Hey everyone - I'm still a BIAB beginner here.

I play through my pc using TH-U and use an audio interface. I got BIAB for xmas and it's a great piece of software, other than desperately needing a lot of time with a half-decent interface design team...

But I had one goal with it - I've got a simple chord progression, which I've written some lyrics for. I wanted to work on this by setting a band off on a loop and then playing along with it. I think that it'd help me to find the right tempo and timing, and try out some different styles.

I can start the band on a loop with a chord progression but I can't work out how to hear my guitar at the same time.

In a DAW, it's easy enough - just open an instrument track, set it to the input from my audio interface and turn on input monitoring. Do the same for a drum patterns and I can play along.

I thought it would be the similar for BIAB as well, but I can't seem to work out what I need to do. I've read the manual but nothing seemed to cover how to hear yourself live.

As a follow up question, TH-U has a VST plug-in and I want to use this when I play. BIAB has VST support and I can load the plug-in fine. But I can only seem to be able to apply to an existing track. I can't hear my guitar through it live.

Is this possible?

Be really grateful for any light that anyone can shed.

For other forum members, +++ TH-U +++ is an amplifier simulator application by Overloud.

Book Lung,

Band-in-a-Box does not offer direct monitoring. Direct monitoring is the ability to playback your guitar audio and Band-in-a-Box generated audio in real time.

What are you using to get your guitar signal into your computer and into TH-U or Band-in-a-Box?

To hear both your guitar audio and Band-in-a-Box audio in real time you will need an external hardware device such as an audio interface or mixer.

In either case the external device must be capable of receiving the stereo (two channel) output of your computer and the mono (one channel) output of your guitar.

The external hardware device will also need to offer input monitoring. Input monitoring is the ability to playback the audio from both computer and external (keyboard, guitar, bass or microphone) devices at the same time.

Many audio interfaces include a headphone jack where you can hear the audio from the computer, your guitar or both. It takes time for audio to go from your guitar, through the audio interface and then through the computer. That's called latency. Audio interfaces delay the guitar audio so it matches the computer audio.

If you use a mixer the computer audio and guitar audio arrive at the same time so there is no time delay. But any guitar audio you record will be late compared to the computer audio.

You can create your song in Band-in-a-Box, export the tracks as AIF files. Import the tracks into GarageBand and playback the BiaB tracks while you record your guitar.

Realband allows Input Monitoring as long as you have an ASIO driver.
You have it with included with BiaB if you want to explore it.

Thanks for the advice. Seems like a major oversight to include this in Realband but not BIAB. But duly noted, I haven't delved into Realband.

Quite the learning curve - I'm sure I'll have more questions to come.