Hi All, I am new to BIAB.

I saw it around in the 90's but never tried it out (how wrong I was), what a great tool for songwriting and arranging. My friend owns the 2016 PC version and my School (I am a music teacher) own the 2016 mac version.

I would like to buy a site licence to add it to our mac school systems for the next academic year, but I am not sure which version is best. We run both OSX and Windows 10 on our macs.

One big difference I find is that my friend can export full musicxml files from the PC version but the mac version only exports a maximum of 32 bars of music into musicxml (maybe I am doing it wrong). This is one of the biggest things my students would need so they could bring their BiaB creations into Logic 10.3 and Sibelius.

Given a music school situation, it might be that Realband will also be useful. This is included at no extra charge with the Windows version of the program. The Mac version does not have this.

Good information above.

The latest features in the Windows version usually precede the subsequent release of the Mac Version by about 6 months.

Windows = Band In A Box + Real Band.

Mac = Band In A Box only.

Real Band has a lot of great additional flexible features that use the same tracks that Band In A Box creates, essentially providing an additional dimension to song creation flexibility.

The choice is of course yours.

Welcome Adebisi.

For a school setting I would suggest highly that you contact PG staff and discuss this issue with them. I don't know but it is possible they may have educational licensing available where you either get a discount on the price or you get to use this on a group of computers under an educational license.... Like I said, they can tell you what, if any, perks you get in an educational setting.

Regarding the 32 bar thing in the Mac version..... yeah, you're doing it wrong. You should always be able to export the entire song.

Regarding the version....PC vs Mac. The PC version comes with Real Band which is a DAW (similar to Logic X) that opens up a whole world of using real tracks and editing the audio so much easier. RB lets you generate the real tracks that sound like live musicians that you hear in many of the songs here.

Even if you have Mac computers.... if I understand correctly, there is a Windows OS that can be installed to run on those machines if you do not have PC's in the music classroom. That would allow you to use the PG music PC version and export the files to Logic X.

Call the support line and talk to the people in the office. They can answer the questions you have accurately.

BTW: I think it's really cool that you are using BB with kids in school.

I would like to keep it mac but that 32 bar thing is really confusing me!

I'm not aware of any 32 bar limitation on either PC or Mac versions.

If you want to take advantage of the benefits of RealBand also, get the PC version and run under Windows 10 on your macs.

As advised by others, definitely contact PG Music Support and get them to clarify for you.

It's only with exporting to musicxml - the note information stops at 32 bars and then only shows the chord info. The PC version does the full song correctly into musicxml format.

Shame I really wanted to use the mac version so there would be no need to switch OS while they were working.

Do you have the latest update for Mac installed? To double-check, it can be found at the below link.

http://www.pgmusic.com/support_macintoshupdates.htm

Just did the update but it still does it? Seems strange, i've looked all over for the settings in the program.

What is the structure of the song that you're trying to save as XML?

Is it multiple choruses (i.e. the default 3x through)?

How many bars long?

Could you email the song to PG Music support and ask them to verify in their mac environment?