Can anyone please describe the roadmap for REAL BAND?

I like Biab to generate tracks, change instruments,
add lyrics, and make changes. Also to import midi.
also export video.

However biab doesnt do enough with midi, in my opinion.

Hence I got to RB. Working in real band was a disappointment: It didn't import or transfer lyrics from Biab. It didn't import/ transfer markers. So already I
cant see using it.

So how could it be useful?

Doesn't seem to have the 24/94 sound engine quality of my
daw as well.

Yes it separates midi, but my impulse is to get out of it asap.

What is it's roadmap?

Instead can more midi tools be put in biab?

thanks

The roadmap would have to come from PGMusic. We users are not privy to that.

But from your comments...

First of all, though, BIAB will not give you 24/96. Everything is recorded in 16-bit, 44.1Khz wav files (converted to compressed WMA files unless you happen to have the audiophile edition). Your DAW, however, can upsample that content when you load it.

RealBand will support greater than 16/44.1; however, you'll have to set it to match your sound card.

Lyrics can be imported into RealBand from BIAB as long as they are note based lyrics. RealBand doesn't support bar based lyrics. Just the way it is.

By markers, I assume you mean the A/B substyle markers. If you export to MIDI from BIAB and then import that MIDI into RealBand, then you're not going to get those markers, because they are BIAB specific, not in the MIDI standard. However, if you open an SGU or MGU file directly into RealBand, your chord grid markers should be preserved.

I would probably spend some time looking at the various videos provided by PGMusic for both products to get a better handle on how it works (and now you can even request videos in the new forum). And keep asking questions here. But we need to know specifically what you are trying to accomplish and specifically what didn't work, and may have to provide a copy of the file you are working on so we can better take a look (using dropbox, for example).

I beg to differ; audio selection options shown in image below.
Generated Tracks will depend on your package purchased but it does have the mentioned bit/rate options depending on your selected sound card (not DAW).
Just tryin' to hep.

Hi KGU2,

I'd say the reasons to use RealBand is that once you have your Band-in-a-Box song laid out, you can open it in RealBand and have 48 audio or MIDI tracks available for recording (Band-in-a-Box has one audio track and two MIDI tracks the user can record to).

You can also regenerate just selected bars of the tracks BIAB had generated, which isn't possible in Band-in-a-Box.

For these reasons, it's good for finishing projects that were started in BIAB.

It's also great for editing MIDI files, since it works natively in the General MIDI format, unlike many DAWs.

Of course, if you're already comfortable in another DAW, you can drag and drop tracks directly from BIAB to your DAW. It requires a few more clicks than just opening the song in RB, but it's not too bad. The biggest drawback is that your DAW can't regenerate BB tracks, but you can regenerate the song in BIAB, drag multiple versions of a track into your DAW, and copy and paste to keep the best parts.

I always say that the best DAW is the one you're comfortable with.

Hope this is helpful.

Kent
PG Music

Again, I can't use REAL BAND 2018.


1. It will not open my biab lyrics.

{ who ever heard of a song without
lyrics ? ]

2. It can not transfer markers between.


are these over-sites? I mean come on,
real band only has to communicate with
one app in the universe!

If that's your show stopper, then don't use it.

Of course, you won't get that capability in any other DAW, either.

Although, to me, it sounds like saying you can't drive your car because the driver side seat warmer doesn't work.

I find RB works out really well for my music lessons. I had really bad timing issues and with RB and BB most of it is gone. More and more I am using RB because I feel I have more control over what I am attempting to accomplish.

At first I found it very difficult but the more I work with it I like it.

...Deb

Huh? You've never heard of an Instrumental? C'mon.

John addressed both of your issues previously.
Have you tried his suggestions?
Any change?
First test would be simply opening one of your SGU files in RB.
Do Markers come across?
Then address your lyric entry issue, which may mean a change of work flow in BiaB to save time in the long run.

Hello,

yes, I've tested. Doesn't work.

@videotrack.


its no secret this program comes grandfathered from Jazz.

I've complained before it needs to
be updated to modern times.

Instrumentals? yeah it appears program is 95 % grandfathered in to users
doing jazz instrumentals.

But not modern singer / musician friendly. I mean how many singers would even attempt jazz?

I am not an RB user, but I do have a large collection of songs written with BIAB that include lyrics, both note based and a few old ones that are bar based.

I found it hard to believe that RB wouldn't be able to accept songs with lyrics or part markers so I followed John's advice and opened one of my existing note based songs in RB. It's is a "modern" pop/rock song, not a jazz classic. It has both Ral tracks, a real drum and a midi track. I didn't convert it to MIDI, WAVE, MP3 or anything else. I just opened the MGU file in RB.

It worked perfectly!! I have all the notes, it generated all of the accompaniment, the lyrics are all there, and so are the part markers. It took a while, much longer than BIAB to generate all the real tracks, but it completed successfully.

I do not understand how you can say it doesn't work.

hi KGU 2

Just to comment on your "jazz" opinion - at the last count less than 24% were jazz styles

As we are today jazz or semi jazz styles have crept into modern day and pop music just as hip hop etc. has crept into jazz

I do arrangements for a wide spectrum of music for church - pop and folk and never had any difficulty in finding ample styles appropriate to use

I sympathise with you on your other problem and yes the program must move forward but we have a very great deal to be thankful for and it seems a pity that the two programs could not be joined into one

jazzman

This is a typical PEBKAC case.

I suggest your roadmap for RB would be to reverse your workflow and start your project with RB. You can create your chord chart, part markers, select the style, tempo, and key signature and do your midi work first. Save the RB project as a midi file.

The midi file will instantly open in BIAB with the correct key signature, tempo part markers and your chord progression populating the Chord chart. At this point, you are ready to use Biab to generate tracks,change instruments,add lyrics, and make any additional changes you wish. Also you're ready to import more midi and export video.

Since your midi is in place in RB in the saved project, you have several choices for either generating midi tracks or rendering midi tracks to audio and importing that audio.

BIAB is capable of creating very complex songs that contain dozens of instruments as well as dozens of tracks so your project should proceed just as smoothly, if not smoother than had you started the project in BIAB and migrated to RB or another DAW.

It always seem to boil down to which is 'better', Biab or Realband. Guess it's the way you work to solve this issue.

As Cubase user since Atari days (Pro24 then, and audio came with the Falcon), i never liked Realband, or powertracks as DAW very much. Why? Probably the interface and some working routines are quite different. Especially the editing of MIDI data seem to me a bit like it's still in its KinderGarten days.

I must say RealBand intrigues me because of its music generation & creation capabilities, and more available audio tracks. As such i still plan on taking a deeper dive down with it, alas sort of scared of them possible sharks hiding in troubled water. But for now i am more familiar with BIAB, can shoot faster with it. Used it for so long now.

PS luckily PG gives as a choice by offering both ..... and maybe RealBand holds the real Trump card. Call me a PG fan. F

@KGU

I didn't mention Jazz or any music genre. I just mentioned the word 'Instrumentals'. Why does that have to mean Jazz?

(Instrumentals != Jazz) && (Jazz != Instrumentals)

I think yes.

Maybe, but perhaps PICNIC.

Mountain Side,

What model computer do you have that has 32gb of RAM and clocks at 4.6? Did you build it from parts? Do you mind sharing the approximate price?

2b

speed beast IMO ... these days the i7 7700 is already outdated LoL ..F

Near enough

2bSolo -

My base computer is a Dell Special Edition XPS. The Intel 7700K processor has been over-clocked a bit to a constant 4.6MHz. My over clock speed is limited by thermal issues and without going to water cooling or more, I cannot run it stable past the current speed...although there seems to be quite a noticeable performance increase at 4.7Ghz, I just can't hold it steady there.

With 4 RAM slots the computer can handle 64Gb but I think that the 32 that I have is more than needed. The memory is 2400Mhz DDR4. When my music system is running, I'm typically running 7 to 8 programs at once and rarely see more than 12-15% memory utilization. Have looked at increasing the memory to higher frequencies but think I'm at a point of diminishing returns.

In all honesty...is it fast? Yeah!...on test programs, test loads, etc. On everyday stuff...I guess..more so than my previous computers. But the biggest bang for the buck is SSD drives...no question about that. But my own experience here is that while your computer and programs will start faster, I'm not so sure they run will noticeably faster with SSD's.

YMMV

Jeff

Thanks, Jeff. Sounds like a great system.

2b

MountainSide, sorry to jump in like this.
One of the biggest annoyances for me in BIAB is rendering times... Since you have a beast of a machine, can you kindly share how long your complete song re-generation takes if you have all 7 slots with RT/RD? Very curious to know.

Thank you,
Misha.

PS on overclocking .... very popular with (graphics intensive) gaming PCs, but IMO not really nescesary with a modern (silent) audio computer, especially if you leave it on day and night like in a lot of pro-studios. Why? your computer wears out sooner due overheating etc. Fans running full speed wear out sooner too. - F

Overclocking with an audio production machine? No. I value stability over an ounce of extra speed.

Interesting question Misha. I never tried to time this before, but this machine is faster than my other two.

Here's how I set this experiment up. I selected 11 previous songs at random that I have worked on. I unfroze the styles that I had in the original song and selected a new style at random. Hit the stopwatch and "Generate and Play" button at the same time and ran the time until I heard music. I typically add RT solos to my 3 verse songs on the entire 2 chorus, in those songs with a RT solo regeneration seems to take longer.

Here are the results, with number of RT's listed first, then the regen time in seconds.

3 - 2.9
5 - 5.2
5 - 7.2
5 - 5.5
5 - 11.2
5 - 5.6
5 - 4.7
6 - 7.2
6 - 6.8
6 - 8.7
6 - 9.2

I really don't know how this compares to anyone else's regen times. It's definitely faster than my other 2 Intel i5 systems. Those systems both had programs on SSD's and secondary 7200 rpm HD's for my RT's with 12 and 16GB of memory respectively. There is a difference between the number of cores and threads on i5 versus i7 but I'm not clear on how BIAB handles those.

As others have stated, overclocking is not for the faint of heart. It will definitely void any warranty that you my have, your system will run hotter and at higher voltage; likely shortening the computer's life. You really have to run very long stress tests to be sure that your system is stable and can handle this playing around. I'll typically run stress tests for 24 hours straight or more.

In my case, I'm a technician and came into music because of the technology not the other way around. I'm sure that explains my tendency to tinker and my lack of music theory which many folks here are expert at.

Jeff

Jeff,
Thank you for running the tests!
I am guesstimating that adding a soloist tracks, regeneration will take 10 seconds on your machine on average.

I have 7600U which is 2 cores compared to 4 cores of yours. (M.2 SSD and 16gb Ram...)
7 tracks take an average of 12 seconds on my computer... 2 re-generations=full Windows startup (time-wise)

One thing that I forgot to ask, and I am guessing here... you have the UltraPak, not Audiophile edition of BIAB.


A bit sad to see such long re-gen times on such a monster of a computer. I was hoping that doubling processor cores would speed up things significantly, but difference is not that impressive. As I mentioned in other post, I believe it takes so much time because BIAB goes to original file sources every time to gathers files for re-generation instead of loading active group of RT/RD to memory. So, the long times in re-generation depends more on SSD Random access speed... and not as much on processor cores or ram amount.

Jeff, thanks again!

Misha.

Yes, I have the UltraPak. Actually, in most all of my songs I add a soloist track. Only that 3 track song is without the soloist. A full windows startup on my machine from a dead off (not sleep or restart) is 12-13 seconds. I attribute this to the SSD not so much the processor.

Possible point about BIAB going to original file sources for a new style regens. My RT's are not on my NVMe M.2 but are on my secondary 7200 rpm mechanical. Have thought about getting a larger NVMe to put all RT's on, but as I mentioned, I think that I'm at the point of diminishing returns and I've probably pushed this rig as far as it can go.

Personally, I think that I've done as much with the hardware side of the equation as I can now. Any further improvements, at least in my humble opinion, would be of the software side of BIAB's code and implementation.

YMMV

Jeff

"Any further improvements, at least in my humble opinion, would be of the software side of BIAB's code and implementation."

+1

Jeff thank you for your time and tests!

Rustyspoon, you asked if he had the ultrapak or audiophile edition. For purposes of speed tests, the audiophile edition has a slightly faster regeneration time because BIAB doesn’t have to uncompress the RealTracks first.

Note - this assumes you didn’t make WAV files out of WMA, which the program allows but normally makes little sense because of the huge storage requirement.

Hi Matt.

I know. Here is the thing. I will say upfront, I do get the "freezing" concept and I use it where it needs to be. However, my "re-generations" and renderings take about 1/2 time of tune making in BIAB. I am talking hours on each project, just those "regenerations". It does add up.

My UltraPack lives on internal M.2 SSD, it seems that a much faster computer does make some difference in cutting regen time, but not eye popping difference.

Misha.

I guess the big baddie is the wma to wav rendering. Considering the price of the Audiophile version coming on an external USB 3.0 drive INCLUDED versus the wma only download 'model', and the coming upgrading to 2019 deals, you might be wiser to follow that route instead of building a speed monster. Built an i7 5930K 3,5 GHz ASUSx99 system four years ago, and killed all the Windows 10 bullshit; it is still fast enough. About 3-5 secs rendering time for a BIAB RT ridden MGU. Biab internally installed on a separate 2TB SATA drive.

fiddler2007...
"Biab internally installed on a separate 2TB"
not a solution for me as this year it (audiophile) will most likely increase to 1.75TB, so a single internal (I can only have one HD) 2tb SSD would not do it
And larger ones cost a small fortune.

If PG had an option of "send your own drive" it would save users $100 or so on purchase of SSD or offer that option themselves (to ship it on SSD)...

options, options...

I rather see them change code slightly, to reflect modern computers, so active stuff happens in memory, not through original source to destination every generation.

a good old fashioned SATA3 drive is quite fast these days; with externals you'll have more problems as gradually slowing down USB transfers ... even if you have a separate controller chip per bus as i have ...

Not buying any more spinning drives, buried too many of them + my comp.takes only M.2. internally.
USB 3.1 C gen2. / Thunderbolt 3 looks promising for external connection, but to find out for sure have to spend a lot of money. Audiophile upgrade + 2tb external SSD... at that pace of spending, I will become hunter & gatherer pretty soon

There's 100+ gig of RealTrack audio 'chunk' options available when regenerating.
This is with the smaller WMA files; WAV is larger yet.
You want this to happen in RAM? I don't follow.
In order to have all RTs available for regenerating it has to look to some kind of storage that is larger than RAM .. or are you thinking it should load all options for that one style? (this may still be too large for many systems)

Or maybe I misunderstood your idea (?)

I 'burried' a Samsung SSD pro 250GB recently, after 3 years of intensive use only ... got some really old IDE spinning drives still perfect ... F