Ditto what everyone else has said.

I didn't sense from your post that you intend to produce music for commercial release to the public...but rather as a writing tool. In the latter context, I can't imagine that there is another program anywhere near the price of BIAB that would come even close to its capabilities for your purposes.

IF you ARE planning to master and release your music commercially then MAYBE you should bite the bullet and get the audiofile version.

But assuming pro mastering I don't think there is 1 listener in 100...maybe 1000 who could tell the difference so I would conserve budget for other purposes.

It's SO funny that the pro labels go to extremes in producing tracks which are massively released on MP3s which are WAY dumbed down in sound quality and/or are played on pretty cheapo car sound systems!!

Trust me...there IS a learning curve...more so for the casual users like me than for power users who can dive into the manual and tutorials

But you will find that there is OUTSTANDING and generally very prompt user support on this forum and I have had excellent results from the on line chat support offered by PG.

Bottom line, I don't think you can do better than BIAB and given the refund policy, your only risk is time.

Regards,
Jim