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Hi All,
Let me start by saying I really do love the features that RealBand offers me foe songwriting (when its not frustrating me that is).

I am considering whether to upgrade to 2019, although I'm not that sure it's worth the move from 2017. But I have a load of things that simply keep putting me off. I do realise that this might be my own setup configuration and hardware, so I'm not out to get at RealBand, but I would like some other opinions, surely more than me gets at least some of this behaviour?

1. To start off, there is just the habit of just frequently crashing while it is being used.

2. Sometimes I will save a song that has been selected as an SEQ, but forget to put the actual SEQ extension. When I have done this and try to open the file, it is not visible in the file dialog (I have to go in separately and add the extension). If I forget that I have saved the file without an extension and subsequently save the file WITH the SEQ extension, I get the dreaded 'Error has Occurred' message. That reminds that I have to go and rename the file to add the extension.

3. Sometimes when I insert a RealTrack I will get the little timer circle (normal) but then the timer circle disappears and I can't do anything, I keep getting beeps each time I try to click on something. It's as if the program has crashed. But, it is really just waiting for me to select a RealTrack from the file dialog which is not visible on the screen. After many fails at this I discovered that by using Alt-Tab I was able to get to the dialog and select the file.

4. If I have at least one audio track in my song and I attempt to change the tempo then I get a message that the Sample Rate is being changed, but this never finishes - another crash. I have to get around this by deciding on the tempo before I lay down any audio tracks.

RealBand has been around for a long time now and issues like these should really not be occurring. So I'd be grateful for any feedback so that at least I can point the finger at myself.

Thanks

John
none of these problems trouble me so maybe i'm just lucky. al the problems i've had with RB have been operator error solved by posting on this forum! except the DI problem for Guitar realtracks and that is a known bug..........
I'm going out on a limb.
They don't happen to me either 2019. I do however some of those issues in 2017. I THINK 2017 went to build 4 but RB 2017 was broke beyound 2 or 3. Try going back to an older build.
1. I do not get frequent crashes. A crash is pretty rare here.

2. I have never experienced this. If I select SEQ format it has alsawys saved as a .seq extension, and wav format as wav, etc. That said, there is a newer option added in this area in the last year; there is now a checkbox to set 'Default to SEQ format when saving a file'.
I don't understand how it could save a file without an extension. I've never seen that at all.

3.This was an issue for a couple versions. As you've noticed the Alt-Tab method works (as do others) as a workaround, but I feel like this was fixed over a year ago.

4. Sorry, I don't get this one either.
One thing I do know is doing this process creates a whole bunch of temp files in your Temp Audio directory.
Why? Because you can Undo it, and RB needs all those original chunks to revert to.
Not sure if that helps or provides a clue but thought I'd mention.

I just performed this action (tempo change) on a song with 9 RTs and it created 44 temp files. (Note that I had generated various sections on some tracks so I had lots of audio 'chunks' scattered around those 9 tracks).
If your Temp Audio directory is getting full or the drive is being overworked, maybe it lags too much (?)
I dunno. Just guessing, as I just don't see this result here.
Your Temp Audio directory can be set to any drive available, maybe that will help or eliminate some possibilities.

I'd also consider John's suggestion and try previous updates for 2017 as a test. Maybe a previous build will play nicer on your machine.


Originally Posted By: jonel
...
I am considering whether to upgrade to 2019
...

Hi John,
If history repeats itself, there may be a 2020 version soon. It may even have special pricing. This is all only a guess, I have absolutely no evidence, but Santa often pops up his head at PG Music in December wink
Thank you rharv for your detailed reply. This is exactly what I was looking for and clearly there is an issue from my end.

When I first started to get these problems I looked for a RealBand update (I'm embarrassed to say that I don't even know what 'build' my version is or even where to find it).
I thought it might have been part of the BIAB update, which I did download and apply but there was no reference to RealBand there.

Thanks again

John
Your build is shown under Help - About Realband in the top menu
Thanks, but try as I might, the box tells me it's RealBand Version (2) but no build information.
For my BiaB though the information is Version 2017 (471) where I assume 471 is the build number.
But I'm guessing that any RealBand updates will be part of the 471 buils anyway.

hi


Originally Posted By: jonel
Thanks, but try as I might, the box tells me it's RealBand Version (2) but no build information.
For my BiaB though the information is Version 2017 (471) where I assume 471 is the build number.
But I'm guessing that any RealBand updates will be part of the 471 buils anyway.



You will find that Realband update builds do not come as part of biab updates.
Go to the Realband forum page and you will see the latest update at the top for the current version
My installed version shows as version 2019 (5) under about.

For the latest update for earlier versions go to:
Support (Top of page)/ Widows updates/Realband

Mike
Thanks Mike. Got it, updated. Didn't solve the problem unfortunately, but I think I'm on the path.
Well to just answer the question in the post - Yes. But I stopped using it long ago because of this so things might be different today. I just felt you needed a simple answer to a simple question. crazy
I have been through the same with RealBand and eventually gave up and this gave birth to ReaTrak, it integrates Biab and the Biab Plugin into Reaper.
When RB is setup right it rocks I used it exclusively for about two years. It was solid I did have a few crashes but usually it was related to trying things it didn’t do or pushing it to fast. For the singer songwriter type it’s hard to beat.

Detail your setup and maybe something will jump out.

2020 is right around the corner I would upgrade then.
Also, pre-2018 (and in the initial release of 2018 until it was fixed) had an issue where it did not properly save files that may be deep into a file folder tree (the Windows limit of folder plus filename length is 260 characters; RealBand and PowerTracks limited it to 128 characters). This caused me all sorts of problems, as I manage my hard drive space using a lot of file folders with descriptive names.

Don't know if that is part of your problem, but I ended up with a lot a crashes (especially when I went one character over the limit). After it was fixed, I almost never have a crash.
Yes, jford, I am absolutely convinced that this IS one of the problems with my saving files but oddly it only really happens with the custom dialog. I wasn't aware of that limit I, too, have some quite deeply nested folders.
Do you have 'Log File Names use custom open/save dialogues' enabled?
May also want to check the 'Open and Save As dialogues remember last folder independently'
These are both in Options-Prefs-File section.
My Long file names use custom dialog is currently not enabled, this is what started off the problems I was having. I will nest my projects back near the root and have another go at using this feature (it was great to use Favorites but the box was small and couldn't be expanded so my long filenames disappeared off to the right of the box making the feature useless. So I guess it was never designed for very long file names!
Since version 2018, you get the full 260 characters (folders plus file name).

And if you happen to save your songs under "My Documents", remember that is actually a shortcut to:

"C:\Users\UserName\Documents"

so that's around 27 characters right there before any other folders and/or file names.
I had a lot of crashes too so I stopped using it.
I think the crashes were related to the fact that RB is 32 bit and the file sizes were getting to be aver 500Mb.
Must have been hitting some type of RAM limit on my old hard ware.
Another this was that wanted to try out some plugins and see what was so great about a plugin that I had read about.
I had to jump thru all kinds of hoops to try to get them to work with little success.

So then I heard about Cakewalk by Bandlab.
I moved my project to it. Spent some time to learn a bit.
No crashes and no issues at all to try out a plugin.

Later I heard about Reaper.
Found the tutorials at Reaper.fm to be very very very easy to follow, interesting and informative.
After the 60 day trial I bought it for $60.
No crashes. 64 bit. all plugins run with no effort. great support. awesome training.

Reaper does not load all of the files into one file.
The reaper file is very small.
If you browse to the folder you will see lots of files. every audio take etc stays external.
you can undo to your hearts content.
Save is very fast because only the new areas get saved. not 500mb every time you hit save.

Your mileage may vary, but that is my story
You didn't read about JBridge on the forum? It's ten bucks through PGM. Then all of your plugs play perfectly in RB. Plus none of those DAWS can do what RB can right out of the box. Now, I'm just talking about problems with RB crashing. I understand there are other legitimate reasons to use other DAWs because you like their workflow, features, the overall look, etc but if the reason was you couldn't make RB work, then that's incorrect.

Bob
I rarely use RB only because it offers nothing for my workflow. But I can say that when I do use it I rarely, if ever, have it crash.
Jazzmammal, you and I have argued this before.

Unless you are with us to see what happens, you don't know if we have crashes or not. And a lot of us have had many crashes. I had one every session. Those of us who did are not total idiots either.

I agree with you that RB has great functions. I liked it. I like PG Music. But I couldn't live with the crashing. And I haven't had that problem with the software I moved to.

So while you may be happy with RB as your DAW (and I'm glad you are), it's incorrect to say we didn't have this problem.

2b
I was thinking about that the other day how RB saves it all in one big file rather than a source location reference like most DAWs.
If it had some sort of sandbox connection to the audio/midi driver that would crash out and not effect the main program ???? JBridge's PluginFlipFlop works that way, you load the VST into it and load another so if it crashes it will just load the other instance.
But what do you do, modify it, re-write it, update to 64bit, or just make do with it how it is ???
Cakewalk ProAudio 9.3 saves a project as a single file - it's called a bundle and was a proprietary zip style thing. It ONLY did it upon request and that was also a LONG time ago.
There were sensitivity issues with Bundles & the same version of Pro Audio that created it versus earlier or later versions. I was glad to move on to Reaper.
I did try RealBand but as it was neither logical or intuitive to use FOR ME I didn't bother getting into it in details.
2020 seems rock solid but perpetuates the error message i got with 2019 after generating a RealTrack and using the edit menu undo if I wanted to delete it.

erase track works fine but undo gives me an error message saying the program may have problems - but it never does!
I tried the JBridge thing and had trouble.
So I just put Real Band to the side for now.
Thanks for the tips though!

I did complete my first song in RealBand last year!
Originally Posted By: 2bSolo
Jazzmammal, you and I have argued this before.

Unless you are with us to see what happens, you don't know if we have crashes or not. And a lot of us have had many crashes. I had one every session. Those of us who did are not total idiots either.


Do you know what a beta test is? All the testing just finished for 2020. Nobody reported crashing issues and believe me the subject came up because of a few like you who keep talking about it. Don't you think the developers want to know about that if it exists?

I'm not doubting you're having crashes, I'm only doubting the cause. Please post exactly what you were doing when RB crashed step by step as in you opened this, you clicked on that, you changed the tempo, opened the Edit window, then you hit generate and it crashed or whatever so we can try to reproduce it and then give them a chance to fix it.

Just saying it crashes at least once every session and you can't use it is a waste of time. What's the point if you're not going to treat this as a test and let them try to fix it? Maybe you are doing some combination of things we never thought of and it does cause a crash so report it.

Bob
I had many crashes a few years back. I found most of them were third party plugin related. Also some traced back to sound card drivers.

It’s very helpful to detail what causes it so the program develops properly
Maybe this would help..

I don't have crashes in RealBand and I use:

Audio Device/s =

Audio Driver Type = Windows Audio ? MME ? ASIO ?
Jazzmammal,

Thanks for acknowledging that the crashes occurred.

RB2020 passing beta is good but irrelevant. I have RB2016.

I'm glad RB works for you. I couldn't get it to work for me. I changed to Reaper using the same computer. I didn't spend any more time learning the system. I had one crash in about 200 hours. So do you expect me to spend time debugging RB or recording?

My best to you, PG and all the members of this forum. I appreciate all the help you have given me. Happy holidays.

2b
Reaper, Cubase, Cakewalk, Studio one, Protools, etc. are all going to be somewhat more stable than RB. none of those programs look back at BiaB folders for co tent and functionality. it really boils down to what you need to accomplish. I have tracked over 100 different song files in RB mostly for live performance. these started out as simple .mid, or .kar files and then RTs and RDs, loops, multiple VSTi plugins. The lyrics and chord screens were scrolled. all in all a ton of work was done. And it went very smoothly at first I played several time live with them. I did have a few crashes, mostly while tracking them and working out different sounds for certain instruments. Overall it went great. after accouple years with a computer change and a computer upgrade, I had some issues where some of the files got corrupted. I don't think this was totally RBs fault. a lot came from swapping in and out the various midi instruments.

Could RB use some TLC and some modernization? Yes! Can you track a project with it as it is, again Yes.

One thing is undeniable, none of the programs mentioned above could do what RB can do over all. it is very unique. Still it needs some love as does Powertracks.

I think it a tad unfair to say "debugging RB" it certainly needs a bit of work in some area, but it is not un unusable. It needs some love, a few added tools, a bit of GUI work, refining some it has.

There's no need to fuss over it. We each get to use what works best for us, and we will have different experiences in how programs work. We will each have stuff that is shakey on our system, but not for someone else.
Rob,

Thanks for this post.

2b
Just wondering if this whole thing isn't a driver issue. First, I would be sure you have the latest build and update for your version. Call tech support if you are not exactly sure if you have it or how to install it.

Second.... the fact that in #1 you have frequent crashes makes me think you have driver incompatibility issues. Be sure you are using the correct driver for your sound card. I did not see you mention the sound card or interface you are using. Hopefully, it's not a built in card/chip.... If it is external, it should be capable of running on ASIO. Be sure that is selected as the default. AND.... be sure nothing else is open, running, and using the ASIO driver. ASIO won't share itself on 2 programs at the same time.


I'm running an old machine and I don't recall one single crash with BB or RB. They run pretty flawlessly.
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