PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums RealBand Could someone please help me.

I just spent three freakin weeks working all my songs over trying to convert them from VSC over to sampletank as the synth, song by song track be track carefully choosing patches, panning mixing and finally had the whole list done. I tried to enter them in to a jukebox list and the system forced all of the songs i chose back to VSC. I stopped the juke box and all my settings are gone. Is all my work gone for nothing? Is there a box to uncheck, or a setting to chose that will stop this from happening?

This is the second time i have gone thru something like this last time i did not know what set it off, but it lost all my patches and settings i started over now threy are gone again. If you have any ideas please toss them out. I am so frustrated i want to scream. Three freakin weeks of hard work gone in in one second. Why does the system not warn you that it will force a complete reroute of the synth if you use the juke box?


AAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Robh,
You need to back away for a moment. You're settings are not lost if you saved your songs after all the tweaks. Trust me. If this were BIAB different story. Now a question;
1. are you using Sampletank inserted in each track or is it being used as the default synth?
2. do you by chance have two copies of the songs,ie, before and after fixes and you're loading the wrong ones?
3. uninstall the VSC and go back to PREFS and reset the default synth to Sampletank and see what happens.

If you get this all back do what I do. Render each track to audio when you have it set and tweak the audio tracks. I have over 200 songs like this and they never miss a beat. All straight audio.

Another place to look is use 'File-Open backup".
See what the backed up version does as far as the synth

So far no joy i guess i will start over and re do them and forego the jukebox. I just hate having to pick the files from the folder each time.

I think you just have the VSC selected in Prefs MIDI as the default synth.

Changing that to Sampletank would have -- or should have -- changed all the songs in one step...


--Mac

Check the setting Mac mentioned, then double check, as it would explain the whole mess.

Here is the problem. VSC is setup as the default, because Sampletank will not save it's settings if it is the default, i posted this problem last week. So you have to load it up every time if you leave it in the default position. I gues this is another feature/bug in RB. I have to place Sampletank in the synth 1 position, and leave VSC as the default, and then i can load up Sampletank and save that arrangement.

This problem is different, as i had all the songs arranged and saved, then when i entered them in the juke box it changed all the settings back to the default settings. I have fixed three already and will grind it out and fix the others, then not use jukebox I guess.

Why would the bug have to be on RB?

Sounds to me like if there's a bug here, it could, at this point, equally point the finger at Sampletank...


--Mac

Mac I understand that, however as we know RB does not handle VSTi as well and most other host do. The fact that i can save any patch i want in MTS, cakewalk, and reaper, and even N-Tracks and it saves the settings without a hitch, again points back to RB. The fact that RB will not save patches if it is in the default position, and i never had a glitch in sampletank inside Rb and or PTPA until i tried to use the jukebox feature points to RB. For all i know you are right, it is a feature of Sampletank that conflicts with RB and Sampletank is causing the problem, however if RB had better VSTi implimentation I doubt this would happen, so again it points to RB.

This is not a RB bashing, i love RB, i love BiaB i use them every day. I will continue to use them everyday! The big issue here is to bring this out so everyone can be aware, and maybe in time some of these VSTi issues will get handled. I defend PG software all the time, but let's face it it is not as stable as some of the other titles. It is close, but let's also face the fact that it does somethings the others do not, the more features the more opportunity for issues. Some folks here have bemoaned the need of better VSTi handling, fix the timing issues, make it handle a larger variety of VSTi. Look some VSti's just are a pill, but sampletank!?!?!? It has always worked well for me, in almost any host 'cept RB

Hi Rob,

Jukebox in RealBand seems to be working perfectly for me, using ST in some of the tracks. I don't use RealBand much because I was already hooked on another daw, but I loaded up a couple of songs to see if I could duplicate your problem, and so far I can't.

One difference tho, is I'm not using the VSC at all. Back when I was trying to use the VSC, I had a lot of random problems with both biab and realband. (I was using realband quite a bit then, trying to learn it.) I went to another player and most of my problems went away, so I never use the VSC anymore.

I'm not very good at explaining things so I'll just list what I did, and maybe you can spot some differences.

What I did was open some mgu files in RB. These files are a combination of real tracks and midi. I then save as RB file. (note: I don't have --reroute to vsti-- ticked so if I hit play at this point only the real tracks would sound).

Next, I right click in the left side of a midi track and select SampleTank for vsti, then go to the next midi track and do the same thing. When I get them all assigned I start RB playing and click on the dxi synth button up toward the top right of RB. The channels that are receiving midi data will be flashing, but nothing loaded. Let's say one of them is channel 3, I select it and load whatever sound I want, then on to the next channel that I'm using. When done I hit save and I'm done. I did two songs like that, loaded them in jukebox and started them. There's a little arrow that forwards to the next song, so I would listen to one a little, hit the arrow, listen, hit the arrow. In that way I cycled thru the two songs several times and there was no failures.

Another thing thats important to remember here is that you do not want a cc map file loaded in ST. The loading info gets stored in the RB (or any other host) file itself. This allows you to load any sound on any channel on a project by project basis. Also, you don't need to remove any program change message from any channel in your midi file, because without a cc map file, ST won't respond to program change messages anyway. (That's a strength of ST in this situation, and the reason it's designed like it is in the first place, as it wasn't designed to be a gm type player.) If you do have a sound change some where in any of your channels, copy that portion out to another track, change the channel number, and manually assign the sound in ST just like you did the others.

Hope this helps and have a great day.
Jim

Thanks Jim i appreciate the thoughs, i will try some of that. I do not want to sound like a whinner, for the most part i usually defend the host against VSTi issues as I appreciate that the host does not have the responsibility to make their program run ever different Plug in out there. It is the responsibility of the plug in makeer to make a plug that runs in most host. VSTi is a certain code project and everyone does it a bit different. The reason for my frustration is that ST has always at least worked in BiaB. RB and PTPa to some degree. For me it never worked perfectly, as it always had small issues, that i had to work around, but nothing major. One was that every time i switch from VSC to ST for a tracki have to adjust the volume in the track cause ST comes out of the gate full volume, adjusting the fader in the track allows RB to take control over the knob in ST.

I have VSC as thed efault because RB would not allow me to save the setup using ST as the default. I could open ST and insert the sampels and it played flawlessly until i saved and closed the song then reopened and ST would be empty. So i resetup VSC as the default and ST in the rack as synth 1, this allowed saving and everything was flowing opena dn reopen songs at my leisure and all was right, the sound was great and it was cool. Then the jukebox issue raised it's head. i entered about 7 songs in the juke box by hitting "ADD SONG" and a box popped up saying that i had no midi setup, and i click okay and it erased the st from all the songs in the jukebox as if they never had it inserted.

The problem here was that it acted out of character, in that it allowed me to insert ST in the no. 1 synth slot and open it, and it allowed me to choose the samples and it played them. But why did that cause the elimination of the synth? I would imagine because that pop up box had to do with something in my setup, that i am unaware of. If this was the only thing i ever had to deal with in VSTi use with RB i would just cry for 5 minutes and start over, but there have been other issues that i wish could be fixed. 1. jamstix does not work, we all know that and are waiting, 4front piano, bass, and electric piano does not allow you to control the volume at all. There have been issues with PS fretted , and even other ST issues.

These are all issue with the plugins in part, but the fact remains that everyone of these plugins works flawlessly with Cakewalk MC 3 and 5, Multitrackstudio, Reaper, and AcidPro for me on my system. No matter how much i love PG products, that tells me that there is still some issue with the VST technology inside their code. I remember when i was using Cakewalk MC 2003, it had to use a wrapper to use VST plugins, and some worked great and others were kinda rough at times. When MC 3 came out the wrapper was eliminated and VST became far more stable. I know that PG does not use a wrapper they have native VST implimentation, so the problem must be in the coding. At that same time i had PTPA 10, and it did not use VSTi it was DXi compliant, and that was a limiting factor for me. I used ST in it because it was both VSTi and DXi. I upgraded to version 11 for VSTi and it seems that the progress stopped there.

Anyway i got 5 or 6 of them fixed last night, and will have them all by this evening. No Jukebox for me until i figure out how without a blowout. I will most likely use small folders for short sets, numbered for order. a little more work, but no danger.

If the VSC is truly the issue, then why not uninstall it, and instead install the Coyote WaveTable (WT) that came with a recent update to BIAB/RealBand (assuming you still need something different from ST to be the default)? That will get VSC out of the mix and you can see if things work then. You can always re-install VSC later if you want it back.

John that is a decent idea, i hope the WT has good enough sound to fill in the few tracks i still use VSC on. I am not sure though that VSC is the problem. What i think i will do is to make a copy of a few files and do some testing on them.

Robh,
You got me on ignore? I posted some thoughts and you never replied.

how do i un-ignore you?

Hi, Rob -

Quote:

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John that is a decent idea, i hope the WT has good enough sound to fill in the few tracks i still use VSC on.

---

I was thinking more in the sense of troubleshooting. The Coyote WT sounds are the same you get from Windows, but packaged as a DXi synth. But if the problem goes away, that would lead you to more fully suspect the VSC is the problem. If not, well, you eliminated another possibility.

Good thinking, I will run with that.

Rob,
Don't get it.Sorry.
On second thought I do.

I am going to render to straight audio one song at a time now and follow the SilveJohntone's direction .

John i have about four songs i have purchased from one of the Karaoke sites and remixed these dogs load in two seconds.

Rob,
For me I find that once I get the parts I want I'll just highlight the midi track and use the "convert individual midi track to audio track". I save the midi track but muted until the song is 100% complete. I then delete all the MIDI tracks. Left with nothing but audio tracks. There are a lot more tools available for tweaking audio as well.
BTW you left off the r in Silvertones.