I think a Fix of BIAB and RB's 255 Bar limit would be your and anyone's ultimate satisfaction because a fix is necessary in order to complete the expected and ordinary task of creating a chord chart, choosing a style and pushing the play button and BIAB/RB generates its soundtrack of the song. Ultimately, this should happen whether the song is 25 bars or 255 bars or 555 bars. My comment was spoken to you but meant for everybody.
Agreed. Thanks for the clarification.
Personally, I don't see the difference between "I have to say that the "ultimate" resolution I'd be "satisfied" with is if the 255 bar limit in BiaB was eliminated completely so that I wouldn't have to deal with one or more of the numerous workarounds to this limit for any of my songs that exceed it." you say today and " I'm hoping that the upcoming release of RB 2019 Version 4 will include a fix for this issue." you said on 6/21 other than the number of words you used.
The difference is that the elimination of the 255 bar limit in BiaB would make it possible to use BiaB to generate a complete arrangement with one click of the mouse for songs that exceed that limit in the exact same way that BiaB can currently do this for songs that don't exceed that limit. This currently cannot be done, and that is why everyone (including me) has to use a workaround in BiaB (which will require a different workflow) or use RB and be forced to take extra steps in order to deal with an erroneous erroneous chord change in bar 241 (per item #2 in my earlier post). This was the point I was making with my statement.
<< The other reason your statement is interesting is that it could imply that the resolution of this issue in RB would mostly benefit me. >>
Not at all. Everyone that will ever create a project that taxes this limitation will benefit. This limitation has been known for years and requests have been made over those years for a fix.
You misunderstood my statement. I was referring to the two problems that exist in RB at the 240/241 bar boundary, not to the 255 bar limit in BiaB. While the 255 bar limitation has been known for years, these two problems were only recently (about two weeks ago) discovered by me as a result of using RB to generate an arrangement for one of my songs that has more than 255 bars and that meets the requirements of item #2 in my earlier post.
<< Considering the fact that (please correct me if I'm wrong about this) I am the first person to discover these two problems <snip> they are not due to RB's alleged improper handling of .XML files or to MuseScore's improper creation of .XML files. >>
Correction regarding the 255 limit, that's been known for years and was already an old issue when I joined the forum years ago. Regarding the chord glitch, I don't know about that. I've never seen it mentioned before but I also have never previously participated in a discussion about these two glitches so it could have been mentioned and I missed it.
As I said above, I know that the 255 bar limit has been known about for years, so I wasn't claiming to have discovered it. However, it's possible that someone else had discovered the chord glitch before. Also, due to the intermittent nature of this glitch and the likelihood that a track regeneration procedure may make the glitch go away, it's also possible that anyone who did discover this glitch simply never bothered to submit a post about it to this forum. So, I'm willing to relinquish my claim to be the first one to have discovered it and to say instead that I may be the first.
It seemed to me in his response, and this is just speculation, but Joe with PGMusic seemed to be aware that approaching the 255 bar limit caused RB to begin to act in sporadic and unstable audio renders. Whether that came from PGMusic programmers testing or clients reports I don't know. My speculation could be completely wrong too.
You make a good point here that I believe explains why RB only generates tracks in 240 bar chunks instead of in 255 bar chunks. This was one of the mysteries about the occurrence of the erroneous chord change and glitch at the 240/241 bar boundary that we had discussed during the early stages of this thread.
<< Considering the fact that a substantial amount of time was spent on various workflow processes in this discussion, I also need to make it clear that these two problems have nothing to do with my workflow. In other words, because these problems are not related in any way to my .XML files, and because my standard use of both BiaB and RB is to begin (as my first step) by opening a .XML file that I exported from MuseScore (rather than by manually entering chords into the Chords window of either program, as most users of these programs normally do), these two problems also have nothing to do with my workflow (contrary to your assertion in your post on 06/20/19 at 08:07 AM PT and contrary to MusicStudent's subsequent post). >>
I agree with this for the most part too. As I noted above, your workflow is fine except that BIAB/RB doesn't react correctly to generate your audio without error. As I also noted earlier, for me, those glitch issues are no more an issue than turning down the gain knob to keep a channel's input signal from clipping. I don't encounter the glitches you discovered by using a method where I generate or record audio in sections small enough so the number of bars is never an issue. That's how my workflow works anyway so I'd never encounter the two limitations as you did even If I had a project in RB that exceeded the 255 bar limit. Others also work in a similar manner and that's why they say that RB is not subject to the 255 Bar limit the same as BIAB. My workflow will allow RB to have an unlimited amount of bars subject only to what my computer can tolerate. If RB in my computer can accept 1,500 bars, I can do that and there will absolutely be no audio glitches, guaranteed. I drop pre-recorded audio into RB or record short lengths of audio into RB rather and then if I apply any regeneration done by BIAB/RB, it's done in sections rather than one large single render.
As it turns out, it does have to do with your workflow because apparently BIAB and RB utilize the same architecture to generate audio tracks, and because with your workflow, you attempt to generate more than 255 bars in a single render. It's something BIAB and RB should do, but neither does. If the two glitches are eventually fixed in both BIAB and RB, then you and everyone else will be able to generate tracks the same as those that now generate songs with a smaller number of measures.
For you to clearly understand my claim that "these two problems in RB have nothing to do with my workflow," I need to differentiate between the results I've gotten from BiaB vs. the results I've gotten from RB with my workflow and point out the premise upon which I made this claim. Before doing so, however, I want to exclude the occasional glitch issue from the picture because we haven't done enough testing to properly characterize this issue and because its occurrence seems to be a byproduct or side effect of any effort to compensate for the erroneous chord change issue.
Every time I have generated a complete arrangement in BiaB for one of my songs that have less than 255 bars, I have never encountered an erroneous chord change anywhere in those arrangements. So, when I decided to try using RB to generate an arrangement for one of my songs that has more than 255 bars, I made that decision based on jazzmammal's claim that the issue of the 255 bar limit has been resolved in RB. I also made that decision with the intent of using RB in the exact same way and with the exact same purpose for which I was already using BiaB. As I've mentioned several times before in this thread, the primary purpose for which I've been using BiaB since I purchased it in December 2018 is twofold:
1) to make it easier for me to work out the kinks in my songs that I'm currently writing, and
2) to quickly create a decent, basic instrumental demo of those songs after I've finished writing them so that I can share my demos of those songs with other people for various reasons
However, the first time I used RB to generate a complete arrangement for one of my songs that has more than 255 bars, I encountered an erroneous chord change that occurred in bar 241 because of how RB implements BiaB's track generation algorithm. If my song already had a C chord in bar 241 or if the most recent chord in my song prior to bar 241 was a C chord, I wouldn't have encountered an erroneous chord change in bar 241. So, while it's true that RB has resolved the 255 bar limit that exists in BiaB, it's implementation of BiaB's track generation algorithm is faulty because of its erroneous change to a C chord in bar 241 in songs that don't meet the above criteria. This has nothing to do with the fact that I chose to generate an arrangement for the entire song as I normally do in my standard workflow procedure that I've been using for the two-fold purpose I mentioned above. The reason I say this is that the same thing would have happened if I had only selected bars 235-245 and then executed RB's Generate command. And it wouldn't have made any differenct if I had generated one track or if I had generated all the tracks. I know for a fact that this is true because I've done both of these things and seen the same thing happen both times.
If you happen to get the mixing book I referenced, it is all about developing a workflow and it will work with any DAW including BIAB/RB. It will also bypass the 255 bar limit. If you adopt its principals and techniques it will be a change in workflow and a workaround as far as the glitches in BIAB and RB go. By using the multi track recording techniques of overdubbing and Punch in/out and working in sections of your project rather than a single full length render, the issues presented in a full render attempt will never be an issue.
I am planning to get that book in the near future. But as I explained above, the erroneous chord change issue in bar 241 will occur even if I "adopt its principals and techniques" and change my workflow accordingly. This why I keep saying that this issue has nothing to do with my workflow.
<< Considering the fact that, even though this discussion has been ongoing since 6/7/10 and has 190+ posts so far, as recently as 06/20/19 06:07 AM PT (per a PM he sent me two days ago and which he reiterated in his public post on 06/20/19 12:35 PM PT), Silvertones thought that the newest RB 2019 Version 4 release candidate had fixed these issues and that the .SEQ file he had created from that version (to which he provided a link in his post on 06/20/19 12:35 PM PT) was proof of that. <snip> >>
That's what I had read at the time I made my post. Who knows if or when a fix may come?
Because of the point I made above about the occurrence of an erroneous chord change at bar 241 (if the above chord criteria is met) regardless of workflow and regardless of whether an entire track is generated or only a section of that track that includes the 240/241 bar boundary and regardless of whether all tracks are generated or only a section of those tracks are generated that includes the 240/241 bar boundary, I think it's wrong for us to think that a fix to this issue won't come and that it won't come soon.
<< Finally, considering the fact that everyone who has used RB to automatically generate tracks for songs with more than 240 bars has ended up with an erroneous chord change at bar 241 of their songs (if there wasn't any chord already entered into bar 241 and if the most recent chord in their song was not a C chord), there shouldn't be any reason for anyone to assume that I would be the primary (if not the sole) beneficiary of a fix to these issues. Furthermore, I find it very surprising that no one else who has used RB for this purpose discovered these issues before I discovered them about two weeks ago. Surely, if someone had discovered them, either these issues would have been fixed long ago or I would have been informed early on in this discussion that these are known issues that Tech Support hasn't fixed yet. >>
I never assumed you to be primary anything other than you were primarily the person I was having the conversation with. As noted, the 255 bar issue is a long known issue, most of the others over time have abandoned generation lengths that get near or exceed the limitation.
Although it wasn't certain to me that you were making such an assumption or that anyone else was making such an assumption, I appreciate the clarification nonetheless. Regarding other users, as long as they are using BiaB only, they won't encounter these two issues anyway. But if they use RB to do any track generation that crosses the 240/241 bar boundary for a song that meets the chord criteria I described above, they will still encounter an erroneous chord change in bar 241.