Who of you dedicate a computer strictly for BIAB

[Dick Chapple Sr]

I will be diving into BIAB shortly. It would seem to be nice to have a laptop or tablet or notebook with a large enough screen to see what is on it while it would rest on a music stand or small stand next to the steel guitar. And use the computer solely for BIAB.

Would a 15.6 or 17.3" screen be large enough to work with?
I am thinking the laptop would benefit best with at least a 264GB SSD drive and 8 megs of RAM.
A port for an external hard drive for the BIAB. A DVD drive would be nice too.
And a laptop that would have room to put a decent sound card in it.

If any of you out there are doing this, could one realistically keep under a $350 budget for a good used computer? One easily capable of running BIAB?

what are your thoughts, ideas, setups, any help will be much appreciated.

Dick

[Pete Nicholls]

I use a 14" refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad with a 500GB drive, and it does a great job for me. I use it as a dedicated music computer which includes over 1,000 backing tracks (mp3) and BIAB with many thousands of songs. I also have thousands of midi files on there, and hundreds of pdf sheet music.

I mounted a piece of plywood to a photography tripod and set it up next to the guitar for my stand.

I think I paid around $250 for mine.

[Dick Chapple Sr]

Thanks Pete, neat idea with the tripod, that I could do with the space I have at home. Thank you.
What do you do with the sound? Can you plug into a guitar amp? Or do you have powered external speakers?
Dick

[Erv Niehaus]

I have a dedicated computer for BIAB, no internet connection. I want to avoid the risk of a virus.
Erv

[Dick Chapple Sr]

Hi Erv:
Good to hear that, I was going to write to you to see if you did have.
Laptop or desktop? What size screen?
And what do you do for decent sound? External powered speaker, or do you connect somehow to a guitar amp?
Dick

I like what Pete has done.

[Erv Niehaus]

Dick,
I have my BIAB on an old desktop computer running Windows XP
I have a high end sound board in it, external speakers and a good sized flat screen.
You need a good sound card or BIAB comes out sounding like crap!
You also need a lot of capacity to download the BIAB files. I had to upgrade mine as I ran out of memory.
And a DVD drive is necessary.
I also use it to burn tracks to CDs.
Erv

[Dick Chapple Sr]

Thanks Erv:
That is exactly what I need. I am hoping to do that with a suitable laptop, I really need the portability this time.
I have two nice desktops that will handle BIAB very well, but I can't get near them with my guitar setup.
If I find the decent laptop I will but it on a pedestal like Pete did.

Dick

[Pete Nicholls]

Get a sound card that plugs into your usb port, and run it into a powered mixer, or powered speaker. I've done many gigs with this setup, and always sounds good. I do use a volume pedal in line to the powered mixer to dynamically balance the track volume with the vocal volume.

[Dick Chapple Sr]

Well, I did latch on to a used lap top Pete and Erv. Got a fairly new one with 17.3" screen, 1T hard drive, 3.0 USB, CD/DCD drive pretty decent for $150.00. cheap enough to try, I can always get that back out of it I think if I need a better setup. Now I will look for a good external sound card and put it on a tripod so it close enough for me to see and work with while playing. Now I need to get a new Band In A Box.

Dick

[Greg Cutshaw]

Get the new BIAB that's packaged on it's own hard drive! You'll get ReaTracks with it and the best possible sound and great performance. Note that if you do that and load the entire RealTracks on your own hard drive, the high quality RealTracks files will be downgraded from wav to lower res files per the BIAB documentation. So you are better off keeping those on the BIAB provided drive which is very fast, extremely portable and usable with all your computers.

[Greg Cutshaw]

Here's the original post regarding the Audiophile version of BIAB on hard drive:

viewtopic.php?t=309752&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[Dick Chapple Sr]

Thank you Greg. I went to the Midi Store and also their ebay site. That is a good price for the audiophile. They allow offers on their ebay listing, so I offered an amount about what they sell them for from their own store.
This is way more than I need for now and probably forever but I will have the tools when I am ready. "when you are ready, the Teacher will appear".

Now all I need is a good external sound card and plug into something decent.

Dick

[Greg Cutshaw]

If you use mostly RealTracks and wav files, your built in sound card will work great. You can also try it for midi if you use a lot of midi tracks and you may find it quite acceptable. There's a zillion good solutions for speakers depending on what interface you want to use. I have Yamaha HS5's on my desktop and HS8's in my studio. They are pretty harsh sounding for general listening with music but crystal clear for mixing. I added the Yamaha subwoofer for general use. For everyday music playback I've had great luck and warmer sound with the economical KRK 5" and 8" ROKIT powered speakers.

[Dick Chapple Sr]

Thanks Greg, you have been very helpful. I have the BIAB audiophile on the way. I will look at the speakers you mentioned. this old dog is going to learn some new tricks.

Dick

[Ken Metcalf]

I have the biab external USB drive with an old laptop still running on XP..
It works okay but am getting ready to rotate it out and upgrade a laptop so my current one will be for biab.

[Dick Chapple Sr]

Hi Ken. My BIAB is suppossed to arrive today. Laptop is ready. I bought the Audiophile Version 2018 which is on a hard drive. I am sure glad I found a 17.3" screen. The computer had a licensed older version of windows 19 on it, and with the key I was still legally able to upgrade to the latest windows 10.
I found a nice stool at hobby lobby at a close out price that has a solid welded steel frame with a real wood top, has a small footprint and I have it parked next to the pedal steel, so I hope to see what it all looks like today.

Dick