A few things that could be better

PG Music Home

Hi, I am starting to use RealBand once a month it seems. Not only that Realband has become a lot more important because I am now using our jam recordings as filler music between songs during live jams and I want the balance to be pretty good. So I guess it is time to wish upon a star :-) I am using 2016 at the moment.

The first thing is it bombs a lot. I wish it did not. I guess I will start sending in the dump info.

The node feature to adjust volume at various points is great. However it does not send these adjustments to "save as .wav". I did an extreme experiment and it is confirmed. I end up having to run realband and send the signal out to another computer. Not only is this a lot of time and extra work that I gather should not be necessary but it also produces a reduced volume recording. This one has me thinking I might look for a replacement.

The whole selection view button for the track window does not seem to consistently work. It could also have some enhancements to allow more options.
---All but it needs to work always.
---just the area that has sound
---selection which is has now
---view enough to see all the markers
---Grab the bar scale and drag it in to whatever you want.
This could be handy both when expanded to big and you want to reduce the expansion
It would also be handy when viewing whole and you want to reduce the compression.
---maybe by percentages (100% 50% 25% etc whatever)

It aborted once when I tried to put on some reverb so I never tried again.

After I was getting a lot of aborts I started saving my work. So I got an abort that made me decided to go back to my saved work. The saved work still aborted in that spot so it was a waste of time saving the work. So it would be a great idea to have a time stamp save of work (date/time stamp that is). Actually a better idea would be to have it rotate. Here is what I mean. The song name would be at the front of the file and there would be a max number and it would save until that number was reached and after that it would loop back to the beginning. Users would find the most recent by sorting by date/time of the last update. It should auto start sorting that way so the latest one is at the top. Lastly the user should be able to adjust the max number. For my website they have this feature and I have the max number set to 100. I would probably select 10 for RealBand since the file is very large and I do not use it as much.

The markers probably should have a jump to in the list of markers. When jumped to it should be centered in the tracks window.

That is all I can think of. Not a heavy user yet. In a way this makes these concerns more noticeable. Aborting is always the biggest concern. I think that one is the one that makes me think of getting a replacement the most. BIAB rarely bombs. RealBand bombs on about every 3rd or 2nd song I work on. I might ask the jam group for suggestions but the node volume adjust idea is a must for any replacement. Any replacement will immediately get a test to see if it holds it during writes to a .wav file before the trial period is over.

Thanks,
John

You probably are, but thought I would mention it anyway. Make sure you are running the latest version of RealBand 2016 (Build 10). Not so much in build 10, but a whole lot of fixes occurred in build 9.

Thanks John.

Assuming that "Version 2016 (7)" means build 7, I guess I have to apply some fixes. I guess when I did all the fix downloads it was just BIAB I was upgrading. Either that or maybe it is because I had to replace my disk drive and I never got the fixes after I did that. I will pock around and try to figure out where to get these fixes. I think I took note of a page that has all the release notes. Maybe it is there.

I won't know the result until a few days after April 28th when we have our next jam.

John

John - The BIAB and RealBand updates are posted separately. The RealBand updates are less frequent, but like the BIAB updates, they are all-inclusive of the previous updates. So if you are on Build 7 (as indicated), then you are 3 builds behind, and as you can see from the description on the update page, you won't have the following updates if you are still on build 7:

Quote:

Summary of Changes for 2016 Build 10 (Sept 9, 2016)
Added: Improved support for time-based VST plugin features. Synchronization / tempo lock now works for plugins such as JamStix, Addictive Drums, EZ Drummer, and RapidComposer. This allows, for example, plugins like JamStix Virtual Drummer to generate and play drum arrangements in real-time.

Summary of Changes for 2016 Build 9 (Aug 3, 2016)
Added: Support for Xtra Styles. These are 150+ additional RealStyles that use existing RealTracks from a 2016 Ultra/EverythingPAK. More information about Xtra Styles.
Improved: Faster generation of Loops or UserTracks in some cases.
Fixed: Song Title now uses a text edit control that pops up on top of the Song Title field, so that the editing it will work like a normal edit control.
Fixed: Pressing the Chorus Begin button didn't usually update the text of the button.
Fixed: loading in an BB song with an early ending wasn't generating the early ending correctly.
Fixed: TGS files were not loading at all for RB 2016 when loading in a BB song.
Fixed: after getting TGS files to load, drums and piano TGS files were swapped.
Fixed: if a BB track was excluded from a rest, shot, or held chord, and the track were regenerated, the track wasn't excluded.
Fixed: if measure offset wasn't the default, the music may have been offset incorrectly compared to the chords entered in the chords window.
Fixed: some newer styles that realtracks with loops in it would generate every realtrack in the style, when attempting to generate an individual track.
Fixed: regeneration of a loop didn't work.
Fixed: Clicking snap button in Tracks Window visually released the long button.
Fixed: nodes sometimes showing to the left of the overview section in the Tracks Window.
Fixed: track volume, chorus, reverb, modulation not set to default values.
Fixed: track categories not reset to defaults in a new song.
Fixed: Undo of generating a RT didn't always work.
Fixed: recording of mixer moves didn't usually create the corresponding volume nodes.
Fixed: issue of RB freezing when loading demo with DRMNBAS.STY.
Fixed: Importing a WAV file removed all track categories.
Fixed: Selecting "DRMNBAS.STY" in the StylePicker and hitting the Load Song Demo caused RB to crash with an Access Violation.
Fixed: Selecting Note Names: Channel Numbers in Notation Window Options shows numbers on the notes heads, but they don't correspond to MIDI channels at all.
Fixed: Triplets not written to XML file correctly if a triplet began with a rest.
Fixed: Some XML files, saved by certain programs, were getting access violations when loaded into RB.
Fixed: Generated music might be generated in wrong bar locations (out of sync with the chords shown in the bars) if there was a bar offset of zero.
Fixed: Band menu would always show styles that weren't installed on the user's hard drive.
Fixed: Loading in a BB song, such as SGU or MGU, might result in an access violation due to an inconsistency in the type/size of strings stored in the song structure.
Fixed: When entering chords in the chords window, and it scrolls to new row during entering, the screen redraw/entering may not work correctly (current bar may jump to top row and redrawing temporarily messed up).
Fixed: Changing a part marker in a song when the song is scrolled to the 2nd page of the chords window might result in the window jumping back to the beginning of the song.
Fixed: Duration and snap-to settings in the Piano Roll Window weren't always (or usually) sticking, if you closed and reopened the window.
Fixed: Access violation for paste with data filter and ctrl-7.
Fixed: In Chords Window, entering a chord on beat 3 of a 3/4 bar caused the 1st beat of next bar to be erased.

Thanks John. I just applied the patches, checked the build to be sure it is now build 10 which it is and tried the node volume test which still fails. I originally reported that on a separate thread. I will send a link to support with that thread link. It now has a picture to make sure it is clear.

Quote:

After I was getting a lot of aborts I started saving my work. So I got an abort that made me decided to go back to my saved work. The saved work still aborted in that spot so it was a waste of time saving the work. So it would be a great idea to have a time stamp save of work (date/time stamp that is). Actually a better idea would be to have it rotate. Here is what I mean. The song name would be at the front of the file and there would be a max number and it would save until that number was reached and after that it would loop back to the beginning. Users would find the most recent by sorting by date/time of the last update. It should auto start sorting that way so the latest one is at the top. Lastly the user should be able to adjust the max number. For my website they have this feature and I have the max number set to 100. I would probably select 10 for RealBand since the file is very large and I do not use it as much.

The markers probably should have a jump to in the list of markers. When jumped to it should be centered in the tracks window.

FWIW when you save a file in RB it does make a backup of the previous version. You can find the location in Options-Prefs.

These backups are time stamped, and can be great for tracking down issues. For exmample;
Maybe you added a new plugin that isn't playing nice with RB now.
You open the previous saved file and it may contain the same plugin.

Open a backup from 2 weks ago and it may not .. this can help find problems as well as get you back to a last known working copy.

Use File-Open Special - Open Backup (may be different in previous versions).
Look for the BKS files (backups) that RB created in the folder specified in the Prefs section mentioned above.
These backups can be well worth investigating.

Thanks Rharv. I found it and attached an image. My external hard drive is unplugged at the moment. I left myself a note for my next mix down session a month from now.
John

Attached picture New Bitmap Image.png

They are normally in the Backup folder in your Realband folder as far as location (from memory).
I think there is a way to change this to your 'Temp Audio Directory' (which is another storage trick available) but I don't recall the details now.

Looks like you should have the last 5 versions, as long as you worked on it fairly recently.
As your image suggests, if you need the 6th or 7th you may be able to find them in your Recycle Bin. That's where the expiring ones get moved according to your settings,