PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Beginners Forum Questions Re. Thinking About Buying Band in a Box

Welcome Drutgat!

Huge Reaper fan here, and spend much time on the r/Reaper subreddit (under a different user name). The workflow from BiaB/RB to Reaper is a dream, especially with the enhancements and developments made to the DAW station/section in the PG music programs.

One of the reasons that (IMHO) Reaper and BiaB work so well together is that, unlike with many DAWs, a Reaper track does not have to be pre-desgnated as audio or MIDI, so you can plonk a plethora of mixed MIDI and audio tracks right into reaper via the dropstation, or, IIRC, in RB by simply selecting a section and dragging it, and having it snap right to grid!

One word of caution, at the outset make sure to set the project tempo in Reaper to the same as the Tempo if the track you are exporting from BiaB/RB. Of course, if you forget to do this you can rectify the issue later, but then you have to mess with other settings such as "change playback rate w/o affecting pitch".. etc.

Editing to address your questions in turn:

Q 1. Is my assumption / hope that creating arrangements quickly, then exporting them to Reaper where I will edit them and overdub guitar and vocals, a realistic assumption/hope?"

A Yes.

Q By this, I mean are there any potential problems with that as a workflow?

A No

Q 2. I will probably be giving myself a new computer for Christmas (to be used exclusively for tracking and video production), but until then will be using my laptop, which does not have a lot of space left on the SSD.

So, I plan to run BIAB from a USB (50 MB)

Are there any problems with running BIAB from a USB? Freezing? Latency? Anything like that? Will I be sacrificing any features if I go the USB route?

A The version I purchased came with an external drive, IIRC maybe it costs an extra $10 to ship. No latency issues at all--just be aware that it won't work through a multi-USB hub, and needs to be plugged in directly to your laptop.

Q Is BIAB / Real Band capable of automation for volume, panning and effects - it would be nice to be able to do as much as possible in BIAB before exporting to Reaper, just to save time.

A. Absolutely. You have volume automation lanes in RB, although personally I leave them untouched because I do all that stuff once I'm in Reaper.

Q 4. What Pak would you all recommend for me?

Well that really depends on what you feel your needs are, and how much $ you're willing/able to spend. The most basic version though should suffice for what you describe...

Q 5. What are the potential pitfalls or disadvantages with using BIAB for the purposes I describe above?

A None. It's the best way to do it, IMO


If you have any more specific questions feel free to ask!