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I have had this issue for a long time and a week of dedicating myself to solving the problem has not worked.
The issue: all BIAB playback has pops and clicks and artifacts. This happens regardless of which: audio drivers are used (ASIO, WAS or MME), what bit rate, sample rate, buffer size is selected. This happens regardless of track type (RT or MIDI), regardless of style, regardless of plug-ins used, and regardless of BIAB year (I've tried 2023 and 2024) or build (including 1109). I can confirm this issue is not present in any other audio application I have on my system. including Real Band. I can open a BIAB file in RealBand and everything plays perfectly with no noise.

Yes, I've returned to factory settings many times. No joy. Bought and returned a new audio interface thinking it might be my hardware. No joy there either.

I can confirm this issue is limited to playback from within Band In A Box. Tracks generated in BIAB are clean and there's no noise. Yes I can move tracks elsewhere and they are clean. However If I use BIAB to play anything, that anything plays back with clicks and pops.

One more data point: I was listening watching a speech on YouTube this morning and opened BIAB at the same time. Immediately I heard the same kind of noise now affecting the YouTube audio. When I closed BIAB the audio signal that was playing in my browser returned to a clean sound. Further testing with other apps confirms the following: Whenever BIAB is open on my desktop, ALL audio playback contains these pops and clicks. When BIAB is closed, there are no playback issues whatsoever.

Motherboard/Internal Sound Card Audio is turned off in my system BIOS, so the motherboard soundcard is not in play here.

In summary, I can't play BIAB with clean playback, and can't have BIAB open when using any other audio producing app.

Help! Why is this happening with BIAB but not with Real Band?


Bruce Hook - Soprano, Alto and Tenor Saxes
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"Motherboard/Internal Sound Card Audio is turned off in my system BIOS, so the motherboard soundcard is not in play here."
Does it do the same when the internal sound card enabled and in use ?

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Well...
when turned it on in the bios, and the Realtek drivers are installed for the internal audio, there's no noise when BIAB is set to use that output instead of my audio interface. Hooray I thought. I appeared to have a solution. However... the mini-jack in the back of the mb has only one channel working and the front header mini-jack works but emits a very low volume (but still audible) beep about once every second, when the signal is dormant. Can't make the beep go away, so I uninstalled the Realtek drivers and shut the mb audio off in the BIOS. This said, there may be some problem with the connectors and the onboard audio in general which is preventing me from using that as a workaround.
Again, that wouldn't explain why BIAB won't play cleanly - and Realband will - through all three external audio interfaces I've tried, would it? I'm assuming that while they're companion products (BIAB and RealBand), how they each talk to drivers may be quite different.


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The issue: all BIAB playback has pops and clicks and artifacts.

That is code for a mismatched sampling rate ( e.g., 48, 44.1 etc.). Look closer!


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That is code for a mismatched sampling rate ( e.g., 48, 44.1 etc.). Look closer!

Thanks Dan. Yes that is what it sounds like, a mismatched sampling rate. Hours spent... I've tried them all (a closer look at my original post please), matched to what the interface is set at, and also intentionally different to test behavior. Does it get worse when I intentionally set a mismatched sampling rate? Not to my ears, it stays the same, as if my change didn't have an affect.

Also tried two additional external interfaces with their respective drivers and nothing made a difference.

If Biab is open on my desktop (it doesn't have to be the active window), the same "sounds like a sampling rate" thing is heard in any other audio currently playing. For example: I'm listening to spotify or playing an mp3 using Windows Media Player and as soon as I open BIAB I hear the clicks and pops and artifacts. Exit BIAB and the and signal is clean again.

Is there something I should know or check when it comes to exclusivity of input and output drivers as set in windows sound control panel?


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Check what midi and audio input is set to that you are not getting some feedback, but I suppose if you did a factory reset many times.
What default midi output is.
And, you said the onboard sound worked but the front had noise ? the front goes from the motherboard through un shielded wires but if the back port sound was good but one channel.
With RealTek can't you set the port you plug in to what output you want ? speaker/line

Last edited by musocity; 02/25/24 03:55 PM.
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A couple of comments after reading "Why is this happening with BIAB and not RealBand"? and "Exit BIAB and the signal is clean again."

It appears you've tried different audio interfaces and drivers, but I didn't see a mention of buffers. For recording, I set that low, but for playback with no problems, I often raise it. This certainly applies to ASIO drivers; I'm not sure about WAS since that doesn't work on my system. And I agree you should stay away from the internal RealTek soundcard for any serious work.

I have occasionally read comments here that say, "My DAW works fine, so why doesn't BIAB"? BIAB can load and run on a modest machine, but even though I haven't read any statement from the company saying this, I think the most recent version does seem to demand a lot more in computer resources if you have many tracks regenerating. This is something DAWs do not do. On a computer without many cores in the CPU to share the load as they now do, I could anticipate a problem.


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Thanks Matt, Dan, and Musocity. The feedback and suggestions you've made were tried before posting, but I still appreciate your replies. Matt, I tried every buffer setting my interface would allow. No joy. I have 8 cores and 32GB of ram, SSD disk. It's a mean and fast machine.

There's some good news:
The BIOS has three options for HD audio: Disabled, Enabled, and Auto. I set it to "Auto" and booted into Windows. I did not install the Realtek audio drivers this time. After telling BIAB to use the "Headphones" (front jack) and not the "Speakers" (back panel) which appeared in my sound control panel and plugging a headphone cable into the front panel connector, problem solved! BIAB playback is clean. ASIO, WAS, MME = clean. 41k or 44K = clean. Time to set this thread to resolved.

Going forward it seems there are two lessons learned: 1) still don't understand why BIAB expects the internal audio hardware to be present and corrupts the playback if it's not there. Has PG Music ever tried to recreate this issue? Does BIAB play cleanly on other PCs that have motherboard audio disabled? 2) Don't install the Realtek drivers that came with the MB, BIAB won't play cleanly if they're installed. Windows 11 uses it's own drivers and the Realtek drivers aren't needed.

Last edited by SaxaBruce; 02/25/24 10:10 PM. Reason: added more detail

Bruce Hook - Soprano, Alto and Tenor Saxes
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Good news you solved it. I’m fascinated by what you say about the RealTek driver needing to be present for BIAB. That makes no sense to me and I hope you can get an explanation.

About HD drivers in general, I always Disable them rather than Remove them. Otherwise Windows puts them back every time it updates! Very annoying. For others reading, I’m referring to drivers for devices we who have good audio interfaces never want to use, such as the internal sound chip or especially things like monitors (screens) that have their own sound. I learned from Noel Borthwick at Cakewalk SONAR that the existence of such drivers actually limited how many tracks SONAR could have. I would bet that most people here who have a monitor with its own speakers have an active HD driver visible in Device Manager.


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Originally Posted by SaxaBruce
...................... 1) still don't understand why BIAB expects the internal audio hardware to be present and corrupts the playback if it's not there. Has PG Music ever tried to recreate this issue? Does BIAB play cleanly on other PCs that have motherboard audio disabled? .........................

FWIW - BiaB plays cleanly with my motherboard RealTek drivers disabled.


I want my last spoken words to be "I hid a million dollars under the........................"

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Originally Posted by Matt Finley
............... I would bet that most people here who have a monitor with its own speakers have an active HD driver visible in Device Manager.

The same is true with many Nvidia graphic cards. Every time my Nvidia card drivers update I have to disable the Nvidia audio drivers, otherwise I can not hear the BiaB style demos. BiaB plays fine, I just can't hear the demos when those drivers are active.


I want my last spoken words to be "I hid a million dollars under the........................"

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That’s even one more good reason, Mario, although I hadn’t heard that one before. I wonder if that’s unique to your system? Probably pretty widespread as Nvidia cards are ubiquitous.

There are so many vendors and driver choices that it’s hard to know anything for certain, just that this is an area to explore when having problems.

ps For quite a few years I have been using only the Intel chips with their own video, and I don’t have a separate (often noisy) graphics card. BIAB certainly doesn’t need a good graphics card, and neither do the DAW or other digital audio editing programs I use.


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Originally Posted by Matt Finley
That’s even one more good reason, Mario, although I hadn’t heard that one before. I wonder if that’s unique to your system? Probably pretty widespread as Nvidia cards are ubiquitous.

There are so many vendors and driver choices that it’s hard to know anything for certain, just that this is an area to explore when having problems.

ps For quite a few years I have been using only the Intel chips with their own video, and I don’t have a separate (often noisy) graphics card. BIAB certainly doesn’t need a good graphics card, and neither do the DAW or other digital audio editing programs I use.

It may be unique to my music computer. I have BiaB on two computers, one for the Internet and my off-line music and photography computer. My Internet computer has both RealTek and Nvidia audio, however the Nvidia is a much less expensive card than on my music computer. BiaB works perfectly on it with both audio drivers active. My music computer has RealTek, Nvidia, and Win 10 Roland Octa-Capture, my audio interface, drivers. On it I have to deactivate the RealTek and Nvidia audio drivers for BiaB style demos to work. Note I need a better graphic card for my photographic work, one that is also quiet. You are correct in that music programs usually don't need super graphic card unless, maybe, they are also adding video: don't know that for sure.


I want my last spoken words to be "I hid a million dollars under the........................"

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Good point about the video that one may need to work with alongside audio.


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Thank you Mario and Matt. Great points. I do indeed have a monitor with speakers and a high end AMD graphics card with audio. I've had those drivers disabled from the get go. A search through online reviews of my specific motherboard model this morning found several saying the internal audio has problems of various types. That, along with Mario's confirming he has no problems with using whatever he has (save for the playback of style demos) was enough for me to conclude this is not a BiaB problem, rather it's my motherboard.


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Unfortunately for you, that makes perfect sense.


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A couple hours of work and a new motherboard is now installed and working well. No issues, BiaB sounds great through either the onboard sound or the external audio interface.

It's time to make some music!!


Bruce Hook - Soprano, Alto and Tenor Saxes
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Cool. Congratulations on figuring it out.


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Thank you! Could not have figured it out without y'all.


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