I should confess I don't use RealBand, but like PhillyJazz I had long since learned Cakewalk Pro Audio (which became SONAR, which recently became BandLab). I'm wrongly following my own advice by not learning this particular "new" one when I already knew another quite well. Many users here make a great case to learn RealBand for the special abilities it has, most notably regenerating sections of a track.

If I were starting out, I certainly would have learned RealBand first. Then moved to a standalone DAW.

Standalone DAWs are like foreign languages. They all do the almost the same things; they just go about it differently. The more of them you learn, the easier it gets as you see the similarities. Often it's a case of learning the terminology (what one DAW calls this, another calls that).


BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.