TBH I've only read about 1/2 of this thread ... and I strongly concur with Norton's inciting insights.

But along with multiport midi and higher resolution, there is one feature that tops them all for me: a multichannel MIDI VSTi version.

Music Devlopments RapdidComposer (google it if you're interested) has just been updated to include a 128 track MIDI VSTi. The developer did it by himself evenings and weekends over a couple of months. This product uses 8 different instantiations of the MIDI VSTi plug ins to get it's 128 tracks ... but all using the same GUI by having tracks 1-16 go to the first instance, named ... you guessed it '1-16' ... and in the GUI tracks 17-32 go to the second GUI, etc.

Surely it wouldn't take the BIAB crew more than a few weeks to accomplish this with the number of tracks in BIAB?

The only reason I can imagine this hasn't been done is because it might be considered to conflict with the development of RealBand, as in 'keep it all in the family.'

In my opinion, this is shortsighted. There are thousands of BIAB users who are dedicated users of Cubase, Logic, ProTools, Sonar, etc., who are never going to go to RealBand as their primary DAW. Even more significantly, there are many times that many dedicated users of these other DAWs who would only be interested in buying BIAB, either as an included feature or separate product, if it were a multichannel MIDI VSTi.

Besides RapidComposer, Cognitone is shortly to release a MIDI VSTi. Simpler midi manipulation MIDI VSTi products like 7Aliens Catanya or SubarBytes TheSys or Consequence are already significant products in the general audio creation/ production market.

BIAB will miss a huge opportunity if they don't target this type of MIDI enhancement.

Prado