I am a Newbie to Band in a Box, but I would like to post some comments. I don't think further add-on programs are the right path. I think a consolidation and more focus on the strenghts of the already given functionality would be the right way forward for BB. In some areas this might also mean giving up some of the stuff that comes along with the current program packages.

Great and not so great:

First of all Band in a Box is a great program to create Mock-ups of song ideas and to get some inspiration what a song could sound like. However I doubt that any musician or producer would use it to do a complete production of a song. There are too many limitations and the sound quality isn't just good enough. Not even the Audiophile version would match current recording standards.

What I like about the program:
- The way how to come from some chords towards some song idea
- The variety of styles to choose from

What I really dislike:
- The mess it creates on the computer in terms of directories and scattered related content
- the way it integrates (or rather does not) with the existing DAW and audio setup (ASIO, 96k/24). It seems that BB creates its own DX Audio stuff in parallel and messes around with the set audio bitrates.
- the weird and completely overloaded UI. Despite all the tutorials and manuals, it often isn't clear to me, what the settings and functions are about or what a symbol means.
- the limitations when it comes to integrate own user ideas with the generated stuff
- the performance. I have a pretty new and fast computer with lots of RAM and SSD space. But even that gets to its limits.
- I never managed to get this sforzando and WT Coyote stuff working reasonably and the track channels don't accept my own VSTi's (SD3, Komplete, UVI Workstation, Korg Synths, ...)

At the end I usually get completely lost. I don't understand anymore what the BB program or the DAW plugin are doing, why certain tracks and sounds work, whilst others don't, why the computer freezes and so on. Sometimes not even the generated results seem to be predictible/reproduceable.

Why not keeping the whole subject lean and simple for the user?

In particular, what I expect from Band in a Box and what it should focus on from my point of view:

I assume that most users have a good DAW and decent collection of good soundineg Vst3 instruments. Also most musicians have their own idea what an instrument should sound like. So they would finally chose their own sound for the instrument anyway. Apart from some exceptions - why should I mess around with RealTracks and RealDrums, after having got some first impression of the song? What is really needed is the possibility to create some decent midi representation of the instrument track/part/variation, for further processing within my DAW. Providing such midi representations of a track or a part, is what BB should focus on and where the most value is created.

If BB could play the instruments with my own VSTi's with the given audio setup right from the start, that would be even better.

Starting from a preset style with a given instrument lineup is a weird approach. Usually I already have some audio and midi tracks for my songs as a start. I just look for some idea, what a further instrument or riff could do for the given song or a particular part. Instead of generating a full new song in BB, an instrument based filter and style picker would create the most benefit. Just filtering a particular instrument from the style finder, look what it would sound like in the song, with the given chords and a selectable style. Afterwards copying it to the DAW as midi file or Real Track as desired. By the way, this would likely also solve most of the performance issues with BB as it wouldn't have to generate an entire song every time.

I would like to create my own band lineup of instruments for a song and see what ideas BB could contribute to the song under those circumstances. I would like to select and mix different styles for different instruments. Maybe the outcome would be strange in most cases, but mabe also some good new ideas would come along with it.

Going beyond that, knowing that this vision may be some challenge for the programmers:

I am originally a guitar player and my capabilities on other instruments are pretty limited. I can convert melodies to midi notes, although those would not always match very well with the proper articulation of a desired target instrument. If I could feed BB with such a raw idea, either as a midi or audio track, letting BB create some proposals for a correctly played substitute that could be imported to my DAW, that would be perfect. All the other stuff BB comes with, just looks like huge overhead to me. It just distracts me from the real job.

[size:8pt]BiaB2023 Plus, Win11, AMD 8-core, 32GByte RAM, RME Fireface UFX, Samplitude ProX8, REAPER 7, Melodyne 5 Studio, Toontrack SD3, iZotope MP4, NI Komplete 12, Korg Collection, etc.