIAB does write a few things to the registry, but the last time I looked, they weren't consequential or numerous. They related primarily to two things: fonts, and the last ten files loaded. I would not think that this is the place to spend much time.
Your statement that really bothers me is this one:
you can see that the song doesn't start until all four instrument tracks have been generated, but it STILL gets one or two bars into the song and it starts to generate the tracks again.
I have no explanation for that. It shouldn't happen, and it would seem to explain the stuttering. It's not something I recall ever being reported here, so I think you are going to have to talk with Support. Since you already did a new installation, I'm assuming Return to Factory Settings won't help, but if it were me, I'd try it anyway.
Keep us informed!
Matt
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Hey Matt! Went to fellowship this morning, told someone there I needed this thing to be working, since I want to do something at an upcoming fellowship meeting. I'm going to be providing the drums, piano parts, maybe some organ parts, most of it is going to come from BIAB. Got home and half the problems were gone. They still crop up once in a while. I was going to use a screen recorder to capture it, but of course, every time I turn on the screen recorder, it works flawlessly!
You are correct, I said I have 2021 on the laptop, I have 2022 with Build 932 on the desktop, so I'm up to date there.
My problem is that this stuttering, which is caused by regenerating the tracks, affects both RealTracks and 100% MIDI tracks. So, on the MIDI tracks, there is no audio at all, it goes directly out to my keyboard. That's why I'm having problems understanding why this is happening. It shouldn't be.
As to the registry, this computer has had 2018, 2021 and now 2022 on it, and I don't know what might be in the registry. Since this is a clean install, I don't know what controls and triggers the actual generation of the tracks. Since it DOES generate them, I don't see a reason for the track to be regenerated again. This is why I'm going to have to take it up with support, I hope they can give me an answer. For the time being, I'll be looking for that perfect style for the song I'm doing. See if I can audition it here, instead of on the laptop, since my desktop is connected the all the audio and keyboard.
Hope all is well with you, and I'm STILL waiting on your next album! I lost almost all of my CDs and stuff when I became homeless, but I can still listen to your album on Napster/Rhapsody, but I do need to get another physical copy of it, one of these days. I was actually out on your website last night to see if there was anything new. Let me know if you've got something in the works!
Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
Thanks for the kind words about music. We can follow up by PM.
You are indeed a man of the future with build 932, so I assume you have 923.
Yep, two issues:
1) if it's MIDI only, what's the cause of the stutter even if it is regenerating in the background a second time 2) what in general causes the regeneration of tracks
About #2, we have on occasion made discoveries that BIAB would NOT regenerate after we made a change and we thought it should have (and we reported it and it gets fixed) but never the reverse.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Either I'm getting old, and can't see any more, my memory is failing, or I'm dyslexic, one or the other. Yeah, Build 923. At least I had the correct three numbers! LOL.
Yeah, this one stumps me, and not, it's not doing it like it used to, i.e., every time I hit the play button, but I haven't done anything to the computer or the install, so I'm really confused.
G
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
1: Did you try any of my suggestions in my first reply to your post, regarding the Task Manager, CPU, Resource Monitor etc? You didn't say what your results were.
2: You mentioned: "When I click that box, you can see that the song doesn't start until all four instrument tracks have been generated, but it STILL gets one or two bars into the song and it starts to generate the tracks again."
How do you know that it starts to generate the tracks again? What indicator do you use to verify this?
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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