The argument about whether or not Real Tracks are sufficient by themselves or whether or not midi is "dead" all boils down to the individual user. This is a worldwide forum and there are people who use this software who are coming from all kinds of different perspectives. The range goes from someone with minimal musical knowledge and ability to to true pro level players. Then there's the computer pro angle. Some limited musicians are pro computer types while some top pro players know squat about computers and digital audio recording.

All this makes trying to answer a broad question about midi very difficult because in a forum like this we can't tell who the poster really is, where they are in terms of musical ability and equally important, computer ability.

For myself, I'm basically a mid level pro player and now after about 10 years of working with digital audio maybe a mid level computer guy. When the Real Tracks came out a few years ago I was absolutely thrilled with them. They sound great and yes, many times they're all I use for routine things like jamming and practicing. I want to work on soloing over Green Dolphin Street for example, I have it all set up using all RT's and it sounds great but it doesn't sound like any of the many commercial versions of that tune. RT's are generic backing tracks in various styles. That's good enough for quick jamming but I also have a couple of very good Biab midi style files too that have some very good arranging elements in them that cannot be duplicated with the RT's. Only midi can do that but then I have to set them up to play using better midi synths than just the basic GM Forte Dxi or my Roland TTS-1. It takes some time to set those up while the RT's simply play with one mouse click.

Since I'm a good player and do these tunes live with jazz groups anyway I'm not so concerned with getting the arrangement perfect at home for jamming along with so most of the time the RT's are good enough. I can tell that the really nice elements of any particular song are missing but I don't care, I get to play along with those when I'm doing a gig with other good players anyway.

But this is just for me. Other people who don't do a lot of gigs maybe do want to have complete arrangements of their tunes and for that the RT's are not good enough because you can't edit them to give you melody lines, certain song specific licks and other things. For those you need midi tracks and like Notes said lots of times the best overall sound is a combination of both.

As as far as midi in the overall music industry is concerned just look at video demos of other DAW software. Midi is huge, not just "a" part of music, no it's the biggest part of much of current song creation from pop music to movie soundtracks. Midi is far from dead, if anything it's getting bigger. I have been watching videos from Winter NAMM 2013 and the Midi Association had a booth there and the guy is talking about how Midi 2.0 is in fact being developed right now due to demand from software and music producers. There have been insider rumors about this for years but this is the first time I've seen them at a NAMM show so that tells me progress is actually being made.

Bob

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