Hink, you're missing some very basic points about midi. Forgive me since this is just an internet forum but it seems like you really don't understand midi at all. You inferred that Biab doesn't use any audio sound samples. Audio sound samples are part of most synthesizers. If you have a synth/sampler that uses nothing but audio sound samples, Biab will play it just fine. Look at my sig below my name. Do you know what Garritan JABB or Sampletank is? JABB a collection of jazz big band samples of all the instruments and Sampletank has over 4,000 other instruments separate from just big band. Note I said samples. If I happen to choose one of those synths for Biab, no problem that's what Biab will play. My Sonic Cell is also sample based so your comment makes no sense.

You said this:

Quote:

If every note in RB seems to be shown on the screen, couldn't and shouldn't that also correspond to MIDI data? I'm assuming that while it's audio, associated MIDI data should be present so you can, e.g. trigger an external module to double the track.



Yes! That's exactly right. Understand though that not all Real Tracks display notation on the piano keyboard. Those don't have underlying midi information. Some RT's like strumming guitars don't lend themselves to doing a midi transcription so no midi for those.

You mentioned you saw something like "RB is real sounds..." Not sure where you saw that, I haven't seen it. I think what you saw is Real Tracks are real sounds. Real Band can generate RT's just as well as Biab can but one thing is Biab does it faster. Don't ask me boss, I don't know why, it just does so if you're working with 5 or 6 RT's at a time it's much faster to do them in Biab then drag them over to RB.

You asked why are they two different programs. That's a very complicated thing and it would take me all night to fully answer it. Just know that RB started out as Power Tracks and basic 48 track audio/midi sequencer and that's it. People had been complaining for years about the lack of midi output ports in Biab so you can only use one synth at a time etc. Rather than rewrite Biab, PG decided to put some Biab functions into Power Tracks and call it Real Band. There's have been many threads talking about why it would be a good idea to incorporate both programs into one. Most people including me think that's a bad idea but some like it. So far PG seems to want to keep them separate. Since they started out as two completely separate and distinct programs written by two different development teams it's probably impossible to fully integrate them anyway.

You also asked why do so many people use other DAW's like Reaper, Sonar etc instead of RB? Probably familiarity and the fact if someone has used Sonar Producer for years and just paid $500 for the latest upgrade that person is not suddenly going to dump all that money and experience just to use RB. But, if someone is relatively new to this and does not already have a lot of money and time invested in another DAW then RB is a perfectly good DAW. Others like to advertise unlimited tracks and other stuff but really, when's the last time you used more than 48 tracks? RB really does a lot, if you want to know more about it do a forum username search using the name Rharv. Bob Harvey is one of our resident experts on Power Tracks and Real Band. He's a producer, computer programmer and website designer. He knows what he's talking about and he uses RB for multitrack live recordings. He will record 6, 7, 8 or maybe more tracks live at a time using his PC, he will do all the editing, mastering and final producing just using RB and many different plugins and he gets some great results.

Read some of Eddies posts in the RB forum. He just learned RB in the last couple of months. He started from nothing, had his share of problems which you can read about and now he's well on his way to becoming an expert with it. Pretty impressive because he stuck with it when he was really getting frustrated.

You have to learn how to use it before we can really discuss it in detail. Just jump in and start doing things with it, when you have questions come back here.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.