Janne Lepola has made a comprehensive 17 min. video overview of the program, which I'm not sure has found its way to this forum yet (lmk if it's here already), so:

Thanks for sharing this video!

Thanks Icelander
Good Video,The guy is some kinda of genius when communicating,he seems to be just fumbling along but he really gets his message across.Hes The Columbo of reviewers,gets his man in the end!
I thought his appraisel of Biab was spot on.I dont really know what a 1990s programme looks like so how BIAB appears doesnt bother me and he mentioned all of the things you guys on the forum talk about lke it being 32bit etc but his evaluation that it is a brilliant tool with great quality and that it is always being developed by PG Music which is spot on also,
Hugh

Perhaps I ought to confess I haven't actually watched this thing through myself, nor do I necessarily agree with everything he says.
I just thought it was worth sharing as a pretty serious attempt at a review from a purely user perspective. We don't see too many of those around

I agree with you.

I found his review to be a mixed bag. His programming of a realistic cover, his ease of use in personally being able to manipulate his way around what he understands about BIAB is great.

His demonstration skills were uninspirational as he clearly has not spread his wings beyond the small arena of use he focuses on with BIAB as a songwriting aid. He gives such a narrow presentation it seemed to me the video was directed toward a particular group, such as a songwriter's club or forum.

He did not have a good understanding (or failed to demonstrate it, if he did) of the Stylepicker. His off the cuff demo's of entering chords and then simply opening the Stylepicker window was horrible. Yet, the result of his serious effort to find and build a great backing track was sensational.

I loved it. It was a great review by what I believe to represent the average user of BIAB. The focus was on the particular area of use the reviewer had for choosing BIAB. He had weeded through the quantity of "everything's" feature of BIAB to mine out the features that addressed his needs for songwriting.

For me, his review gave me a better understanding of a BIAB user's mindset rather than a good technical review of the BIAB software.

Although he lacked skill in completing a competent technical review and missed valuable features such as BIAB having Jbridge to address 64 bit VST's, he demonstrated that with limited technical knowledge of BIAB, one can produce outstanding results.

I enjoyed his review.

Charlie

Hi everyone and thanks for gracious comments. I never really expected this to hit viral, so let me explain a few things.

First, sorry for mumbling & babbling with that Finnish accent - I rarely speak English, so sometimes it's a bit hard to articulate sentences from fly.

The title "overview" is a bit overshot, it should be more of an "Quick take on BB + VST + DAW workflow (what the heck is BB anyway?)".

I have been familiar with Band In A Box from early nineties, but I haven't been using it, except for few trials here and there over the years. I remember playing around with old DOS and Windows version, as my dad has been using it for over 20 years(!). I have seen how good it can be when paired with Roland MT32 or such (back in good old days), and I have watched it growing over the years.

My musical ambitions have varied between every kind of genre, from metal to dance, pop, rock and such. Few years ago I started seriously to invest on studying soundtrack-genre (virtual orchestration) and that's when I started putting effort on wanna-be-profession-arranger -skills. If I were to ever make small bucks for even minor productions I have to be able to work fast, when doing backing tracks for theaters etc. This is why I finally took my personal roll with BB.

I don't plan to use BB as your usual pop/rock backing track arranger or studying platform, but more like an inspirational tool for coming up with themes, chord-structures and such. This is why I put most my effort on this "overview" video as seen by "virtual orchestrator" -enthusiast, and I tried to target audience of VI-Control -forum (which is full of guys who take their art seriously).

So as said, I really wanted to target those viewers who wouldn't be your usual BB users, but people who are trying to produce tracks and ideas quickly (= video game & film composers).

My overview video includes couple of example tracks (another one within comments). I really wanted to put effort on the final mix, as the quality of example track would be either dealmaker or breaker for professionals. If it were to sound like static midi or plain real tracks laid together, soundtrack composers would skip BB without hesitation... Additionally, I tend to try to keep my videos as short as possible. 15 minutes is just about the maximum what enthusiastic viewer is ready to spend on tutorial/overview video, so I really had to put focus on small feature-section :P

As such, my overview really doesn't put enough effort on telling what Band-In-A-Box really is and what it can do for all-kinds of musicians. It doesn't give enough praise for it as an virtual-live-band, nor as an gem-box for studying all kinds of genres.

I really didn't even try to cover all this, so I'm really sorry if someone might find it a bit uninspiring or shallow take over the subject. Hopefully someone will cover missing points more thoroughly and show all those neat tricks BB can do, be it arranging bar rests/hits, throwing tab-notes for guitars, using style-picker (/ style wizard!), or generating solo tracks.


Finally a little message for PG -

Sorry for giving harsh comments about UI. As an experienced software developer (specialized on UI-design) I understand what the weight of history means for evolving software, and having 20 years of past is respectable! Still, I stand behind by points: UI reminds me of late 90's / early 2000. It's really confusing and is filled with lots of unnecessary features (such as "open file location" or "delete current file" -- really, what are those for? ... At the same time it's great that there are lots of configuration variables, something advanced users love!

My only real cons are related for unstability of VST support. I haven't been able to get any VST's to work without crashing, be it Addictive Keys or Kontakt 5. Coyote / Soundfontz-player doesn't seem to handle too well either, as I'm having really hard time changing instruments (as switching midi patch doesn't seem to have effect on playback sound). I also haven't been able to route my Nektar LX88 midi keyboard to midi thru, even though MIDI debugger shows that notes are coming in...

Still, I can't but praise you for your history and dedication for your product. Keep on doing to the good work and I hope all the best for the whole community of Band-In-A-Box!

Hi Reaktor and welcome to the forum.

And thanks for making your review of BIAB. Icelander's remark that your review is "a pretty serious attempt at a review from a purely user perspective. We don't see too many of those around." I found to be spot on and was my intended focus in my remarks.

My use of uninspiring was in contrast to how inspiring I found your review to be in the areas of BIAB that you are familiar with. No intent of uninspirational was for my overall impression of your review.

My intended point was that as an overview, your "overview really doesn't put enough effort on telling what Band-In-A-Box really is and what it can do for all-kinds of musicians. It doesn't give enough praise for it as an virtual-live-band, nor as an gem-box for studying all kinds of genres." I found it to be as you stated in your reply, a more targeted interview toward a particular audience.

I stated that as a fact and not a disparagement.

You should have no regrets regarding your review. It was excellent overall and I stated in my comment, I loved it. My remarks slanted toward if the video were truly an overall review of BIAB, users whose interest in woodshedding, teaching, and songwriting from a production perspective rather than a song development perspective had to wait until the end of the video to see the amazing takeaway of your fabulous production to appreciate the overall value of BIAB.

The 2017 enhancements of the GUI may help you eliminate some of the clutter of features you don't use and help your workflow. As a participant of the forum, you may shorten the learning curve and not have to re-invent the wheel in getting the most out of VST's and integration between BIAB and other software. You'll find plenty of discussion as well as tips, tricks and techniques about that here.

Hopefully you will continue to participate with us here on the forum and not be discouraged in any way. You bring a lot to the table and there are many users who approach BIAB exactly as you do and look forward to you sharing your expertise in how you use BIAB.

Charlie

Thank you Charlie for kind words.

This is how I interpreted your intentions. I just wanted to drop my story, as I never would have though video ending up to news feed... I would have put much more effort on it!

Making a review of Band-In-A-Box is as hard as trying to explain why Photoshop is defacto standard of industry. There are just way too many features & points to be made for reader/viewer to understand what it's all about and what it can do. It serves multiple user roles, be it educational or live playback.

I think that many users who have bumped to BIAB are initially impressed, but are quickly turned down by lack of good outcome. I just feel bad for BIAB having to prove itself as an serious tool and that's one reason why I wanted to do quick overview on BIAB <-> DAW workflow. I initially wanted to put more effort on style midi notation exporting, as that's what VST enthusiasts are more interested to see. I should have recorded string- and brass-sections from my orchestral libraries, but that video was just a moment of inspiration (as most of my videos are).

As for GUI, I initially tried using new UI but as I use UWHQ (3440 x 1440) monitor I seem to have LOT'S of spare room for icons, so I moved back to old UI. Great that it's still supplied as an alternative!

My technical problems seem to be really technical and hard to explain, such as MIDI-routing problem or VST's crashing, but I really appreciate the help community could provide. Hopefully I'll have more time to investigate depths of BIAB in future.

Thanks for your reply. I just wanted to stress I see you and your video review as beneficial to the BIAB community and not detracting to it. I'm looking forward to more from you soon.

Check out the User's Showcase Forum and plan on favoring us with a taste of your original work....

Charlie

And just to close this off, since I was the one who started all this:

The best way to totally undermine your own review (of anything) is to get apologetic about it afterwards - So don't.

Janne,

Thanks for doing the helpful review and for your support of Band-in-a-Box.

Peter

Hi Reaktar,
Thank you for the review I watched it a couple of times.
My "Columbo" comment was a compliment! I hope you understand.
I guess what I was saying is that I liked the way you just got in and messed around with it as almost any BIAB user does and come out the other in end with something useful as most BIAB users do.In that way it was a very realistic video which I liked it,
Thanks Hugh

@Reaktor thanks for the vid.
With Kontakt crashing, have a look at these tips n tricks:
I have vst's that won't work in BB but run in IL Minihost inside BB.
Using Multiple VSTi Plugins on the same Track Win Mac 32 64

ReWire RealBand/FL Studio

Slave Reaper to Biab/RealBand with Midi Sync

With ReWire getting implemented you will be able to ReWire FL Studio soon.

Another option:


I could just see your tiny little taskbar icon for Voicemeeter, I use that it's great.

Brilliant piece of research work there as always, Pipeline.

I went to that MiniHost forum for their plugin, but on there the supposed "links" seem to be just plain text, at least my browser is only seeing it as text instead of a link. Any idea what could be the problem?

Go here first https://support.image-line.com/member/registration.php?r=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.image-line.com%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ft%3D123031 and join then login to get the links.
Just put any old info in the red* but your email is needed to confirm.

Hmm, at a glance that's a lot of personal info to hand out for just one little link... I'll think about it, thanks for the info

Yes it's ridiculous why they need all that info, you can put anything in there but just legit email is needed.

DropBox
Mac
Win

You just keep on scoring points, my man!