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The down side is, I have to piece together all the drum parts myself. It's so much easier to stay hands-off and just let "Terry Clarke" in BIAB make up amazing drum tracks, but then I can't have specific arrangements. And just figuring out the coding and logic that BIAB uses, so I can have the maximum control possible and have, for example, just the right placement of fills and cymbal crashes, seems arduous.

So I guess the question for today is, is it worth it to spend all the time learning the BIAB RT/RD logic given that I will still be somewhat limited? Or should I just go with my other drum plugin/DAW combo?



You just nailed the conundrum Vinny. A good answer to this is to use Real Band. I also have a very good drum synth in Jamstix. Nothing is perfect and here's the problem with RB: It has some VST implementation glitch that's been known for years and for some reason not been fixed. It let's you use your drum modules for sound but not to create their own drum parts. If you really want your drum module to create it's own parts you have to use another DAW.
Still, RB lets you create multiple drum parts on separate tracks without it changing any other tracks. This means you can create several different Real Drum tracks, import in several midi drum tracks and create several new Biab midi drum tracks using different styles. What I have done to solve your problem of having a great basic Terry Clarke RD track but it's missing all the cool punches and things a tune like Joy Spring has for example, is to find a midi file of whatever tune you're working on that has a good drum track and start with that. It can take a while but there are some killer midi's out there where a pro laid down the drum track live on a midi drum set. I've taken a RD track and lowered the volume for a bar and let Jamstix play the fill or punch that the song needs and then bring back in the RD track. Some of my JS kits are a perfect match for the sound of the RD's. For latin stuff, I've used a good midi track layered with one or more of the good RD latin percussion tracks. Mixing and matching like that can yield very good results.

Dan, to answer your question of having a good basic track but then you change the chart, what I just described is also why you need to use Real Band, not Biab. The same principle applies to all the instruments, not just the drums. If you managed to find a great RT guitar part you want to keep and then changed the chart, in RB you can keep that track and regenerate a new one as many times as you want. It's very useful to generate one version of a part, then go into the chord grid and change the part markers and/or the style to give a different feel and do it again. Then you may want to keep part of your original track, maybe cut it and paste it onto another track and by doing that you may use parts of several different tracks in order to make one good one. Just like the drums, these tracks can be from a midi file, your own audio recording, a generated Real Track or a generated Biab midi track.
Real Band can give you a ton of choices to play and experiment with even with that VST glitch.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.