Originally Posted by shlind
+1/ exactly

My latest experience is now when testing out the new stem separation in BIAB 2025.

Stem separation was fairly easy and straight forward as such but then when it comes to use it in BIAB to generate music against it I need to make a Time Map with ACW.

I have managed to do this before at times after spending hours on it and looking through the manual and guidance from the forum.
But this knowledge is nothing that sticks or that I remember now since I don’t use ACW in BIAB unless I really have to (and I don’t since I do most of my work outside BIAB in my DAW and other software).

So I tried to do the Time Mapping in ACW once again but gave up after one hour.
I just don’t want to spend any more time on it (it is done automatically or by one single operation in other software).
I know that I can figure it out again if I go back to my notes and check the guidance notes here on the forum but that will again take hours and I don’t want to be there.

The above is given just as an example.
The new stem separation seems to work fine but falls more or less flat since the next step in the workflow - to set the time map - is very frustrating and time consuming (at least for for me).
If there's an issue with syncing the stems in BIAB I found that it wasn't clear that the ACW in BIAB is a single track function. The ACW only works on the Audio Track. The Master stem is on the Audio Track and is used to sync with BIAB program. This action doesn't affect the split stems. The ACW requires the first bar of audio on the Audio Track to be determined and set by the user. This aligns the Master Track with BIAB Chord Sheet but none of the split stems are automatically aligned. Once the tempo map is created, all tracks follow the tempo map. The issue seems that the stems aren't aligned with the change made to the Master Track setting the first bar.

When you first play the split stems in BIAB, they all are aligned. It's creating the ACW tempo map process of attempting to do a multitrack function on a single track tool where the misalignment occurs.

The easy answer for Windows users is to split stems in RealBand. It is a total breeze because all of split tracks are aligned when imported and RB has the option to use the existing song when processing the ACW, so the tempo map will align all the tracks, BIAB and splits at once. RealBand can save the file as a Band in a Box file.

If the user is only planning to use the isolated vocals, This can be done in BIAB. It's easy to sync any single track automatically with the Master Track when the Master Track is processed by the ACW and then remove the Master Track leaving just the isolated vocal track. This process works with any split stem track. I used vocals as an example.

BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.