I’m running the latest copy of Reaper and went to load the B-n-B plugin then generated some tracks then hit the send button to send them to Reaper then soloed each track inside Reaper and noticed the tracks sound garbled, gritty and distorted. I thought what could be doing that? I loaded the WMA file (RPS034.wma) inside Reaper and it was not garbled, gritty and distorted. I then turned off the “Use Reaper Instructions” then generated the tracks then sent them over to Reaper and everything sounded OK. This “Use Reaper Instructions” is broke.

Can you upload a Reaper .rpp that is garbled, gritty and distorted.
What is the actual Reaper version ?

Here's the zip file you can look at: https://we.tl/t-tczM9OtQTd

Reaper 7.11
Files -> https://we.tl/t-tczM9OtQTd

I figured out why there are clicks and pops in the garbled tracks. It's because the "Use Reaper Instructions" chops up the track into bit and pieces when it transfers the tracks. These segments in the transferred track do not have cross fades on them which produces clicks and pops. You can see that that they really do overlap without cross fades.

Do you know the story of The King who had no clothes?
It describes a situation in which people are afraid to criticize sometime because the perceived wisdom is that something is good or of great value.

Just to be clear here is what PGM has to says about this...
I looked at your files. That is exactly as designed! Just the "instructions" as stung out in seqence. If you want them put together is a smooth manner you have to run the instructions thru the BIAB engine to generate the final audio.

So now you know. Long live the king.

Thanks for the rpp you didn't need to save the files with it as it would just reference the same files on my Biab drive.
There should be a fix for that soon but the PLUGIN programmer needs to wait on the Biab programmer to fix it in BBW4 that runs in the background:
DAW Send Reaper Instructions to Tracks Puts Gaps in Generated Tracks
Set Reaper to Items always mix
Advanced Mode of Working with Biab
See also: Open SGU in Reaper

This is "NOT by design" there's two bug's in the system:
1. Crossfades are not produced in the output which creates clicks and pops.
2. Stretched garbled auto is not a optimal by-product of the BnB engine. The BnB engine must work on the audio
just like it does now without the plugin involved then do the transfer to the plugin after it performs it's operations.
Not garble the audio then transfer it Reaper. (If it is by design then that feature should be deleted from the system
for not reaching a usable state or until Reaper adds more API to handle it better. The ReaScript & LUA scripting
language in Reaper is pretty robust)

That bizarre chopping up of tracks was part of the collection of oddities that contributed to me throwing my toys out of the pram the other day when I was also having multiple misbehaviours with the drag-and-drop. Clearly I'm right to stay away from it for a while.

This is the way it has worked through all of beta testing and final release going on forover two months. PGM has not acknowleged that a fix is needed or coming! This is not included in the tracking list of bugs. All that talk about fixes coming, comes from one guy who does not speak for PGM. Adar, the developer was clear in his statement I provided, if you don't like the way it works, turn it off in the preferences.

You know.. I've been a software engineer for over 35 years. Early in my career I used to receive bug reports and get upset that somebody would criticize my software that I developed by telling me I missed something or I had to go the extra mile to accommodate the user in some fashion. I tell you right now those products that I built suffered in quality that yielded a true lack of usage. I was really in game of destroying the messenger of the bug report or even the user for that matter. I soon learned that if I was to design a piece of software that user loved and came back to everyday to get what he/she needed done, I must listen to them and understand what and why they are saying these things. I hope the real programmer here stands up chimes in and hears on what I’m saying about these issues. I'm just the messenger, user, investor and a programmer.

What I learnt coming here years ago if you try to change things, fix thing or suggest new ideas you get jumped on by long term users and you end up saying "it's not worth it I will just leave and not come back" as so many do, hence why it has been held back in the 90's technology and looks for so long.
I suggested the PLUGIN years and years ago and kept posting ideas how it could work then eventually PG hired a PLUGIN programmer for the job, hence the job.
Getting it to work now in Reaper was because of years of posting how it could be done with virtually zero interest or support from other users, even other users saying don't worry about those Reaper idea postings it's all crap. But the users now don't mind using all the new functions now added to Biab and the PLUGIN because of the ideas posted using Reaper.
Long story short, if I left after negativity of first coming here it would be still in the dark ages.

Relax Muso, I am confident you will still be here long after all the old timers are gone.

My intent here was only to clarify your response to the OP,

Just for the record, you are not the only one contributing to the advancement of BIAB. A group of old timers/users spend a considerable about of time testing and discussing and recommending directly with PGM. Which is why I pointed out that currently there is no "fix for that soon" that I am aware of. The general understanding is this feature, introduced in 2024, may become more prominate in 2025 when it will be further developed. In the mean time use it or turn it off in preferences.

I didn't want the OP to get the wrong idea.

"there is no "fix for that soon" that I am aware of"
how aware of things are they when saying something is crap then PG implement it ? I would say zero awareness of things.
He won't get the wrong idea, he got the IDEA and is using it, the PLUGIN, it now generates fast and you don't have to wait for wav files, why ? because some idiot posted all the information that went over the heads of most users, and still does.

Hello Kip,

Some of the comments in this thread are incorrect.

First, I tested your project file and the distortion is definitely there and sounds terrible, especially on the Guitar tracks. This is an artifact caused by Reaper pitch shifting and tempo stretching the wave files.

You can fix this by going to File | Project Settings and setting the pitch shifting method to Elastique Pro 3. It's possible there are other parameters here which you can set. Try the defaults (see attached image).

With the Reaper Instructions feature, it's Reaper that does a lot of the 'processing' of the raw wave files. If you weren't using Reaper Instructions, then it would be Band-in-a-Box doing the tempo stretching and any additional processing, and it would be giving you one long wave file for each track, all ready to go. Each method has pros and cons.

So DrDan is more or less correctly describing the feature, but didn't identify the cause of the distortion, while I think Musocity is talking about the concept of the BiaB DAW plugin in general.

All sound fine, thanks for weighing in.

The default setting you show are indeed "default" in Reaper. These were set on my machine when I played the tracks. While I didn't really hear "clicks and pops" I did hear poor sounding audio (distortion? maybe). So is Reaper not stretching and processing the audio pieces as well as BIAB does it??

Reaper uses the same Elastique engine, so I would expect that overall the quality is as good as Band-in-a-Box. However, there are various settings and other factors. For example, there are lower quality settings that require less CPU power. I found that the OP's project (to clarify, a project-specific setting) was set to Elastique 3 "Soloist" and when I changed it to Elastique 3 "Pro", that fixed most of the distortion I was hearing. It's possible that the Soloist setting has a specific use case - maybe only monophonic material. It would make sense that it didn't do well with those strumming guitar tracks.

OK, good answer. The Soloist is default, I changed it to pro and sure enough the guitar strum was brighter and clearer.

That is just another FIX that needs adding:
PLAYRATE 1 1 0 -1 0 0 > PLAYRATE 1 1 0 589824 0 0

I don't think Soloist is the default for a new project, and it shouldn't be. It should be (and IS, as far as I can tell) "Elastique 3 Pro" which is the best quality.

Thanks Andrew.. That was very helpful. I did change mine to Elastique 3 "Soloist" because some Youtube video told me too for processing mono material. I have to be aware of that when I switch back and forth between BnB and mono material.