After watching the video, I have to say this is the most excited I've been about a BiaB release in years, maybe ever. Ordinarily, I focus on the Real Tracks and judge the new release based heavily on my impressions of them. This has been particularly true in the years that the new features seem to be incremental improvements or tweaks to things I never use. This release blows me away and offers some features many of us have wanted for years. PG seems to have really knocked this one out of the park!

For me, Micro Chords are a game changer. My pet peeve with BiaB has always been that I was chained at the ankle to quarter note changes. No more. This also effectively eliminates the need for the push in entering chords. You can now change the chord wherever you want it to change, rather than being tied to what the program generates. Ditto with the motif feature. These two used in combination expands a world of creative possibilities and takes an already powerful program to the next level.

I never even considered volume automation within the program itself. Mainly because, BiaB was so far behind in some basic features over the years, that it seemed the least of my worries. I always created my own using my DAW's automation lanes anyway, but this is an excellent addition and gives the user a high level of control. Hopefully, new releases will see other parameters become editable as well.

Playable RealTracks is a welcome addition too. So often, I generate a section for a solo or something and it's "almost" right. I've sometimes used my DAW's editing tools to change a note here or there, and even Melodyne. But to go into the piano roll and replace the notes generated from BiaB? That's very useful and should yield a more organic sound, that theoretically wouldn't produce artifacts.

I'm looking forward to the Drum Stems discussion in part 2.

So one question I have is about backwards compatibility. Do these features work on older Real Tracks sets as well, or only for those included with 2022 and beyond? Can any track become a Playable Real Track for example? Even those from old sets? Will Micro Chords entry work on all sets? Can I automate volume on RT's from say 2012 or 2015? Or, as I said, it only available for certain sets? Ditto for the stems feature. Will it be available for all past drums sets, or just new ones?

I haven't downloaded it yet. I probably will tomorrow, but I'll close with an additional question I didn't see covered in the video. Does Micro Chords entry support all the basic chord entry options, such as shots and holds, etc? I noticed you can separate the notes with commas, as in regular chord entry but it would be awesome if you could accent a note with a shot or whatever.