Hi KGU2,

I'd say the reasons to use RealBand is that once you have your Band-in-a-Box song laid out, you can open it in RealBand and have 48 audio or MIDI tracks available for recording (Band-in-a-Box has one audio track and two MIDI tracks the user can record to).

You can also regenerate just selected bars of the tracks BIAB had generated, which isn't possible in Band-in-a-Box.

For these reasons, it's good for finishing projects that were started in BIAB.

It's also great for editing MIDI files, since it works natively in the General MIDI format, unlike many DAWs.

Of course, if you're already comfortable in another DAW, you can drag and drop tracks directly from BIAB to your DAW. It requires a few more clicks than just opening the song in RB, but it's not too bad. The biggest drawback is that your DAW can't regenerate BB tracks, but you can regenerate the song in BIAB, drag multiple versions of a track into your DAW, and copy and paste to keep the best parts.

I always say that the best DAW is the one you're comfortable with.

Hope this is helpful.

Kent
PG Music