The 'regular' versions, not the audiophile version, use .WMA files. Although these are compressed, they sound remarkably good. The difference is certainly NOT 'drastic'.

The audiophile version with the original uncompressed .WAV files is, in my opinion, best used for commercial projects. There have been many threads about this in the past but few recently, so I'll repeat my opinion that yes, I can hear the difference, but it takes good equipment to do so. Noise is additive in a mix, so if you have many Real Tracks it could make more of a difference in a commercial mix. Still, if your final product were an MP3, or a CD played in a car, you would probably never hear a difference.

This is all subjective, and my opinion will be different from others, no doubt.

There is one other small advantage to using the audiophile versions: they regenerate in BIAB slightly faster. The 'regular' Real Tracks are first uncompressed by the program as they are used. However, given the dramatic improvement in regeneration speed in version 2010, this is far less of an advantage than it used to be.

BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.