Originally Posted by Jim Fogle
Bass Thumper, just like with my response to Dan I'm playing Devil's Advocate. I have a question for you; are you more familiar with using a DAW or BiaB? I ask because I assume you are more familiar with recording in a DAW than you are with recording in BiaB. Remember this thread started with the question should the op record in BiaB or a DAW.
Jim, you are entirely right, I am more familiar with recording in my DAW than in BiaB. However, over the years I’ve had sufficiently painful experiences with the GUI and workflow of BiaB and RealBand to confidently say (imho) that if you take your music seriously and seek to musically grow then BiaB is not the recording tool you want. It isn’t only about “recording” per se. It’s about all the other tasks and sub tasks that are required to take an idea from creative inception thru completion.

I have struggled with BiaB’s outdated GUI, inconsistent workflows and lack of quality post-processing for years. But the chord entry grid and the quality of the RTs is what keeps me loyal. But struggles with basic elements like odd time signatures and consistent looping workflows have been detractors for many. What does this have to do with recording? Everything. Because the same lack of strategic design thinking is embedded in the recording aspects of BiaB.

This is contrasted to Studio One, now FSP where simple drag and drop is prevalent in the program and logic and consistency is prioritized by the Presonus/Fender development team. FSP is my audio hub and there isn’t a single feature I can think of that is missing (or is clunky) regarding it. Is it perfect? For me, right now, yes. Despite this, improvements and additions are continually made to it; many of which I may never use. If you spend some time in the world-class DAW forums, you’ll see that they are way beyond debating odd time sigs and whether or not looping should be standardized. Those issues were solved years or even decades ago.

And so, rather than needing to fight BiaB to accomplish what I need, FSP is not only a joy to work with but historically has been 3 steps ahead of me on what I need to do. BiaB historically has been 2 steps behind. My time is too valuable to spend 20 minutes doing a task in BiaB where 2 mouse clicks and a drag gets it done in FSP.

To one degree or another we’re comparing elephants to ants. I wouldn’t be surprised if the weekly staff effort of the big-name DAWs are measured in multi-thousand manhours. My AI assistant searched Ableton as having 500 employees (20k hrs/wk) and Avid/ProTools having approx. 1500 employees (60k hrs/wk). Of course, not every employee is involved in sw development, but it gives some idea as to what we’re talking about.

My advice to those that want to compose music is to put BiaB in your toolbox.
My advice to those that want to record, process and share music is to put a big-name DAW in your toolbox.

https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677
BiaB 2026 Windows
For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.