If I switch to a Mac (been using Windows), will the BB and Real Band songs I created in Windows open in the Mac version of BB and Real Band?
Thanks
EDIT: Looks like I found the answer in the Mac FAQ (yes)
"36. Are Mac and PC versions of Band-in-a-Box® songs compatible?
Yes, Band-in-a-Box® songs are compatible between platforms."

Be forewarned: there is no Mac version of Real Band.

One thing to be careful of is that your songs that you are sharing between the Windows version and the Mac version uses RealTracks that both computers have installed. For example, the Band-in-a-Box UltraPAK includes all of the RealTrack Sets for its particular version/year and the Pro PAK is the smallest PAK with a limited number of RealTracks. If your Windows is an UltraPAK and you made a song with it, then open that song in a Pro PAK for Mac, it is possible to accidentally use RealTracks from the Windows UltraPAK that are not included in the Mac Pro. Thus the RealTracks would then show as N/A and not play.

Gotcha, thanks. I'm planning on avoiding that problem by getting the Mac version with all 2,500 tracks

What, no Real Band for Mac? Wow, I just assumed that would be part of the package. Darn, I've always liked moving songs from BB to Real Band. So you make a song in BB and move it to another DAW?

Correct. Since all Mac users have access to Garage Band for free, most users would likely not use RealBand. Some users certainly would miss it, of course, but likely not enough of them to be worth the amount of time and programming it would take to port RealBand to Mac (and because RealBand depends on a number of Windows-only libraries and API's, that would likely make the task quite difficult).

That's just my educated guess though, I don't know the full reasoning behind the decision.

OK, thanks for the heads up. I'm just so used to Real Band. Guess switching to one of the other free DAWs is not a deal breaker, though

RealBand on Mac
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=423694#Post423694

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=302515

http://www.winonx.com/

Really, that's the reason?

Oh dear…

I'm one of many who would purchase RB for Mac if it was available. I've no intention of ever firing up my Windows laptop again, however.

So would I - easier than having to learn a new DAW
PS - I'm a "newbie" on the forums, but as you can see from my sig, I've been using BB and PowerTracks - was that what it was called before RealBand? - since 2002 My Windows laptop died, and I'm strongly leaning toward replacing it with a MacBook, thus the questions
EDIT: PG Music's algorithm put an ad on my Facebook today for the plugin that puts Band in a Box into GarageBand. OK, I have to say that makes sense.
https://www.pgmusic.com/support.bbmplugin.garageband.htm

RealBand is basically PowerTracks that calls on bbw2.exe that is just Biab that runs silently in the background, it generates up tracks, renders them to RealBand's temp folder that are then loaded into RealBand tracks.

So basically this in what the BBPlugin does within your DAW,
so you have the Band in a box plugin you load in your DAW,
it then calls on bbw_64.app that runs silently in the back ground,
it generates the tracks, renders to aiff into the SavedTrack folder,
you then can drag them into the DAW.

The future of the BBPlugin should be to generate and play the RT RD direct from the source files.
This way the tracks will generate instantly, quicker than Biab, load frozen SGU's,
no aiff/wav files will be rendered until you are happy with the results
then as you drag them out of the BBPlugin into the DAW track they will be rendered.
With the Sends now in the BBPlugin you could leave them in the BBPlugin and just render the DAW session to wav without the BBPlugin ever have to render to file.

There is also a ReWireVST Mac/Win that will let you slave any slavable DAW to Biab.
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=648011
You will need BB21Mac for the plugin to work.

It's interesting you bring this up, as I've personally experimented with BB on Wine. Definitely not ready for prime time, but I did manage to get it to make sound. Didn't play with it much further than that. Of course, this is completely unsupported territory. I would personally use VirtualBox before I used Wine for this.




I wouldn't say it's the reason, just potentially one of many.




Yep, I prefer using the plugin over RealBand myself, though that's mostly because I'm a Pro Tools/Logic guy so I'm more comfortable sticking with those.

This is another way, it should work on BBMac21 as it has the new Plugin structure and seems to have quicker render times.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/abmdoc06zssol9t/Reaper-ReWireVST-Biab-PlugIn-Mode-MultiRiffs.mp4?dl=0