What about a hardware version of Biab with a solid state drive that is firmware update-able for new RT/Styles and comes with a ultra thin gorilla glass wireless LED touch screen or can also Bluetooth to your tablet ? no more Windows, no more laptops !
Just like you have hardware karaoke players, DigiTech Trio (that uses biab tracks) and BackTrak backing track pedals.

I'll have some of whatever you're drinking!!

I second that. Have a BIAB "computer" just made for BIAB. It would be more like a tablet than a computer with the best specs out there to blow the audio industry away.

Oh ya +1

Goodbye to system & platform differences and discrepancies?! SIGN ME UP!!

Of course a great idea but what's it based on? Biab being touch enabled. That's been in the Wishlist for years.

Bob

Biab touch enabled ? you can do that now with a AHK GUI like the chord picker tool, create large touch buttons with any function you like.
You could run it on a POS terminal.
I have ETouch Jukebox on a POS terminal, the POS also has another video port so it will show music videos playing or music visualizations on the large LED TV Screen while you add more songs in the terminal.

But the hardware version needs to be a simplified version of Biab to do the basic things. Being hardware ROM it's instant on not pc boot up.

Hmm. The idea is certainly interesting, however I think there are many ifs..
I believe BIAB is focused more on assembling/composing music and that process usually takes time: audition, trying out things, tweaking (going to deep dark places of menus). So "mousing" will still be needed for many, many tasks. And what about VST's? USB, VIDEO drivers...

If I only had the magic wand... I would focus on cleaning up all the clutter, modernizing most menus, open mixer to more tracks, speed up (significantly!) re-generation times, fix bugs, overhaul chord picker with something similar to what pipeline made, with a few other nuances. Combining some menus & features. One of the key items I would focus on is making interface fully customizable (modular) and re-sizable. Where is my magic wand?!?!

If BIAB is tuned to near perfection, I believe there is no need for a separate hardware module. If one would want to use BIAB as a proprietary "hardware touch screen unit", there is always a possibility of using a powerful windows tablet (surface) or touch screen PC and tune it specifically for BIAB...and design the interface exactly how you want it, given the interface is modular

Bottom line, BIAB is very versatile piece of software, but it reminds me of a garden that was seeded in very anarchic way. You got all of these exotic plants growing one on top of the other (some, I am sure like it that way). Only a good gardener can restore the order

...Getting close to winter. Wondering about all the good things we got with 2019 update.. I am hoping that it was THE spark that will light up a bigger torch and not just a knee jerk effect.

I hope that was not all boring.

This is not replacing the Biab software.
This is for LIVE Use, it has to be easy and simple for any musician that's not familiar with Biab to use without the steep learning curve of the million and 1 functions and features of the software.
Have a look at the first post and check out the DigiTech Trio it won best new product @ NAMM, see what it's powered by.
Your bass player and drummer don't show up at the gig because the drummer ran off with the bass player's wife, what do you do ?
You have the SGU's of your songs, mute all tracks except bass and drums !
It even has a conductor pedal, Bluetooth, USB and HDMI ports.
It will Bluetooth to your tablet or phone to display the chord chart.
Actually mute the bass track as another bass player just showed up, he doesn't know the songs but he is following the chord chart on his phone bluetoothed to the Band in a Hardware Box.

The old bass player had enough of the live scene so he buys Biab software version to create his own songs adding VST's to them and going deep into all the menus to do all sorts of things.

Now over to Biab software, lets get that sorted out and improved.

Ok, how about an alternative?

To have a (very) simple mixer app on android/iphone. Lets call it BIABPA (BIAB Play Along)

In full PC/MAC version have an option to... "Export to mobile format"... or even "Send to mobile device" So it will take your SGU/MGU or whatever is loaded in BIAB and render each track individually to a single compressed file that either is transferred to the mobile device directly or saved in "Mobile" folder on Hard Drive for manual transfer.

Then when you load the file on mobile device, it unpacks it to the proper channel and you can press your mutes or solos...

Use bluetooth or phones jack on the phone itself to PA or something else and use it as a backing module.

I think this is very doable.

You mean something like this https://www.pgmusic.com/support.android.htm

Almost, but not quite.
As I understood, the mobile version as it stands is more like a remote item or mp4 player or even extension to PC version.

I am talking about more what you mentioned:
"Your bass player and drummer don't show up at the gig because the drummer ran off with the bass player's wife"

In the scenario I described (if you export all tracks as waves/mp3s in one compressed file and let the android app open and sort these properly on mixer with solos and mutes at your disposal) You can use it as backing unit soloing or muting tracks on the fly as needed. (If bass and drum players are fighting outside for example) Basically, a condensed multi track player... without the need of PC once you load your compressed files of course.

Oh yes, programming solo/mute buttons to be used with bluetooth pedal would also be a plus.

The current Trio has built-in; 7 Music Genres To Choose From • 12 Styles Selectable Per Genre •

A solution is to add a second USB port on the existing Trio that accepts a flash drive and modify the Trio device to allow access to the music genres and styles storage and make it user selectable between the flash drive and on board genres/styles. Using a PC, the entire BIAB Style Picker would be available to load on the flash drive and be loaded into the Trio. Trio owners that don't have BIAB would have access to the current defaults listed above or could purchase BIAB to have the entire BIAB library available. Current owners of BIAB would already have that library available.

100 BIG plus 1s.
My live computer is stripped right down to nothing so is real good on play back but every gig I get the heebeegeebees that windows is going to house me.A dedicated piece of hardware would be ideal for playback on live gigs.

What a wild, and wonderful idea!

+1

I blame the hackers for our troubles. Yes, I said it! Windows and Mac are always updating for security reasons and that makes your computer slower or reduces compatibility, messes with your drivers.

Where can I buy one, already? D@#m!

That's why my playback computer never has seen the internet. Has no virus crap, network disabled etc,etc.

Same here. Save for the updates or software registration, the laptop is off the grid! Some great advice here.

...and following Blackviper’s advice on disabling services up to all networking services.

You can create a Live CD/DVD and run Biab from that, you could have Biab on an SD card.
I had Biab running on Win10 Live CD, you can add the PG Chord fonts to the Live CD fonts folder and whatever else you need. That way it's the same OS every boot as it boots from read only.

Thanks for that, I haven't check that out for ages. I see it is a Trio+ now as the old model is discontinued https://digitech.com/en/products/trio-plus
I will have a read up on it.

My music computer is only on line for software registration and updates, including Win 10 updates. Otherwise it is off line via disabling my Ethernet card and my anti-stuff.

Note that I keep my Win 10 up to date because a couple of years ago I had not updated for over a year. When I had to update due to software I ran into a real mess and had to format my C drive and start again.

Was thinking about this..Still I think
mobile Android version is a better choice to be used with a hardware midi pedal BT or Wireless or even wired. You can get an inexpensive phone that will have guts much more sophisticated than most of pedals...why be hardware dependant/limited? So at the end of the day you have your hardware pedal with hardware processor (phone) and if you feel creative, you can built a custom wooden case that would house pedal and phone.. so you have yourself a touchscreen, fully programmable midi pedal.