Now its approaching that time again , wondering what will be added and the new real tracks etc.

This got me wondering to the actual age of our average Biab user, are we a dying breed is there new Blood etc.

Just a thought in a marketing sense ?.

There's been a thread going for a while now on the BIAB Windows forum:
BIAB 2021?

Still never even booted it up.

I would think 50 and upwards, and as regards new blood, plenty of people entering this age group.

Thanks Steve

missed this thread will have a look !.

Regarding "new blood", we have had more younger users picking up BIAB recently (possibly due to the pandemic). I agree, generally the crowd is the 50+ folks, but from customers I deal with I've noticed an increase of 40 and under folks. I just don't think they're big into forums.

Simon, that's great news. Seriously.

Good point Simon. Our friends range from late 30’s to 70’s. The younger folks are total social media while many of the older prefer the less transient aspects of forums. We are active on fb but like the more laid back atmosphere engendered by forums (at least the ones that moderate the trolls snd flamers). I like it when topics hang around for a while. I was once the admin of an active cycling forum but fb killed it. Later I was a mod on a very large history based board and the same thing happened. We are delighted that PG Music has chosen to keep their forums active!

J&B

With the new blood comes more questions though. When I was "that age" we all wanted to be The Beatles. Now every kid you meet is a "Rappa!! Layin' down the beats, yo!" So the depth of what the younger breed requires may neo be the same as the OGs. So many of the songs out there today are an 8 bar loop that never changes, with no bridge, no chorus... nothing. Just bad beat poetry over a bass heavy loop played in a minor key.

We are all at least familiar if not fans of Live From Daryl's House. I got to know Elliot Lewis because he does a lot of solo shows in the northeast Ohio area. We talked for almost a whole break about the show when Joe Walsh was on and he told me that the conversation that was cut to 6-7 minutes lasted over an hour and some of the stuff that was cut was pure gold, but not suitable for TV. One line in particular was after he discussed songwriting, and singled out a Beyonce song that had 5 writers and 4 producers. And what was cut was "For THAT piece of s**t? There was nothing to produce."

So I wonder how much the 20-30 somethings are actually beating this software up to the level that a lot of the OGs do? I mean I stretch and contract tempo, I transpose key, I insert blank bars, enter chords, and generate only those empty bars. And I get a TON of memory exception errors when the edit buffer gets full. Thus I have to save after every tine change, not knowing when it's going to crash on me and then I lose an hour of work. When that happens I just turn the computer off and go rant about it.

Also comes up is the BIAB/RB thing. Do BOTH have those same instabilities? The OG here has never tried RB because "BIAB works and it's what I started using 78 years ago when I bought it. And god forbid we try something new." I am the opposite. I never tried BIAB because I prefer the more DAW like feel of RB.

So it's just not the age demographic. It's the genres involved as well.

Eddie, at the risk of getting you going... I am surprised that despite your acknowledgement of the instability associated with Real Band, you continue to use it for making your music. I feel safe to say that many of us knew about these issues long ago and moved on to more stable DAWs. And yes, BIAB is more stable for generating tracks. So the typical workflow many have adapted for years is BIAB-DAW. All the heavy lifting is done in the DAW which has the horsepower and features and functions to get the job done without all the drama and frustration.

That's all I have to say on the matter...

Nothing else generates tracks. Once I have tracks I move it along to Pro Tools. It's during the "heavy lifting" I have the problems. I beat up songs in progress REALLY bad. I can't tell Pro Tools to create another guitar solo for me, and I am not going to bounce back and forth. I am more like "Real Band, finish what you do and I will move on."

Much like girlfriends. Finish what I need from you and I'll move on to the next one....

I'm 36 and use BIAB, in case that helps. I think I'm firmly in the middle with the forum vs social media, in that (outside of my profession) I rarely engage in either. Perhaps I'm just old enough to avoid Facebook, just young enough to avoid forums.

PG holds a very special niche based on fundamental western genres of past 80+ years:
Blues, Rock, Country, Pop, Rock, Jazz, Folk Afro-Cuban, World, etc.
It is a good idea to expand on genres, but I think there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. Younger or older audience, if they like quality, would appreciate what BIAB has to offer, even if they use only segments of it in their compositions.

I think one of the biggest and easiest to resolve issues with BIAB to make it more "inviting" are menu design(s) and amount of these menus. Endless scattered boxes... Veterans users in most cases do not care about these and for the matter of conversation, I can "live" with it as well. But I am 99% sure it is very discouraging to many new users.

Clean up, consolidate menus, make boxes/buttons look "pretty". Have basic/advanced views. It is easy-peasy stuff that should bring results. I am just a little concerned that such a powerful program is taking a hit from such ridiculously minor things.

In any case, I wish all the best to the PG crew and patiently waiting and saving for 2021 release

Your verb is the key. Pro Tools is for mixing music. Real Band is for making it, making meaning "creating/writing/composing and then playing".

Band In A Box should be renamed as "Not Havin To Deal With Jackazz Musicians Who Show Up Late And Drunk For Every Rehearsal".

Though BIAB is easier to say than "NHTDWJMWSULADFER". That's the main reason I was drawn to the stuff. If I want to work tomorrow night at 1:30am, I can do it. I don't have to coordinate schedules and hope the musician shows up. I also don't have to listen to him whine when I want another take, tell him I am not interested in his opinions of MY songs, and to play what I tell him to play and STFU.

Plus, the software can create better stuff than most of the local level players I could call in anyway.

You already know what a day at the beach I am, right?

I am installing it right now and I hope this $200 was worth it.

Just a thought relating to all the ranting on another thread about selling on an installable hard drive. I may do this just to see.... I have an old version on hard drive. I MAY just try to format the old one and install 2021 on that drive just to test the data throughput of this installation on my C:\ drive and the one that is running through a USB port. That may give some answers to that topic. Has anybody else tried that yet?

Also Simon's point that it isn't going to happen because of the number of laptop users, and Mario's counter that it could be an option, and not one or the other, deserves attention. What exactly is the objection with the installation process as it is? The hour it takes to install it? IF that is it, all I can say is "Huh?" It's 60 minutes of the 525,600 minutes that make up a year!

So... let's say they do it. They offer copies on a hard drive ready to be slipped into a drive slot on your computer. Point 1 is that it will only apply to desktops. So market research on desktop vs laptop users would drive that part of the decision. Point 2 is user level. Many (maybe even most) know how to install a drive. But now you factor in whether the computer can accept one more SATA device. Of the 4 desktops I have, only 1 has an open SATA power supply pigtail. 2 have 2 hard drives and 2 DVD drives. One has 3 hard drives and a DVD drive. What would it do to the price if PG was supplying a 2tb 10,000 rpm hard drive vs this semi disposable external they send now? The throughput of the SATA data bus vs the USB 3.1 is close, but now you are adding the variable of people with older computers without USB 3.1 ports who would see less than optimal speed, which I assume is the end game here, unless the earlier question about whether it's just about the ease of use.

Then how about this. If they order X number of these 2tb 10,000 drives, and X-Y sell, what did they accomplish? They need to task somebody to format all those Y drives and load them up for the next year's version.

So from a business standpoint, I would not expect them to ever do this.

Now, the 2021 installation is almost done. Then on to the experiment!

EDIT:

That idea died on the table. The old version hard drive I have isn't big enough to hold the installation. It's only 148gb. I think it's from like 1947 or something. It still has a micro USB on it if that helps date it. It must be the Everything Pak, because it has a sticker on it that says EP. Probably from back before USB 3 too. And I think I downloaded 2019 and didn't get a hard drive.

Now if the fine folks at PG would send me a blank USB drive that they use these days I could still experiment. Not that I'm hinting or anything...

Okay that experiment failed badly. I loaded 2021 and opened Real Band, only to find that either J-Bridge doesn't work anymore, that I have to run it again and don't remember how, that I have to buy another copy, or that I just can't use my VSTs anymore, because the only executable for Real Band is 64 bit and my plugins are 32 bit. Here we go again..... 200 bucks later and I may have to revert to 2019.

Why is it never easy for me? There's ALWAYS something to give me heartburn.

It ain't just you.

BTW, you can get a free upgrade for jbridge here, https://jstuff.wordpress.com/jbridge/updates/

Eddie,

I think you're the one giving yourself heartburn. As you well know, the whole 64 bit upgrade happened a long time ago.

It's not PG Music's fault they're using current technology.

My 2019 had only a 32 bit version of Real Band. I chatted with support and the suggestion was to uninstall 2021 and put back the old version.. I just sighed and ended the chat. I now have to check and see if the plugin upstairs is 32 or 64. If I recall I had a problem last year or so because I had loaded the 64 bit TTS-1. I reloaded all of Cakewalk's plugins and made sure I ran 32 bit. Now I MUST run 64 so I have to do that whole dance again. Unless the Cakewalk loaded upstairs is 64 bits and then I can just copy the dll files. But for right now, I'm watching football.

Well I have had 2021 for about 8 hour snow and so far it has been a waste of $200. Nothing works that worked before. None of my plugins work. Every one of them says it's not a valid plugin. It was valid yesterday when I had 2019, but not on the new and improved 2021. I am going to play with this tomorrow and if I can't get it to work I will go back to 2019 and stay there forever, right after which I will go out to the garage and hit this hard drive with my sledgehammer 200 times, one for every dollar I wasted thinking it would be better. I chatted with support looking for support and got brushed off and told to go back to 2019. Which I will do. And they can keep my money. I'll call it a lesson in trusting that businesses have their customer's best interests at heart. Because this one clearly doesn't.

My 2019 was 32 bit. And all my plugins worked. Now none of them do. Not one. Because Real Band is 64 bot now. JBridge is as worthless as boobs on a bull if it doesn't work. And it doesn't. I don't understand how neither 32 bit or 64 bit plugins don't work. One or the other should.

Okay Eddie,

Here's a novel idea. How about of asking someone for help instead of throwing a b*tch fit?

I did. I was told to go back to 2019. Or didn't you actually read my post where I said that?

I did read your post from before. If you're dealing with tech support the same you're dealing with folks on here you shouldn't be surprised at the results.

There's a whole lot of folks on the forum who are much more knowledgeable than me or you.

Just ask nicely.

Everything doesn't have to be a confrontation.

"boobs on a bull" That sounds like an amazing song title /theme.

Eddie, not to intrude, but have you checked your plugins, maybe there are 64bit versions available?

Eddie, FYI I have used this jBridge tool procedure:

https://jstuff.wordpress.com/jbridge/jbridge-troubleshooting/782-2/

Now I only have one 32 bit program, NI's B4II, that I use in Studio One Pro 5. IIRC jBridge only worked about 60% of the time when I used it with Sonar. I don't use RB so I can not tell you the success rate for it.

2 hours later.... I had to UNinstall Sonar and reinstall it to make sure I had the 64 bit version. This flies backward from the last time I had to do all this crap when I had to remove Sonar 64 bit and install Sonar 32 bit because Real Band 2019 was 32 bit.

So in the last 2 years I have had Sonar 64 bit on my computer, but that wouldn't work with Real Band. So I had to UN and Re Sonar. That lasted me until yesterday when I put Real Band 2021 on my computer. Then nothing worked. (Isn't that was JBridge is supposed to do, allow 32 bit and 64 bit plugins to be interchangeable?) So this morning I had to again UN and RE Sonar so everything is 64 bit.

Unbelievable that this stuff doesn't just "work". I can't just install the plugins either. I have to install the whole program. It is now 9:37am and I have been up working on this since 6am.

If anything else did what Real Band does I would be defecting. Much to the delight of one particular guy who sent me a hate mail because I am unimpressed with customer service who tells you "Just go back to 2019 then." and ends a chat. That's like getting spoiled food at a restaurant and their solution is "Just don't eat it then." I was beyond livid when that happened. That's the kind of thing that would prompt me to find the owner's house and bang on the door until he talked to me and terminated the person who did that. That says to me "We have your money already. We now don't care abut you." To be honest and fair I will say that this was the first time I had that kind of negative experience, and maybe the agent was having a bad day or it was close to closing time, but as someone who worked in a field parallel to that, I never did that to a caller who needed help.

Rustyspoon, I didn't see your post until after I finished what I did, but your post had the right path in sight. It was just a pain to spend that much time to accomplish that whole reinstallation process.

But I got things working again, and it's nap time.

Just hope that your OS disk doesn't die and you have to start all over.....

Sounds like a bit of hit and miss at the moment with 2021, although some seem to have hiccups and some do not.

Just a settling in period, I do remember that happening to me one time, so I can see in part how Eddie feels, Although it sorted itself out after a bit of tweaking !!

I just tested JBridge again with RealBand64. I'm not able to duplicate the issue of it not working. As long as I ran RealBand64 with Administrator privileges then it seems to work fine without issues. It says my version is v1.7b3 I'm running Windows 10.

Eddie, did you try that?

I run everything with admin privs. That suggestion came after all the unloading and reloading so I have no need for it now. I can also tell you that my JBridge is 1.75.

Can you maybe try ..version v1.7b3 !!, I do not know if it is possible.

But unlike you I have not upgraded yet, ! am weary of falling in to the same situation .

FYI: RealBand 2021 only includes a 64 bit version, there is no 32 bit 2021 RealBand. If you need to use a 32 bit version of RealBand then you will need to keep your prior version of RealBand. 64 bit RealBand and 32 bit RealBand can coexist on the same computer.

Eddie,

This might be worth a shot...

Try running "JBRIDGER.EXE" and setting the host environment.

Regards,
Noel

Noel, when I tried to run it, I got windows asking what directory I wanted to scan and then I had to set one where I wanted the plugins to land. With all kind of small print disclaimers about "not recommended" stuff. (Well, if it's not recommended, take it out and make it impossible for the people who see a wet paint sign and touch the bench anyway). I want a bridging program that runs by clicking it once and it sets itself up and works until I throw the computer away. I don't want to work to set up software I have never seen and will never have to see again. YOU do that. Write it in a way I just click "GO" and go make some tea.

But after all that dancing I did with the uninstalling and reinstalling now it works. I felt like I unretired and went back to work. And I still have to install it on a second computer.

I personally would MUCH prefer that they included a step that says "You don't HAVE to remove the older but if you choose to, click here and we'll do that for you." I am an "order" guy, bordering on OCD, and I want all the executables in a folder, all the dll files in a folder, all the txt in a folder.... Because if I have to go find a file called "oldtennisball.pfc" (knowing there is no such thing as a pfc file - this is an example) I don't want to go through 17 directories to find which one it lives in. If there is a folder called PFC, I know it's in there. My computers are 98% set up that way. I keep a fairly clean desktop because that's what folders are for. Program, document, photo storage is on a separate drive. (A 500gb internal.) Music storage is on yet another. (AS 500gb external.) That's just how I know to do it, and I hate when installations scatter things all over. Could this stuff NOT be organized where they name the root folder PGMusic, and have BIAB and RB as subfolders in there? Why is there a folder called BB and another called Realband hanging off the root of C:\? In my case, I have plugins that came from Sonar and some that came from other sources and they are not in one folder. Where do I tell JBridge to look?

Those are the little things I look at when I do an overall evaluation of software. That and ease of installation. And infrequency of crashes. I have hung in with PG this long because it's the only game in town. Unlike Norton vs McAfee vs Kaspersky vs Joe's Anti Virus, there is only one choice for software that creates this level of backing tracks. Garage Band (Garbage Band) just makes those annoying 8 bar loops like rappers use.

Well, trying to write a hip hop Christmas song but I need to pitch shift a measure of one of the loops and the program crashes, so no Christmas song for me..... First time I used the program. Since paying my money for it.

How does a program ship without this basic function being tested thoroughly?

I sent error logs and screen shots. We'll see what happens.

Man, if there was ANY other software that did what this does.....

Hello Eddie,

I haven't read through this entire thread, but if you are talking about a problem in RealBand64.exe with time stretching, this should be fixed in the RealBand build2 patch (to be released shortly):

https://nn.pgmusic.com/pgfiles/support/patches/realband_2021_update_build2.exe

THANK!
YOU!
ANDREW!

Now I can finish my hip hop Christmas tune! Channel my inner Biggie and get jiggy wid it!!