As a long time RB user I agree with some of your comments. What RB does for me is it allows me to create instant comp tracks of whatever instrument I want. For example, the original song style uses a particular strumming guitar and it sounds good. In RB I can scroll down to an empty track and generate a completely different guitar track just for giggles. Then go to the next track and do it again. Now I have three separate and discreet background rhythm guitars to mess with. And I may generate a couple of solo guitars too just to add a few licks here and there. The fact that complete tracks are generated does not mean you have to use them all. Maybe I'll wind up using 4 bars of a 64 bar RT generated solo track. Let the song play and use the mute buttons to audition each track. Sometimes I won't generate the whole track, just 16 bars and highlight the next 16 bars and generate a different guitar RT there. Lots of ways to do this. Also, don't forget midi. You have full access to the thousands of midi styles too and you just set up your synth on that track and start generating some midi guitar parts too.

I can generate 10 different tracks in about the same amount of time it just took me to write this. Now, expand what I just wrote to drums, percussion, keyboards, whatever.

THAT'S what Real Band can do for you and it's awesome. Once you've decided on which tracks you want to keep you're still free to export them to whatever DAW you want. So far, even though I have Sonar, Studio One and others, I don't really need them. Or, since I'm not a full time pro at this I really don't know what I'm missing. Ok, but I manage to get RB to do what I need. I recently retired so I am going to get into those other DAW's in detail and I'm sure I'll find stuff I like better than how RB does it but make no mistake, RB WILL DO everything those other DAW will do. How do I know this? From what others have posted who know those other programs. Each DAW is different, one does something one way and others do it a different way but bottom line, they all can get the job done because a digital recording is nothing but bits on a hard drive and there are a gazillion ways to manage those bits.

You sound like you're computer savvy, you've seen this in lots of other non musical programs. Office 365, vs Open Office, all the different email programs, All the different A/V programs, some like one others like another and they all work.

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.