Apparently, the moment of truth is nearly upon us. Catalina will officially discontinue support for 32-bit apps. BIAB is currently one of those apps.

Please, someone from PG Music chime in and tell me that a 64-bit build is forthcoming. I've used BIAB since the mid 90s. I rely on it. I shouldn't have to delay critical OS updates to my computer because an update would break BIAB.

I guess I'm disappointed. I just got off support chat, and no solid information was available. The world has known about this situation for 3+ years. Again, I'm just very disappointed.

Hopefully, the mods will appreciate that I've tried to be constructive with this post. No offense intended, hopefully none taken. I just have certain expectations when I pay good money for a product and have been a loyal (and vocal) supporter of said product for decades. I will volunteer to be a beta tester if necessary. I have 30+ years experience working with software development as a tech writer.

There are many threads on this subject. What we know:

a) BIAB 2019 for Windows is 64 bit and has been out a few months now.

b) A 64 bit version for Mac is supposed to be on its way.

c) No release date has been announced

d) No beta has been released

e) The current versions of BIAB 2018 work well in Apple's currently supported OS: Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave

Since (e) is true, BIAB 2019 for Mac will have to be compatible with OS 10.15 and the developer beta of that OS was released this week, (c) and (d) make a lot of sense to me.

I have my upgrade $$$ budgeted, too.

Thanks for the response. I don’t frequent this forum. My first attempt to find information was to engage support via chat. It’s not at all unreasonable to expect support to provide me the information you just did. Derek (chat rep) wouldn’t even verify that BIAB 2019 Mac would be 64-bit.

Anyway, great news. I’ll definitely be upgrading.

I can confirm that current BIAB is not working on current beta of macOS Catalina

i have a feeling that we will get the 64bit version with an AU plug-in feature like Windows. This functionality could really inprove PG Music placement into the producer market

Excellent comment.

It has been known for years ( at least for the past 30/40 years that I have been supporting/purchasing the annual updates ) that the Mac versions of the Band are years behind the Window version . Even features noted in the manuals that just don't work in the Mac . On the other hand PG offer a 30day no questions/hassle refund ( not available with many of the high end DAW's ) .

I truly feel sorry for PG's tech crew having to respond to questions such as yours which is a very valid question/concern . Ultimately it is MR PG himself that has left his tech crew out of the loop and also his customers .

I personally i just think the task and man-resources of bringing BIAB Mac into the 2020 century are so onerous - as the continual bugginess of tis product proves - YET...... this tech is so amazing and more so in its future potential that its time the PG owners seriously consider selling the tech to Yamaha. And put it under the wing of the Steinberg team.

The sale should be contingent on Yamaha putting a serious investment into a new developer team which can really take the product forward - and rethink the GUI - and more to the point - integrate BIAB as a VST3 into the Cubase and DAW ecosystem.

Imagine if a BIAB VST3 plugin ( maybe with a server back end into a new version of BIAB ) for MIDI styles could use any instrument in HALION Sonic SE ( or even full sonic )

Imagine if the power of BIAB was combined with the back catalog of Yamaha PG and Genos/Tyros styles and sounds - merged into a new style format.

PG Music could then become the supper of purely style content.

And RealBand and PowerTracks of course would be ditched - and instead an upgrade/side grade deal to a Cubase of some sort could be built into the transition.

BIAB needs new blood developer wise. Clearly - with the archaic old code from Atari days still in there its time for something new.

And YAMAHA has shown good form in handling its acquisitions over the decades. Both Sternberg and Line 6 have flourished.

Hi Atmospheric,

Because the possibility of 64-bit is about a future release, it's standard practice for PG Music to keep all new features under wraps until the release. It's the same with the Windows version.

Regards,
Noel

I think they were saying that all apps will keep working without any issues from macOS Santa Cruz 10.16 on. That is awesome news, total compatibility, no more headaches and frustration for developers and users, no more different apps for different versions of macOS.

But back to PG, they have made a quantum leap this year going to 64bit and especially the plugin that is now working really well after giving the Win users a bit of grief getting it sorted, so for the Mac users it will be worth the wait, forget about getting a mac RealBand the plugin is the way to go.

"I think they were saying that all apps will keep working without any issues from macOS Santa Cruz 10.16 on. That is awesome news, total compatibility, no more headaches and frustration for developers and users, no more different apps for different versions of macOS. "

Apple said that? And what the heck is macOS Santa Cruz? I must have missed something....

Thanks

Bud

Yes, as Windows has an advertising campaign saying win apps just keep running and you don't need a new app version for each new os version update so apple did not want to be out done by this and will make it so from the next island version on stay compatible with apps.
I think too it's from all the complaining, standing up and feedback mac user have been giving apple and not just to take what apple thinks is best and just grin n bear it (you must follow and obey the leader at all times).

Conspiracy theory or stand-up comedy?

If Apple took customer feedback seriously in charting the future, we'd be eagerly awaiting the latest version of the Apple II and hoping that it wouldn't mess up VisiCalc.

Windows wouldn't exist and MS would still be trying to tell us that DOS rules. Perhaps it would.

I think what I'll do to solve the issue is Carbon Copy Clone my 10.9 drive to some new drives then upgrade or downgrade each drive to a different version, then when you go to run an app and it says you need this version or that version, I just reboot to the boot menu and select that drive. You could even have a common drive to store files on.

Microsoft, despite its compatibility modes in Windows 10, is not above breaking perfectly good software. I had to update and recompile my database applications from Windows XP that simply would not run on Windows 8 or 10.

Ahhhh Comedy. Ignoring the fact that it wouldn't work, it would be fun to watch.


I spent 23 years in a Windows environment, many of them doing tech support for local software firms. When someone goes on about the fantasy of Windows compatibility, I have volumes of horror stories about that nonsense—and it certainly is.

for something that don't work it seems to work fine.
You can partition the drive but I used separate 120SSD to keep it all separate.
It's a good way to try betas. When I was googling it the main reason users create multiboot systems is because of app compatibility, the same reason I did it, and also what I thought of with Carbon Copy is what they do.
Heck you can even add a Linux and Win in there. I've used BootCamp but this way is better. I remember using rEFIt on one of the Macs also to boot Lion or Win7 and installed the hfs driver from the bootcamp package.

"I was using El Capitan without issues till now. I'm starting to use Pro Tools 10 which is incompatible with El Capitan, so I will need to install a previous OS X version like Mavericks to make it work."
"I used CCC successfully to partition up an external hard drive and install multiple Mac OSes on it, so that I could boot my computer from Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion or Mavericks."

"High Sierra was the last version of macOS that fully supported 32-bit applications. It’s likely that in Mojave, if a 32-bit app runs at all, it will have problems with performance and stability. Microsoft Office 2011 is 32-bit, as is Adobe CS 6. So, if you want to keep using those apps, you’ll need to run them in High Sierra. That means you’ll need to install macOS Mojave on a separate volume."

The issues with Mac that I state are true, as I said I love Mac but it totally puts me off it with nearly every update something don't work or you need to update to the latest version.
You need to be honest, I be honest with the issues with Biab and that has got me in a lot of hot water from other users that don't speak up, just take what they are given and make do with issues or problems, but I tell the truth and speak out and a lot of things have changed. You need to do that will apple, don't just accept what they give the followers, complain, stand up, be honest and bring about a change. The leader doesn't always know whats best.
They is no way in the world you get app compatibility issues every time you download updates with Windows like Mac, it's not a completion I love windows and hate mac, I love mac and hate windows. I beta test the win and mac to make them both better !!!!

Agreed. RealBand should be retired eventually to allow resources to be focused better on BIAB and the plugin.

Did it ever have much of a user base?

I was using it for a while, promoted it way back and it served a purpose but was a little too error prone. The idea behind it is what the plugin now uses, a biab app that runs silently in the background generating up the tracks (this side is very solid) to a folder that are then played back in sync to the DAW or dragged in. I'm just using the plugin in Reaper now with ReaTrak that imports the chords from the plugin into Reaper, you can also generate up the RealDrum track directly in Reaper that gives you a bit more control, it will let you fit tracks from the plugin to a tempo map so it will fit RealTracks/Drums to a live session.
Just looking also to create a script to get the chords from the plugin into Cubase.
They might be adding midi import to the plugin to get the tempo map/time signatures from the DAW into the plugin or vice versa and be able to export the chords from the plugin via midi file markers.

You described a technical impossibility and are trying to back it up with random quotes off the internet.

I am all for having a discussion — but that isn't it.

If you don't know how to do it your best to leave it alone.
I have no problem at all doing it.

Hey Mike, I wouldn't be so quick to write Pipeline off.
Look for some of his older posts, he's done some crazy stuff just because he could.

I actually followed the instructions he posted for running RealBand in a WINE wrapper a while back and it worked surprisingly well.
I also played around with it for a while too, but found it a bit kludgey routing MIDI over IAC busses, and audio through Soundflower just to link the Windows and Mac sides.
Amazingly though, it did work pretty well feeding into Logic on the Mac side (and with surprisingly little latency too).

So if anybody here could do something that most would call "impossible" it would be Pipline.

As far as multiple operating systems/backward compatibility, if that's one of the points of contention (I'm not sure if I'm following this discussion correctly, it's getting a bit confusing now). LOL

Right now I currently have Snow Leopard, El Capitan, and High Sierra partitions I can boot from, and I'm sure I can still boot all the in between versions if I bothered to load them.
I have a drive sitting on the desk which I was booting Mojave from, but too many plugin UI graphics glitches with my "non metal" card, so I shelved it for now.

One of my main reasons for multi-booting is that I have a lot of older work in Cubase SX3 which was PPC only, so I boot into Snow Leopard fairly often to export files for use in Logic or Cubase 10.
It's a testament to how far the hardware has come in 10 years that I can run a PPC program in a 10 year old operating system, even through "Rosetta's" dynamic compilation and have it feel like the same performance as back in the day (feel not benchmarks).
With 12 cores, solid state drives, and boatloads of RAM I can run anything all the way back to the advent of 32 bit programs (be it PPC or Intel) and have it actually be useable.

Sorry if I lost the point of this conversation, and sent it out into left field, but I believe you were still talking about backward compatibility right ?
If not then as Emily Litella used to say... "never mind".

Anyway... back to Catilina....
I've been using BIAB since version 3 or 4 (late '80's can't remember), and I've seen PG make the leap from 16 to 32 bits, 68K to PPC, PPC to Intel, and every roadblock Apple has thrown up with their OS updates in between.

I have complete confidence that they will be able to make the transition to 64 bits.

- Jay

I know why I threw the red flag and have no intention of going down that rabbit hole.

Anyway, the MacOS is going forward. BIAB must do the same and we've been told they are so all's good on that front. Just wish they'd hurry up

Posts about how the Mac OS should try to remain backwards compatible are pointless. Apple announced this (removing 32 bit support) for what became Yosemite OS 10.10 then kicked the can. I'm glad to see it. Every major OS/iOS upgrade has benefited me greatly—would I feel the same were I not handicapped? Pointless speculation since I can't undo what happened.

Comparisons with Windows are just silly. First off, the vaunted backwards compatibility is more legend than fact — as I found when I was supporting 95/NT apps the week that XT was released (that was a nightmare for many companies). I signed an NDA regarding how it affected aspects of our product. Later, some of my older apps never survived the transition to Win7. I think my current company is officially Windows but most of us use Macs now because of our core app — it's possible I was the first to discover the advantages.

In any case, that Apple is pulling the plug on 32bit and Microsoft isn't (yet?) can be subject for endless discussion but it doesn't mean anything really. It's a fact and isn't going away. No amount of yak, yak, yak can change that.

In short: There's no problem to be solved here other than we haven't seen BIAB 2019 for the Mac. I'll be surprised if it's released before September when it will be tested against the shipping OS 10.15 but that's a guess. Until PG Music lets us know, all we can do is speculate.

I think BIAB as a AU inside of Logic Pro will really expand the market for PG and can be a game breaker for publishers who are using a lot of inferior solutions. I think the secret we all have here (and the competitive advantage) will disappear as more people use this.

Yes, that feature in 2019 for Windows shows promise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8aAOQmhOw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVShb4lZr4w

Ok, I'll bite. How would BIAB as a plugin in Logic be a "game breaker for publishers"?

I can see it benefitting composers and arrangers — especially those under a deadline but publishers? What am I not seeing?

I used to use the BIAB plugin in Finale when doing infomercials under deadline so I know the value.

We can hope that 2019 for Mac will include the new plug as an AU. If not, a 64 bit VST will be fine for most of us though not Logic users.

I'd really like to see the BIAB plugin come back for Finale. That would be really nice.

Sorry-- you are correct-- I didn't proof read--- I wrote publishers when I really meant producers/composers

Hi Mike - has PG Music officially stated they are developing a proper 64-bit app for Mac? Looking at the state of the current app, and the UX, I am worried that the (not insignificant amount of) money I tipped into buying this product 6 months ago is going to be wasted.

I find it quite bizarre that PG Music keeps silent on their plans, and doesn't discuss a roadmap. They currently own this market, but are missing out on all the music producers who use iOS, and potentially MacOS and iPadOS going forward. If we knew they were properly redeveloping the app in Swift, and had their eye on SwiftUI and Project Catalyst, it would be a great relief for the future of the app in the Apple world. Unfortunately, from what I can see of their customer support and the existing app, I am not particularly confident that they are on top of this. I seriously doubt we will see an AUV3 Band in a Box plugin anytime soon, if ever - which would be a waste of the resources and IP they have built over the years. It's not like they haven't had enough time to develop a proper product roadmap for Apple's technology future. And a hell of a lot of musicians and producers are all-in on Apple and Logic Pro.

That 2019 for the Mac is coming was mentioned in response to one of many threads on this subject. I don't have time to look through all of them to find it.

Since it must be compatible with the next MacOS, I'll be surprised if it's released before Catalina.

Since no version of BIAB exists for iOS, I can't imagine we will in 2019. The app called Band in a Box in the App Store is a client app for certain BIAB Windows functionality on your iOS device—not the same thing.

AUv3 is not required for Catalina. I think the rollout to Marzipan based apps will be a lot slower than any of the wishful thinkers would like to see.

With Marzipan, OS 10.15 is making this possible—iOS apps to the Mac, not waving some kind of magic wand that just allows it to happen. It's a one-way street and does nothing to make Mac apps run in iOS.

Logic users will need to see an AU plugin for that new DAW functionality so it will be nice if it's there. Most other DAWs on the Mac can use VSTs including Digital Performer. I will be upset only if the plugin isn't there.

What I am wanting to know is whether PG Music has ever officially stated that BIAB 2019 for Mac was coming - and that it would be 64 bit. I have tried to ask customer support but they were totally evasive. I worry that this major redevelopment might be too hard and not deemed worthwhile.



My mistake, I meant to say AU, not AUV3. Many Mac users would be using Logic Pro X and a VST won't be much use. Sure, I would love to see BIAB on iOS but understand that is not viable at the moment due to the state of the legacy code.



What I am getting at is if PG Music were to outline that they were redeveloping this properly utilising the Cocoa framework and programming it with Swift then a number of future possibilities will start to open up. And declarative user interfaces in SwiftUI, along with Project Catalyst/Marzipan, are as close to a magic wand as an Apple developer is likely to find... :-)

I am just hoping PG Music are all in with where Apple is going - but am not feeling confident from my experiences to date. I don't mind if they initially have to launch a very limited feature set providing they have built something on a proper modern framework.

Ok, that makes more sense.
I've said the same thing but there are other DAWs that can use VSTs on a Mac — such as nearly all others.

Finale must use AUs only but it isn't a DAW. I'd really like to see a BIAB plugin for Finale but, if not, I can fire up Finale 2014.5 on one of my other iMacs that doesn't run Mojave and use the BIAB plugin there like I did in 2002. If I need to badly enough, I'll make it work.

How often does PG Music tell us in advance what's coming? Not very... though sometimes they do.

I have no pipeline into them except the same as anyone else—email and phone. I don't really care about the timeline—it happens when it does and I have my upgrade budgeted for that eventuality.

If 2019 doesn't happen, I'll pull out one of my older iMacs to run 2018 when I need to (I have a few that can't run Catalina) but my iMac Pro will be updated within a few weeks of the general release—my music industry day job will require it.

Worst case for me? Nothing changes and I keep my money. PG Music won't get my upgrade $$$, however, and I have the Audiophile version.

I spent over a decade working for a Windows software company and have consulted to Apple (scanning and printing working properly beginning OS 10.8.2—you're welcome). Not knowing exactly what's coming and when; not being told or having to keep info secret till a release, not revealing beta, NDAs, not discussing anything about what I do for a living... All in a day's work in the Silicon Valley.

Re Band in a Box 2019 for Mac.

I am not sure if this is true or not, I found it on the Facebook Band in a Box user-group. Joanne Cooper who is an authorised seller in Johannesburg claims the word from PG Music is late August.

We will just have to wait and see I guess, but I hope its true or I will be stuck on Mojave.

That should be around the time that the final beta is released for Catalina. Makes sense.

Thanks for the heads up!

Is the audiophile version that much better to justify the cost?

The answer is, it depends. For education, practice and hobbyist use, the answer is likely no. For users that create audio for commercial distribution or have really good hearing, yes.

The difference essentially boils down to the answer to the question, Can you hear or need the difference in fidelity between using a compressed (lossy) or uncompressed (lossless) audio file? Generally speaking most people can not tell the difference when a compressed or uncompressed RealTrack or RealDrum audio file is played. Those that do hear distortion in the higher frequencies.

User Matt Finley created a post that provides a more detailed answer +++ HERE +++

What Jim says.

Often, the Audiophile Tracks don't have what I need. That's ok—like the rest of BIAB, they're time savers. If I'm not using the Audiophile tracks, it's because I've ported the MIDI over into a DAW and am assigning other VIs (virtual instruments).

When I pull out BIAB, someone is getting invoiced. My customers are getting the best quality that I can deliver — whether they can hear it or not.

Now that's working fine, I just need the MacBB 2019.8
but while I'm waiting I can boot up on Win7 or Win10 and use WinBB 2019.
If an app won't run I boot on the Mac volume that will run it.
I can use any OS without feeling embarrassed or ashamed that my Mac or Win friends will find out that I'm doing such a sacrilegious thing.
I have no problem using any OS all day long as long as I can create music on it I drove a BMW the other day and then got out into a Honda, they were a bit different but I soon got the hang of it.