🌟 Breaking News! 🌟

We’re thrilled to announce that Rustyspoon has made PG history as the very first person to successfully complete the download and install of the full Band-in-a-Box 2025 Windows Audiophile Edition (with FLAC files)—a whopping 610GB of data! 🎶

A big shoutout to Rustyspoon for stepping up to be our test "elf!"

Thank you for your support, Rustyspoon!

Catherine

This is the new 2025 Audiophile Edition with the FLAC files.

Misha, how long did the download take?

Misha knows. He may wish to post the results but I think he’s testing to help PG Music.

Congratulations...

Catherine,
You making it sound like I was carrying these gigabytes on my shoulders all the way from beautiful Victoria, CA.

To those who might be interested. I've purchased my yearly upgrade, but asked for opportunity to test downloading entire Flac Audiophile version. Personally, I was interested to see if it's possible for someone like me, with very average.... actually below average connection, to complete this. To test integrity of downloaded files and fairly large installation. So here are the details:

My connection is 100mbps. Weekend traffic put it fluctuating between 45-65mbps.
I was given a special link for Download Manager that produced a list of 46 files.
Aside from program files, content were split averaging 20gb per package.
To check integrity of the process, I uninstalled all PGM and related software from my computer except for the Download manager.
Download took me about 30 hours with my relatively slow connection, that was slowed down even more by general weekend traffic and other daily internet activity of whole family.
After download was completed, I pressed big yellow button in D.Manager: "DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL ALL"... and to my surprise, installation went through without a single error.
I was downloading and installing on internal m.2 gen4 drive. Actual installation took less than 1 hour. Opened BIAB, pressed "rebuild" and it was ready to rock&roll. So far - no issues.

Not suitable for all, but definitely a viable option if you have your own media, want to save a few $ and/or want it faster. Definitely a good option to have looking at the future.

PGM, thank you for the opportunity.

A 30-hour download is no small task, but it sounds like everything went smoothly, which is fantastic to hear!

Thank you for sharing the details of your experience, including the download speed and the drive you installed it on—I'm sure this will be helpful to others.

We would also recommend installing to an SSD for faster performance and to save time.

Thank you!

[quote=Rustyspoon#
My connection is 100mbps. Weekend traffic put it fluctuating between 45-65mbps.
Download took me about 30 hours with my relatively slow connection
[/quote]
Misha, from my perspective you do not have a relatively slow connection.
My download speed via landline is roughly 17 Mbps.
Per my calculations it would take greater than 3 days (assuming no interruptions) to download 610GB.

Two years ago I downloaded the Ultrapak and it took over a day.

Our local utility is promising "broadband speeds" using fiber some time in 2025 or 2026, until then snail mail is my solution for BiaB upgrades.

Thanks for sharing your results, it gives me something to look forward to

Question related:

If I bought the Audiophile 2024 to Audiophile 2025 downloadable, would I have access to the download of the whole Audiophile contents or only the 30GB?

I am really interested for a number of reasons:

1) Downloading ~0.6TB of data is OK for me. I've got a 1Gbps/line, and everything up to my computer is Gb Ethernet. When I am not limited by servers, I can download at full speed (means about 2 hours to download everything, I have downloaded a few sampling libraries from 50GB to 270GB from different vendors and it's OK). At this very moment I am installing Sounpaint's "Dunescape" (50GB), no issue, just a few minutes.

2) Buying BiaB in SSD means a physical purchase, it adds customs when bought from Europe (at least this happenede to me last year). Time and money... for nothing.

If the answer is "no", the next question is... Could I download the 30GB of new contents and batch-convert all the audio files in RealTracks and RealDrums folders to their .flac counterparts? Should this work when BiaB now can read both .wav and .flac versions? Or this possibility must be somehow "installed" so the new .flac files are really recognized as their .wav counterpart?

If the answer is "no"; then also I understand that the desciption of the long download by the original poster is just an experiment for a future option.

If downloading (or alternatively batch-converting) is OK, this new possibility could tip the scales to update my BiaB with the Audiophile version.

Thanks!

Congratulations on making PG Music history Misha. And you volunteered. I thought everybody knows never to volunteer.

Excellent write-up regarding your download and install experience. Thank you for taking more than thirty hours of your life to become a guiding beacon for other users interested in Audiophile .downloads.

MoultiPass,
dude it's supposed to be funny. On the other hand, it was a successful test, showing that what was possible only by shipping of physical drive, now technically possible to obtain in a digital form by a person with average connection. I am not a hero, just a guinea pig, but I salute PGM for making this process, which includes transfer and installation of large chunk of data trouble free.

This is all very funny and an interesting thing to test, but I think it’s not needed.

Just buy the $199 audiophile update tiny SSD once to get ALL the past RealTracks in Flac files as well as the new ones. From now on (starting next year), all you will have to do is download the very much smaller update of only the new RealTracks. And you won’t be collecting hard drives anymore.

Matt,
Separately, just for the purpose of the exercise, did you do a test with your blitz-speed internet connection at all?

I think the download option also saves a lot of EU folk the extra VAT costs.

Trevor, I mentioned somewhere I would be happy to run a test using Gigabit Internet. Shouldn’t be too painful.

About the VAT, that was an important reason to develop the download solution but I thought I read that someone got charged based on the retail value of the download - something like that - and downloading the product did not save what they thought it might. That could be wrong and I would appreciate a better explanation from someone who lives in the EU.

Hi Matt, speaking from a UK perspective, I got charged 20% VAT on the retail cost of this year's upgrade. The charge is applied when purchasing. This happens on all my purchases from US vendors for software and subscriptions.

I don't think the download has anything to do with it (VAT or not VAT).
In my experience (I am in EU) it is baset on the value of the purchased goods itself and your registered address/country in the BIAB account.
This is then used by the payment service provider to add the correct VAT for that specific country (for some counties VAT could be 25%)

(I guess that's the reason why there were no VAT added before when payed, I guess directly to PGMusic, but later on changed when they switched over to an external payment service).

Nowadays it is the same for most online shopping sites (at least for the larger on-line shops).

In my case (Spain) it is VAT (21%) over the whole price PLUS Customs fees on the value of the physical media (thankfully PGMusic made clear in their export documentation that the physical goods crossing the border had a relatively small value!).

Then Customs did not charge anything but a small fee "for handling" (inspecting) the physical parcel, if I remember correctly. This is not always the case, this is very unpredictable.

At the end it is full VAT + extra costs + 3 or 4 extra days (it can be 2 or 20 in my expience with other imported goods) + never being totally sure if I'll ever receive the hard drive or not, when at at which total cost. The risk is that if for ANY reason Customs decide that I have to pay a premium, I cannot return my purchase. It happened to me with some goods that I sent to myself from UK to Spain when moving out!

So I was very glad when this morning I saw THIS (I am not totally sure it was available one week ago):



This means I will not be forced to receive an IMPORTED physical drive to update or upgrade (or to buy from a retailer... a FULL Audiophile version at full price in an European retailer). I can just download. If PGmusic servers are not the bottleneck, downloading everything can be done in a couple of hours with my home-office connection. I've already downloaded sampling libraries with similar sizes (280GB in less than 1 hour).

For future years there is a new option on the table: The difference between Audiophile "plus" (only new content) or Audiophile "upgrade" (all content in FLAC, new contents from 2 or more years plus older contents for 299$). This means the normalization of using downloads for Audiophile.

Having the option cannot be bad.

Thanks for the info but I think I’m more confused now than I was before.

I also just learned that the VAT % differs by country. [Im not being critical; in my own state of New York, people drive to different counties to save a percent on sales tax. Totally silly situation but it’s real money on a large purchase.]

Parapnte, good observation! I think the $299 audiophile download is indeed newly added, I suppose as a result of Rustyspoon’s successful test. I note that the $149 download upgrade and $199 SSD audiophile upgrade options both say Limited Time availability. We won’t know if that’s temporary for technical changes, or part of the normal post-release discounts, until we see our options a year from now.

PatrickS, about your upgrade: did you download it, or did you get shipped a package? And in case it wasn’t apparent, PG Music is in Victoria, British Columbia Canada. Same tax though, yes?

Hello!

Yes, looking into various download package options right now. I will update you shortly!

Thank you!
Catherine

It can and often is worse than that ... there can different rates within the same country, depending upon the Government's or tax authorities perception of the goods, for example in the UK, food, educational goods and publications are zero rated. But some 'luxury foods' are not classed as foods and get 20%. Fruit juice is a food, but a smoothie is classed a 'luxury' item and is taxed at 20%. "Go figure" is the expression that comes to mind.

It's also liable on every transfer of goods, B2B or retail. Larger businesses claim it back on purchases and have to charge it again on sales.

I'd hoped that when the UK left the EU we'd be willing to dump VAT, but I rather doubt that will ever happen.

Here is another specific use cases for purchasing downloadable version.

Unlike spinner hard drives shipped prior years, which you can in theory open case and install as internal drives, newly shipped drives have proprietary form factor and can not be used internally. So if your plan is to install full Audiophile on internal drive and you have a fast internet, why not save on the price difference (Downloadable vs HD shipped) and buy yourself a hard drive that will fit your computer / needs, unless of course you already have one, which makes the option even more attractive?

I hope that all that can be done is being done to help our brothers and sisters across the pond.
It appears they deal with challenges and costs that folks in the States don't deal with.

Hello,

Great idea.

We have added an option for those who have the 2024 Audiophile, but want to upgrade to a downloadable version of the Audiophile Edition with all FLAC files for the RealTracks/RealDrums.

Reminder, this is abut 610GB of data.

Thank you!
Catherine

I was referring to the reduced total purchase price if the SSD wasn't required. The VAT costs would only be on the software, and not including hardware.

Yes, it was a download and I should have added Canada as also being also the same for VAT rates.

I've been self indulgent, didn't stick to my word, concentrated on the possibility to use the 30 day money-back guarantee and... I finally bought the downloadable version of full Audiophile 2025 (from Audiophile 2024). ($169 option in the table).

My download is limited on PG's end, not at home, but it is quite fast. 400...700Mbps most of the time. I already downloaded and installed 42% in less than 2 hours. I did not have any interrupted or failing download, I set 12 parallel downloads in a different drive and it seems to work quite well. I set a different drive because I install to a fast HDD, and de-compressing and downloading on the same drive was limiting speed. I did not have to check "download / install sequentially".

Now it says 48%, ETA fluctuating between 1h - 2h. If total time ended up being 3:30, effective average speed would be 386Mbps (48MBPS). So it is practical and effective, at least from Europe at this time of the day.