Right on Bachus. I’ve been harping on arrangers having multiple outputs, when all along it should be a software upgrade.

Ketron, Korg, and Yamaha arrangers should all allow for software integration to your favorite daw.

With the quality sounds produced by these machines, software that allows individual tracking in your daw should be a no brainer. Especially, now that BIAB can do it.

Hi Bernie,
Your best shot would be to go to biab forums, they used to be really helpful.

As for the styles, there are “midi styles “any songs you saved as midifiles could be played in the Pa4x like any other midifile you have.
The styles using real tracks would have to be saved as audio files.

I’ve never played around with audio on the Pa4x, guessing it plays mp3 files.
I’ve never had any luck saving biab files as mp3 ( could be something weird about my laptop) but have saved as wav file to be converted to mp3 using another program. Think I tried it for the pa3x.

Notation in the korg, haven’t tried it, I read my music from fake book or iPad. Biab does lead sheets, would have to do some checking.

Laptop doesn’t have to be as powerful as one would imagine. Check with pg. or the forum.
My 3 to 4 year old laptop runs them perfectly. I got talked into a laptop with a solid state drive. Big mistake only had 70 gigs, which ended up being nowhere big enough to fit the biab audio files. Hadn’t been using the program at the time, so didn’t take it into account.
Got around it though. Bought a 128 gig ssd external USB drive. Loaded the real track instruments on it. Worked well.

More recently I bought a tiny256 gig USB stick put everything on it and it seems to run just as well as it did on the external USB solid state drive.

I’ll probably get the ultra pack plus on usb hardrive , upgrade , 2017 or earlier, as I missed out on a couple of years of real tracks. Get a clean start and just add any extras that I’ve got ,back in.

From memory you can run the program from the drive with just a minor installation of some components into the computer, you can load the program into pc and use the real tracks from the USB drive, saving you from having to load about 100 gig of files into the computer, or you can load everything in if you have the space.

I loaded my BIAB onto an external 1 terabyte USB drive..
And it plays perfect on my Toshiba laptop running Vista..

I also have it set up to run on my HP laptop running Windows 10..

I guess everything other than playing a 'solo' instrument is "cheating" ...
For ME, the difference with using styles as opposed to midi files/backing tracks/whatever is that when I'm using styles I have to know what chords to play - which are all at least 3 finger chords ... so in that sense I am playing live ... if I don't change the chord nothing changes ... if someone wants to say I'm cheating because of the accompanying instruments that are playing, then so be it ... but even they sound as they do because of my chord progression ...
I have no idea how BIAB works, but I wouldn't criticize anyone for using that or anything else in a performance ...
I would still love to be playing with the 5 piece band we had for 26 years, but life changes ...

Hi Tony, I could imagine nothing could beat that.


Biab has a lot of Jazz styles Tony and the chords are right in front of you on your laptop. Haha

Seriously though, to each his own, you do what works for you.

The program has grown, I bought it back in 1990 ( there abouts) when it first came out, I think it had 3 instruments, bass piano, drums. Probably sounded hideous, but, at the time,wow! Certainly a lot cheaper than midifiles, I think at the time they were selling for something like $10 to $30 each. Still,it’s the arranger keyboards I went for over the years.

Think I’m definitely going to upgrade biab again, been playing around with it again for a few days before I jumped in and bought it( not like me, usually buy something then think why did I do that). Sounds good, and something for me to do while my wrist hopefully heals or i’ll Be playing right hand melody jabbing with a pencil on the keys. Haha

Rikki

Thank you for your reply. It helps a lot. I have an instance of my 2008 BIAB on an i5,i7 16in laptop that is fine, but heavy. If I order an Ultra Pak+ upgrade, am I limited to that machine? In other words, is an upgrade installed over my old BIAB, or do I get the upgrade price from their records, and I can use it on any machine with the program on an ext HD?

Hi Bernie,
I’ve had mine on a number of laptops over the years. You get a code with your order and that validates it. Has to be done in 30 days. Quite frankly they seem a great company to deal with. Online chat, 30 day money back if not satisfied.
Have a chat to them. From what I remember what I did last time when I bought a full upgrade, ie I hadn’t upgraded for a few years and I sort of wanted to start from scratch, I bought the USB hard drive version, did a back up and then added any extra styles etc I may have had from years back.

Not sure how many times you can use the code, but pretty sure it’s more than once. If you have a newer laptop, that’s the one you would want to use.
I think i’ll Bite the bullet and order mine tomorrow.i’ll have To wait a couple of weeks before the USB version arrives, but they also give you a download version, which i’ll Be downloading straight away. I’ll let you know how I go.

But seriously try and have an online chat, usually they’re not around when I am because of time differences.

I can test a few bits out for you if you like.

I do always only buy the upgrade version .

I am back on their forum, in which I am still active after ten years. I will give them a chat, as I am a newbe now, especially with all the fantastic improvements they have made. I,also, downloaded their PDF manual.

3 times I believe.

Yes, I just chatted with PG and they said you are licensed for three computers and you don't have to switch, but can have three at once.