Originally Posted By: Al-David
Everyone has their personal preferences and specific needs. I use Audacity for almost every song I post. I find it does everything I need it to. And I am using using Audacity 3.0. But have used the previous versions prior to the 3.0 release a short while back.

Perhaps my needs are considerably less demanding than most of you. But I am very pleased with it.

Below is a song I recorded a few days ago using nothing but BIAB 2021 (Windows version). I sent the tracks directly from the BIAB chord input sheet to Audacity 3.0. After working the tracks over a bit in Audacity, I posted to Soundcloud and used their mastering software (it's an upgrade option at SoundCloud). I am very happy with the results. My wife is the vocalist. The backing tracks have been "touched" by nothing but the BIAB chord input sheet (no RB), Audacity and the Soundcloud mastering option. I think it came out really nice.

The vocal was recorded through an AT2035 condenser mic into a Peavey Nashville 112 Guitar amp. I use the Peavey amp in lieu of a mixing board because I prefer the sound "color" it gives our vocals. I use the headphone-out of the amp and plug it straight into my desktop's mic-in port and record the vocals directly into Audacity and then adjust the vocal in Audacity. I then blend the vocals with the BIAB tracks already loaded into Audacity. I then send to a premade desktop folder as both a WAV file and a high bit rate MP3. I then upload to Soundcloud when I want to.

Audacity is the closest thing I use to a DAW. But, again, perhaps my needs are far lesser than those of other folks. But, I do like the final sound I get using Audacity. So far, we've had 28 songs picked up for one opportunity or another using this very method. Not a single one of them went through a traditional DAW.

No matter your needs, preferences, and wants, good luck to everyone with their music.

Alan

If you're interested, here's the link to our latest song (it's a 1960s era Bossa Nova): https://soundcloud.com/alananddi/you-remix


Hi Al. I'd like to use the highlighted comments I've made from your post to foster some deeper discussion into Audacity and BIAB.

I have Audacity 2.4.2 and it's sufficient to meet my meager needs for capturing and editing audio. I currently have Studio One Pro and Cakewalk available along with RealBand if I'm in need of a DAW. I also have three stand-alone, hard disk digital recorders that each have proprietary DAW firmware and digital effects. However, with BIAB projects, I rarely have need to use any of these to complete a song project and find it faster, easier and quite beneficial to stay totally in BIAB.

Three tools permit me to create complex and complete songs in just BIAB. They have been included in the program for many years, roughly since 2014 as far as I can determine. Although they're longtime features of the program, other than myself I've never seen a song posted that was created with this triple combination of tools.

I'd like to introduce you folks to these tools since it's my experience that BIAB offers more versatility and retains all of the unique and exclusive capabilities of the BIAB program that are lost when BIAB files are exported to Audacity or another DAW. RealBand has much of BIAB's capabilities but not all. It's also a faster workflow not to have to open a song project in RB and frozen tracks can be maintained rather than regenerated by staying in BIAB rather than moving to RB.

The first tool and most pertinent to this conversation is the BIAB Audio Editor. I'd like you to share a bit more with us what you mean when you say you "work over the tracks a bit in Audacity". I've found that I can do all of the basic editing and more using the BIAB Audio Editor than I can in Audacity or any of my DAW's. The BIAB Audio Editor is very robust and is on par with my most advanced stand-alone digital recorder's built-in complete proprietary DAW. I'm interested to learn what you may be doing in Audacity that can't be done in BIAB's Audio Editor. If any interest is raised in this conversation, I'll be glad to share some specific and unique results that can be accessed because an audio track is still in BIAB and hasn't been exported to a DAW.

The second tool is the Performance Track. The Performance Track allows any sound media recognized by BIAB such as RealTracks, RealDrums, WAV/WMA/MP3/MP4 audio, MIDI, SuperMidi, HI-Q Midi, Loops or any combination of these media to be converted to audio for editing on the Audio Channel and then converted so that the edited audio can reside on any of the other BIAB Mixer Legacy Tracks. (Bass, Piano, Drums, Guitar, Strings, Melody and Soloist). With their introduction this year, the 16 new Utility Tracks are now also included.

The third tool is the RealTrack Medley Feature. The Medley Feature provides a 10 channel, RealTrack sub-mixer to each of the seven BIAB Mixer's Legacy Channels. This feature allows the user to have over 70 total RealTrack instruments in a single render of a BIAB song. Combined with Performance Tracks mix capabilities, the total can run into the hundreds. With the addition of Utility Tracks, the total is literally in the thousands. Don't let these remarkable numbers throw you off. The reality is this capability is another way of saying BIAB functions as a multi track digital recorder or DAW. Many DAWs can have an unlimited track count and are only limited by the PC CPU power. In BIAB, tracks are not limited to 8 which has been a myth since 2014.

As I said, I'm interested to compare and challenge BIAB against Audacity and see if BIAB can meet the challenge. It's a solid bet for me because I've yet to find a situation in my workflow where it's not up to the task but I've never seen it used by someone else and their workflow in Audacity, Reaper or other DAW's including RealBand.

I hope there's some interest, questions and comments.

EDIT: I forgot to mention your song. It's great. A wonderful performance by Mrs. Di and you did an fantastic re-mix. Enjoyed it.

Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 06/23/21 05:58 PM.
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