Originally Posted By: Charlie Fogle


Could you share your example of the basic task that took "all day"?


Yes and no. Now I've fixed it, the problems I had aren't so easy to remember and replicate, but I'll try to give the gist of things.

Simple task: Load a Hi-q patch on a utility track. In this instance it was Rock drum kit in sforzando. Create a beat in the piano roll (already a fiddly task) - decide I don't like the kit so changed it to playable realdrum "funklondon".

All good, happy with the sound. Close program, come back later, it's reverted to Rock kit. Weird, I'll change it again, maybe I didn't save? Nope, tried again - it won't save. Maybe this is normal behaviour for BIAB but it's certainly not "expected" behaviour from someone using software every day of their lives.

No problem, I'll see if I can figure out how to force the patch to save. Off to forum, quick look through the manual. No easy or obvious answer so I'm left experimenting and trying to figure things out.

Try again from the start. I'm now experimenting and testing in a temporary project. Create utility etc, select hi-q patch, choose funklondon ... up comes a pop up. "Aria session" or some such can't load, version is out of date.

Back to Google, back to the forum - what's Aria session loader? Turns out something to do with Plogue Art.

Me thinking "Surely it can't be out of date", I've only just updated to 2023, why would they show a playable realtrack that I can't use. Maybe I've done something wrong with the install? Back to the installer and reinstall BIAB update.

Nope, same problem. Sod it, I'll deal with that later and first see if I can find out how to make this patch stick.

More messing around, more experimenting, more forum searches. I end up in track settings (F7) trying to make some sense of how things work.

So far, all I can figure out is that only the first patch selected will get saved with the song. Now, this isn't actually true, it's just all I am able to determine at this point through experimentation, loading patches, saving, re-opening, etc.

At this point I'm clueless - it will let me load funklondon, let me play funklondon, it displays funklondon in the track mixer etc etc, it just won't save. Eventually I figure out that if it doesn't show in the top list of the track settings window then it won't save. Try the same in Cubase, load sforzando, choose instrument no problem, everything is saved as expected, nothing weird, all saves no problem.

In short, the only way to save a patch in BIAB is to load it from within BIAB itself. Completely unusual, not in the slightest expected behaviour and nothing to make this obvious.

All of these oddities wouldn't be so bad if we had some clue with what was going on and how BIAB does things. Nothing is intuitive. The little + sign in the track settings window in the midi patch section has little or nothing to do with midi patches as we'd normally expect so it takes a while to figure these things out. Nothing is consistent.

Ultimately, the session loader needed updating, it now works. No mention of this in the manual, very little on the forum and not updated with the program update.

It's just hard to get your head around things with such a convoluted piece of software where nothing works the same as pretty much all other software out there.

These kind of things happen often when I use BIAB. Maybe I just try to dig too deep into the details and understand how the thing works and what it's doing. After 25 odd years, I'm none the wiser.