Reid Rosefelt

I think it's fair to say that The Orchestra is not trying to compete with any of the libraries you mention. The main reason to get it is for all the presets of arps working with various combinations of orchestral instruments. You play a chord and you get a fully worked out orchestral sound. It's to make things fun and easy, in the same way that ujam instruments do. But... if there is a noob who wants these effects and doesn't own any orchestral libraries, they can compose great music with this, beyond these patterned presets. There are some great instruments in there and a lot of them. But The Orchestra is not trying to compete with Spitfire, Orchestral Tools, and the rest. With what you own, get it only if you want to fool around with their pre-orchestrated templates.

I knew this was coming and money is set aside. Now The Orchestra is truly Complete, although I do think they will continue to add to it. More percussion maybe? More world instruments? This update makes it a lot more like OPUS Orchestrator. I'm sure it doesn't sound as good, but it's more than good enough for all the music I make, and I don't need to buy a new TB of storage and pay for that other thing.

Don't forget the $25 voucher!!! 😃

Nice freebie. And doubly nice not to make us sweat. Thank you, Sonokinetic.

I made it home, just in time. So we'll see what happens. My dentist kept going on and on and on talking. I thought he was going to give me the entire history of plaque through the ages. Somehow I got out of there.

My memory is that the first freebie tends to come on the second day of the sale. If so, I'll probably miss out as I have a dentist's appointment at that time. My timer is set, but I don't think I'll be able to do the transaction on my phone! In the old days (2016) a 12 Days freebie would be available for half the day. Now it's minutes.

Thanks. I would assume there are demos somewhere as they are selling it for $49. I am just too busy with other stuff right now to check on this yet.

My first reaction is that Keepforest (since Evolution Dragon) has been a pioneer in making it super easy to make trailer music. But still, these are toolkits for muscians and sound designers. They don't make the trailer music--they just save time. But AI doesn't just help composers. It has the potential to replace a lot of them. A lot of producers just don't want to pay for things. A trailer editor with AI traukwe nyaux software can easily turn in the job. Until they make AI to replace the editor. 😕

On the home page they should say something like, "if you want to get the most out of BIAB, we suggest you take a look at the Xtra Styles Packs. And then have a link to the page. Or maybe even slap a video on page one that shows people what they are. Instead, if by any chance you happen to got to the Add-ons page, and there are so many options that most people don't use. Songs and Lessons? MIDI Soloists? https://www.pgmusic.com/addons.php?os=win It's like they don't even know what is good about BIAB--which is the Real Tracks. Get performances that sound like real musicians played them (because they did). For most people who are really deep into BIAB, the Xtra Style Packs are necessary. The more the better. Of all the software I own BIAB is the one that gets the most better every year--while still looking like the way it came out in the late 1980s, with that wowza Windows 95 User Interface.😃

It's my favorite among the ujam electric basses. As you can tell by the illustration, it's their version of a Hofner. And I find the ujam drag-and-drop MIDI to be very easy to use. You drag it off the top of the keys. Regular stuff on the white keys and fills on the black keys. A few drags and you can figure out what you want to do in your DAW.

I have always liked Vegas Pro. I've used it so long that it's second nature. I make my YouTube videos in Premiere now, but I still use Vegas all the time for other things. I'm on Vegas Pro 16, so this isn't enough of an upgrade for me. I am still thinking about whether I want to pay $129 to upgrade to Vegas Pro 20. I have a few days. A lot of the new features I already have in Premiere, though.

I think this is a terrific deal. For them. But if somebody knows that they always make a lot of purchases there every month, every year, then they should do it. Why not? APD is strongly motivated to keep putting the best possible deals up, because they want all of us to buy.

Yeah, that makes sense. Nobody else had a problem with the update.

I don't really know if it was upgrading KK that caused this. But everything was fine on my computer on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, I updated a bunch of things on Native Access and decided to update Komplete Kontrol too. And when I ran standalone, all kinds of stuff wouldn't load. Ample Sound Erhu. Dehumaniser Simple Monsters. Two iZotope reverbs I've never used. For example, the Erhu would throw up a card and say input the serial code. I would and it would say I'd used up all my installations. The same thing happened in Cubase, so Cubase blacklisted it. Oddly, Cubase didn't give me any trouble with the other Ample Sound Chinese instruments, but they also don't work. It may have something to do with iLok, but they are all still activated in iLok. Whatever caused this, I'm just going to slowly work on getting my stuff back using the Customer Service of the various companies. Some of it, like the reverbs, I don't care.

Just to add one odd thing about buying BIAB. One time I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy the $49 pak. I figured I had the length of the sale to think about it. Anyway, I eventually decided to buy it. But it was no longer on the site. So I called customer service. To get it, I had to buy the upgrade again and put the $49 pak in my cart. And then delete the upgrade from my cart. Buying BIAB and all their xtra products is unecessarily complex. I can't imagine how complex it is for a total noob with no access to a forum like this. But their customer service is great.

So much to unpack about all these new features, but one thing is true. Making solos in the past wasn't easy and now it is. Some time ago I made a video that said that, while the accompaniment part of BIAB works great even though it's random--it's not good for making solos . You get a few bars that are kinda good and then there is one really bad measure. And then when you regenerate you hate everything. BIAB had some ways to deal with this, but they were clumsy to use and didn't really work. So I made this crazy video, which said the only way to do it was to output the stems to audio and comp them! An insane idea that I'm sure nobody aside from me ever did. But I did do a demo for a friend's song using exactly this method. The version of BIAB that came out after my video last year solved this problem. And this year they made it even better. Did PG Music watch my video? It's not impossible. There aren't many BIAB videos on YouTube, and this is probably the only one that focuses on a workaround for a problem.

I hate to say this, but this is premature. Every year some big deals come out in December. It has driven me nuts because I wouldn't have bought A if I had any idea that a sale on B was coming. But my $$$ was gone. For example, I did know that there would be the yearly BIAB sale, and was expecting that. But I didn't remember how expensive it would be to buy the upgrade, plus $49 pack and a few Xtra Styles paks. By the time I get through studying this, I'll probably be out close to $200 or even more. Who knows what tasty additional products they are selling this year? And to think I almost bought OPUS/Hollywood Orchestra on impulse for $249! So don't be so sure that you have reached the end of your spendage. One year there was a big OT sale on the Inspires and the Arks. That's a pretty common thing these days, but not then. Nobody saw that coming. There is also always a big NI partner sale in December. Last year was a whole set of Evolution Series instruments that I bought and use all the time. And the Sonokinetic 12 Days will soon come a caroling. Hide your money!! 💸😮

The new buttons are a huge improvement on some previously not -great apps like the free digital clock. You can actually read it now. I expect there will be a lot of apps taking advantage of the new size. I forgot to mention, the Premiere Pro version came out today. More setup for me. The Cubase template took hours to do bacause you must do a lot of it by hand. Also, it doesn't have full functionality unless it's Cubase 12.

So much to unpack about all these new features, but one thing is true. Making solos in the past wasn't easy and now it is. Some time ago I made a video that said that, while the accompaniment part of BIAB works great even though it's random--it's not good for making solos . You get a few bars that are kinda good and then there is one really bad measure. And then when you regenerate you hate everything. BIAB had some ways to deal with this, but they were clumsy to use and didn't really work. So I made this crazy video, which said the only way to do it was to output the stems to audio and comp them! An insane idea that I'm sure nobody aside from me ever did. But I did do a demo for my friend Ezra using exactly this method. This is completely BIAB except for some guitar, piano and organ by me. Very badly mixed, this was a long time ago. Anyway, the version of BIAB that came out after my video last year solved this problem. And this year they made it even better. Did PG Music watch my video? It's not impossible. There aren't many BIAB videos on YouTube, and this is probably the only one that focuses on a workaround for a problem. EDIT: I no longer think this is true about solo tracks. The new features affect other things, like drum tracks. But as I said, they addressed this problem last year.

I got mine a few days ago. The big news is that the sideshowfx template for my XL work in tandem with the sideshowfx template for this. Everything works. So I can use the knobs when the knobs are helpful (scrolling, zooming, adjusting levels, etc) and I still have access to 32 more keyboard shortcuts available at the touch of a button. In the coming weeks I'll be customizing both sides to make the best combination for my workflow. In terms of what kind of MIDI the knobs can control, there is a free MIDI program that comes with every Stream Deck. You have to install it to use the sideshowfx templates. How this works with knobs, I have no idea. This was made before there were knobs. But I'll be finding out.

Oh God, I haven't seen that yet. 🤔 I'll listen to the demos, if they are available. AFAIK if you don't buy these Paks each year that come with the update, you miss out on the chance of ever getting to buy them. I think it may be a way to nudge completists to upgrade every year. But are they worth $49? I started from the release of BIAB in the late 80s, when it was all MIDI and came on a CD. I think it cost about $50. I remember the original set had the theme song from "The Flintstones" and I loved that. I updated for many years and then stopped. But since I came back to it in 2016, I've upgraded every year. I have a LOT of money in this thing, but I use it all the time. I often like to map out a piece of music in BIAB and then use it as a guide track. It's so useful. And I don't feel bad about using it now and then for a backing track.

From their site... There are over 70 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2023! This includes many major new features. There are Partial Track Re-Generations, with an on-screen Regeneration Panel and an Always Different setting to get up to 40 variations on any RealTracks. Undo - Track Generation and Undo - Song Generation is added. You can now copy, cut, paste, delete, insert, and do other editing functions to the RealTracks/RealDrums tracks, while preserving the ability for the tracks to re-generate new material. Auto-Save Song prevents data loss. Playable Tracks are enhanced for Playable RealTracks (404 new Sforzando sounds, 700 total - all with Audio Demos), and now include Playable RealDrums, MIDI SuperTracks and MIDI tracks. There are now RealTracks Stems, separate isolated tracks available for multi-track RealTracks like Horns (e.g., Crooner, Blues), Vocals, and String Quartets. Master Track Volume Automation for fadeouts, crescendos etc. added. SynthMaster® Player synth included, with modern/techno sounds. Audio Input monitoring to hear your Audio Input (e.g., electric guitar with effects) through to Audio Out. Arpeggiator sounds available. EZ Selection of your RealTracks/RealDrums Folders. Help for "Style not Found" providing info and lists of substitutes. Generate Intros using Song Chords. RealDrums Fills control, Enhancements for StylePicker - Preview, Prototypes and Rebuild, and much more! The Band-in-a-Box® 2023 DAW Plugin offers over 40 exciting new features and enhancements, including Drum Stems (separate tracks from the different microphones used during the actual recording sessions), 4 color schemes to choose from, enhanced chord settings, improved undo/redo operation, "Rebuild StylePicker" notification whenever rebuild is required, EZ RealTracks/RealDrums Folder Locations dialog, and more!

There's also a new Xtra Styles Pak 15 https://www.pgmusic.com/xtrastyles.php?pak=all&os=win#pak15 All of these paks are now $29 (normally $49) and you can get 1-15 for $199. https://www.pgmusic.com/xtrastyles.php?os=win My whole video I did on BIAB would not be possible without me buying all the xtra styles paks at the time. This upgrade is going to cost me $99, plus another $58 for the two Xtra Styles I don't have. 😡

Thanks. I listened to this, but it's not the kind of music I want to make. But I love Sonuscore generally.

Damn you! Argggh! 😮