Bob here is my take on it. the answer is yes. I use RB all the time. I have not opened Sonar, or Reaper in about a month. Sonar is deeper, and more feature rich than RB, but not as far as you might think. RB does everything you need including automation.

The problem is that some of it need a small upgrade. and Scott is right about ASIO. It works fine in RB, BUT! Not as fine as in most other host. In Sonar, MTS (personal fav) and Reaper it works Better than WDM (mme). In RB MME (WDM) works better than ASIO.

I can use ASIO on RB in my system, but it takes more horsepower.

VSTi works fine in RB, as long as it does not require tempo lock, like jamstix does.

Automation works fine in RB, but requires either fader recording (very unprecise), or in the piano roll you can draw automation with a mouse, but it is far harder to get very presice with that as well. Plus as far as I know it does not do anything but volume and panning. Being able to automate effects, busses, and such is really cool.

The other day i took a song i had written, and did the song track bed in BiaB. Added some live guitar tracks, and vocals, and mixed it isn RB, Sonar, and Reaper. In the end result, the RB mix was every bit as good as the others, in fact i chose it over them, as the final mix.

I love RB, i even like the work flow it is simple to me, and does not require a degree in layered software to use it.

There some upgrades i would like to see regarding the buss, and main output system, but this one works.

For me the VSTi, and the Automation is a big deal, i want to see those two addressed, then following that, i want to see ASIO grow up a bit. After that i am fine with slow easy growth, and add ons for work flow, like enhancements to looping, and audio tools.

HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2025, Realband, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 9 32c , Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app.