Referring to this post, sometimes BiaB will unexpectedly regenerate, causing an existing arrangement to be lost. Unexpectedly losing a wanted arrangement can be both frustrating and disappointing.

BiaB presumably must be able to determine in advance that a regeneration is going to take place when the Play button is pressed.

I would like to see a warning/confirmation to the user that pressing Play (not Generate and Play) is going to cause a regeneration.

Yes, this is important that it works consistently.

+1

I'm with you, Trev.

+1

+1 but also the ability to turn it off in prefs should one wish to.

+1

An option may be just a warning like this when regeneration is needed:

Can not play this song. Regeneration is needed so please press the regeneration icon.

IMHO keeping play and regeneration totally separate is desirable.
YMMV

+1 of course from me. Lol!
Same message please when wanting it to replay from a certain bar as well.
Cheers
Ian

+1

+1

I like Mario's method of handling the issue except for the "can not play this song" wording. I can easily visualize forum posts stating, "Every time I click on the play button I get an error message saying it can't play the song! Why?"

How about a pop up message stating "Song file changes are detected. Select the regenerate and play button to continue or select the play button again to discard the detected changes and play the song file."?

Yes, that would be a good way to achieve the same outcome. The underlying concept is to stop inadvertently over-writing an arrangement. I agree also that the two buttons must remain separate.

Part of me wants to know WHY a song will sometimes need regeneration when we don't think it should. The pragmatic rest of me doesn't care; just please give me a choice. And the suggestion by Musiclover to make this warning an option in preferences is good.

Yes, I definitely agree also.

+1

Absolutely a +1 from me! Why this notice doesn't pop up makes no sense at all and has cost me time many, many times!

Jeff

Matt, I've been experimenting with causes of the generation and cannot yet find anything concrete.

Surprisingly, I can take an existing song, completely change the style and generate it and then select File > New and I am not warned that the current song has changed, even though there are new instruments in the song. What?!!

Inconsistent. Agreed, Trevor.

I've seen that happen as well.

+1 for me on adding this option.

I found another inconsistency in the on-screen Hints:

Specifically, the Generate and Play hint states that if you don't want to generate, press Play instead (figure 1).

But pressing Play will generate if (for reasons unknown to us) the program believes that a generation is necessary (figure 2).

me too - +1

+1!

I'm terrified of this at the moment, so the first thing I do is freeze all my tracks when I get an arrangement I vaguely like :')

I thought the freeze tracks option was the fix for protecting an arrangement. Freeze the tracks then play around all you want or create a second test copy of the song or whatever.

I see the points here but how many more little checkbox options or popups do we need?

Bob

Bob, understood, but I think we do need this one, at least while a song might regenerate when we don't expect there was a reason for it to do so. If that underlying behavior is fixed, then no, we won't need this.

There is an expectation not being met. Band-in-a-Box has two play buttons with one being play and the other being generate and play. One expects generation to occur when the generate and play button is played. One does not expect generation, and has no desire for generation to occur, when the play button is played. However, there are times the program decides generation is needed and proceeds to do so no matter which play button is selected.

The problem is the program generates without giving the user prior warning which not only doesn't meet the user's expectation but actually creates an extraordinary level of user frustration.

Yes, users expect to use the freeze button to protect satisfactory tracks before selecting the generate and play button. There is, and should not be, an expectation to use track freeze buttons to use the play button.

If the Play button does the same as the Generate button (Play Generates if required), then we wouldn't need two buttons. I agree that it's OK to have two buttons, but the individual behavior should be consistent between the two. Re-Generation shouldn't occur if the Play is selected.

However, if it is (unexpectedly) going to occur, give the user an option to back-out and freeze tracks first. Would save a lot of frustration.

I agree. This must be a new bug because I don't remember it happening in previous versions.

+1

I'd really like to see this when rendering the files to .wav. I never end up with what I hear when I play back the file in BIAB.