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Joined: Mar 2009
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Greetings all...
Although I have been using biab for quite some time, there are still a lot of things I don't know about it. Therefore I figure this question is better suited for the beginners forum.
Is there a way to speed up the generating time? I've clocked it taking anywhere between 18 to almost 20 seconds to regenerate even after changing just one chord. This doesn't sound very long, but it is when you've made that small change and have to sit watching the little circle going round and round. I'm not using anything complicated in the song... a normal amount of part markers, no tempo changes or anything else that may bog it down to some degree.
I'm running the program on a dedicated music only SSD drive. I seem to remember it being noticeably faster when I got the new drive but it has noticeably slowed down lately.
It has nothing to do with my computer... Intel core i7 processor and 32 gigs of memory. I'm not running any other software when I'm working with biab. In fact, when I load a vst in my daw, SampleTank 4 or Kontakt 7 for example, they are lightning fast to load up with the SSD drive. The problem is only when I'm working in biab. I do primarily use only real tracks.
Is there a setting somewhere that might speed things up?
I'm using BIAB 2022 Ultra.
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I always chuckle when I read something like this because in the first days of RealTracks, late 2008, you could start regenerating a song, go downstairs and make a sandwich, and come back to see it finishing up. But it’s all relative and the red flag in your question is that it used to be much better than it is now.
There is one major area to check first. I’ll look up exactly where it is, but it is the checkbox to allow a song to regenerate in the background while the song starts playing. I think it’s called Fast Generation or something similar.
Less important is an option in RealTracks preferences about Quality. Reduce it, and generation is faster.
However, I don’t think this is where you should focus.
If you had a sense that the whole computer is slower, we could work the problem to consider malware, background processes, failing drives, the whole works. But you’ve already gone there, so perhaps concentrate on the drive itself. Is there a minimum of 20% free space? Consider getting Crystal Disk Utilities to examine the drive thoroughly.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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What else is on your solid state drive beside the 2022 Band-in-a-Box Ultra install? Do you save your song project on the solid state drive? Do you have other programs installed on the SSD? The more data there is to manage, the slower it will be.
How much empty space remains on the solid state drive? Generally 10+ percent empty space is desirable for file management.
Have you ever used the Windows Trim command on your solid state drive? TRIM is a drive interface command. As you use your drive, changing and deleting information, the solid state drive needs to make sure that invalid information is deleted and that space is available for new information to be written. Trim tells your solid state drive which pieces of data can be erased. The biggest benefit of Trim is the time savings by having the solid state drive erase data while the computer is idle, rather than using extra time during a write process to remove data that is no longer valid.
Microsoft Windows from 7 forward supports Trim. It runs automatically in the background unless you have turned it off. You can run it manually or check that Trim is enabled by looking at the Properties of the drive, then selecting Tools, and Optimize.
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With respect, please don't use Trim on an SSD without doing more research. It is not necessary to do so like it is on a mechanical rotating hard drive. Trim will shorten the life of the SSD, which has a finite number of writes that it is rated for.
The old guideline of 15% free space is for mechanical rotating hard drives. The threshold for an SSD is recommended to be even higher, at 20% free space.
Jim's questions are good, though. Tell us more about the drive, and what's on it.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Beginners Forum
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Good afternoon gentlemen... Thanks so much for the comebacks
I'm on my way out the door so I can't go into depth about my drive. That being said, I have biab installed on an external SSD which is running on a laptop which is certainly not as powerful as my PC. I tried running it using the exact same sgu file. It turns out that it is performing pretty much the same as the PC version.
Perhaps the problem is just me wishing that it was faster.
The SSD drive I am using is dedicated only to my music software. Lots of stuff... biab, Sampletank 4, Addictive Drums 2, Cakewalk and Reaper. Of course, none of these programs are running at the same time. But like I said, any other of these programs open and run with lightning speed compared to how they performed on the old regular drive. The newer drive is about 4 months old and currently I have about 60% free space on it.
I have to run now but will check back in later this evening.
Thanks again!!!
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Adding to the excellent advice already given what, if anything, is running in the background?
FYI - I installed a program called Virtual MIDI (or something like that) to check it out and it slowed my Kontakt to a crawl. It took a very long time to load the Kontakt patch names into quickload even though they were on a SSD! Once I deleted said file Kontakt loading was back to being extremely fast.
Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Stabbing in the dark, did you Rebuild the Index after the last update?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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With respect, please don't use Trim on an SSD without doing more research. It is not necessary to do so like it is on a mechanical rotating hard drive. Trim will shorten the life of the SSD, which has a finite number of writes that it is rated for.
The old guideline of 15% free space is for mechanical rotating hard drives. The threshold for an SSD is recommended to be even higher, at 20% free space.
Jim's questions are good, though. Tell us more about the drive, and what's on it. Matt, you may want to reconsider your response based on +++ THIS +++ web article. The use of TRIM can improve the performance of writing data to SSDs and contribute to longer SSD life. Using the TRIM command reduces the amount of data an SSD needs to move during the garbage collection process and reduces the amount of erase cycles, enabling the drive to last longer.
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Thanks Jim. I agree with you it might help some here. There are a few “ifs” in that article and we still don’t know much about the drive in question, so I recommended caution first.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Probably not... because I don't know how to rebuild the index... mebbe you could shed some light on this for me? 
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After almost all BIAB updates, the first time you go into the style picker, it asks if you want to rebuild the index, and you should do so. I doubt it will make a lot of difference but we are struggling for better answers here.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Hi Mario...
As far as I know there's nothing running besides biab. I only use virtual instruments within my DAW... Cakewalk by Bandlab or Reaper. And these instruments, including Kontakt are lightning fast when I'm using them.
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