Hi Noel. Treating BIAB as a multitrack recorder has has been quite useful to me and provided processes pulled from my many years of owning hardware 2 track, 4 track, 8 track recorders, etc.

I have maintained some fashion of a Home Recording Studio continously since 1968. I literally started with a one track (mono) reel to reel from Sears and worked my way up to better recorders from there. I've posted a photo of myself with that first recorder at Christmas 1967.

I went a long time using BIAB without understanding the Performance Track feature. The Performance Track feature is a very powerful and useful tool but it is seldom mentioned in Forum posts and possibly not used a lot. My discovery of the Performance Track feature allows me to do many tasks from within BIAB that I previously had to take to another program such as RealBand or my Studio One DAW or even Audacity.

The Performance Track in conjunction with placing multiple instruments on the same track frees up computer resources by printing a rendered track with effects like Dxi, Vst's to an Audio File and moving the track to another track and freeing up the Audio Track for further use.

The Performance Track and Audio Track allows sub mixes rendered to audio and then returned into BIAB as a Performance Track which is the Bounce technique that extends BIAB beyond the limit of 8 tracks.

I use the Performance/Audio tracks to automate panning, gain changes, fade in and fade out's and to alternate multiple instruments for solos and fills.

Clearly, these tasks may be preferred to be moved to a DAW to complete and I don't recommend anyone throw their DAW away. My intent is not to replace a DAW but simply show these tasks can be completed within the BIAB program. I have found that forcing changes between solo instruments within BIAB produces cleaner transitions than I achieve in a DAW cutting and pasting. Doing transitions in BIAB takes advantage of the generating engine reading ahead and smoothing transitions and solo endings very nicely. I enjoy the results I obtain by placing two instruments on the same track, duplicating these instruments on a 2nd track and rendering these to an audio track after i've prepared my panning, fills and solos using the F5 feature. I render this sub mix to audio, import the audio and move it to a track as a performance track and then render the entire song. Easier to do in a DAW? Probably. However, I enjoy having to plan my song in the same manner I've done for many years and which I find quite satisfying and is a more creative process to me.

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Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 10/16/17 01:41 AM.
BIAB Ultra Pak+ 2024:RB 2024, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.