Due to the fact that I am the only Mac user, I would like to know if there will ever be a Mac version of Realband. Come on PG Music, I buy Band in a Box for Mac every year, and every year you seem to cater to the Windows users. I know people are going to tell me to just use Bootcamp, but I will not take the risk of having my Mac corrupted by computer virus. If I'm going to by BIAB every year, I should get Realband or never buy it again.

RealBand came about back in 2008 as an enhanced version of PowerTracks, which was and always had been a Windows only program (from before there was even a Mac version of BIAB). So to have a Mac version of RealBand or even PowerTracks would probably require writing one from scratch, since the Mac codebase doesn't exist.

That being said, given that all indications are that a 64-bit version would require pretty much a rewrite anyway, it would be nice if they could do that using a common code base that can be cross compiled for both Windows and Mac. I don't know if that's even on the table, but would seem to solve a lot of compatibility problems.

I think a VST that loads into your DAW (Logic, Pro Tools) and uses the Band-in-a-Box.app in the background to generate the required tracks, and give your DAW a chord track would be a better and simpler way to go than writing RealBand for Mac.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

I'd love to see a true BIAB VSTi (and not the "Plugin Mode" thingy).

I'm only really using RB out of necessity, because it's the only way I can get to the MultiRiff feature. If there were a VSTi that did this without having to load BIAB or RB that would be great! (It would have to have the MultiRiff part, though)...

I'm also puzzled that PG Music doesn't just write an SDK for BIAB so that the core functionality for stitching together the WAV files could just be cued up from a DAW directly. Can you imagine what the Reaper community would do with that? The mind boggles...

Oops, I just saw the thread header was for Mac. Sorry, just got a little ahead of myself there.

Carry on...

You would want a vst for Win not just Mac
RealBand calls on RealBand\Data\bbw2.exe to generate the tracks.

ReWire RealBand/PT is another way.

There is a way to do MultiRiffs in Biab Biab MultiRiffs an Easier Way though not as easy as they could make it.

Watch https://www.dropbox.com/s/4es22n4a8gq9vku/BB-MultiRiffs.mp4?dl=0
Download https://www.dropbox.com/s/4es22n4a8gq9vku/BB-MultiRiffs.mp4?dl=1

Well... RealBand is not that great of a DAW anyway.

You mac users have a decent DAW, GarageBand, included in the OS, and Logic is a remarkable DAW, second to none, and exclusive to Mac.

Plus, most other DAWs have a mac version, like Reaper, which's cost is so little that is more expensive NOT having it.

HTH,

You raise a good point here about security on a Mac so I found a few articles about it. For now, Mac's are more secure than PC's but "more secure" only means just that. They have been and currently do get successfully attacked which is why you need a good AV program just like Windows users do.

The second thing is hackers spend most of their time attacking Windows because of the small market share of Apple. I just read that Apple reached 10% of the PC market last year which is larger than I thought. Well, what does that mean? It means as market share grows so will the attacks because it makes Mac's more attractive to hackers.

To me, you have a real threat of getting malware on your Mac just like Windows users do just not as serious but it's certainly there. I would stop wishing about PGM rewriting code to Mac and just use Bootcamp because you should be using online protection with either platform anyway.

Also, with Bootcamp you chose which platform you're using at any one time, correct? So that means don't use Windows for any online activity if you're worried about that, just use it for your PGM programs and use your Mac OS for everything else.

Bob