Band-in-a-Box Pro 2011 OmniPAK - HD Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)pros:
1.the Realtracks sound amazing. Better than anything I have heard .
2. Price. As oppose as the one negative reviewer said ( from his review, I can see he's a complete beginner; no offense, but he obviously has no idea of price comparisons with similar products- there is none-. Band in a Box basic version costs 129 US dollars. He's probably one of these people who believes things should be given away) Band in a Box has a competitive price, and it also includes a DAW (Realband), which also has the best bits of Band in a Box , i.e. the ability to write chord progressions and have instruments play them back. To buy that alone, a decent one would already cost you almost the full price.
3. No dongles, no registration required. This is amazing, and is the only professional program I came across that saves you tons of headache. Try doing the same with Cubase. It will take you hours just to get up and run. With Band in a Box you simply plug in the HD supplied and you are ready to get on with music.
4. Comprehensive manual ( a very thick one, for reasons explained below.
5. A lot more stable than previous versions. With The previous version it would not work with my soundcard and I gave up and resold the software (another big plus: the license is transferable,unlike other software). But I now bought v 2011 and it's working great !
cons:
2. program is bloated with useless things (games, etc). Also, I never use the 'melodist' etc. If you can't even write a melody yourself, you should take up something else other than music.
3. the intros are all alike and nowhere as good as these found on Yamaha styles.
4. The most annoying thing of all: the program throws in stupid notes that the user does not specify. For example, you enter B dim, and you get B dim but the program plays back B dim 7. That's REALLY bad as often the extra notes that the program stupidly throws in, ruin the music completely. It should be like on Yamaha arranger keyboards: what plays back is exactly the chords that you specify, NO MORE AND NO LESS. This thing that Band in a Box is an 'intelligent' program and throws in all these altered notes etc without any logic, to me, it's a total downfall. It's been years that I say that on Pg Music's forums, nothing has changed. The program still throws in all these alterations and extra notes like a stupid robot, even after specifying 'no embellishment' etc
For this reason, I often ends up frustrated, turn the PC off and compose on my Yamaha Tyros. It feels like night and day.
5. PG Music still did not develop or outsource a great sounding GM module, and that means that if you want MIDI to sounds good, you have to invest in an expensive Ketron SD sound module.
Band in a Box works if you make it work, but prepared to put in a lot of work. It's far from perfect, especially the chord recognition makes no sense most times. However, it still is a great software and the one that I end up using more than any other. I really dislike Cubase, Sonar and that kind of stuff. But PG Music should study carefully the chord recognition on the Yamaha Tyros models: simple and faultless. I still recommend Band in a Box; even though I have occasionally the strange note problem, I can still edit almost anything, and truth be told, there's always a way to make Band in a Box work the way I want. And the Realtracks really are light-years beyond anything else.

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