I'm amazed. I never knew you could do this until quite recently. So many things hidden away. Now to find a reason!
Reason #1 is it is actually fun to play around with. Especially if you are just spending time learning your BIAB software.
Another reason that may be useful to some is the ability to create a completely unique instrument track. To explain. One of the criticisms I've heard and seen written about using BIAB in a commercial, professional grade recording is that it's possible if a popular RealTrack is included in the project, the track may be recognizable. To make it possible to eliminate or greatly reduce the frequency of a recognizable riff being repeated throughout a song is quite easy applying these techniques from within BIAB without need for export to RealBand or a DAW. A technique I use often on a RealTrack guitar where a certain riff repeats to often for my satisfaction is to search for another style which the same artist is playing the same instrument but with a different strumming or fingerpicking pattern. I can alternate between the two guitars as many as 10 times on the same track throughout a song and focus on those bars where the familiar riff sounds. This works well with alternating between a f/p and strummed guitar and the benefit is two fold. First, you eliminate a recognizable riff and second, the odds are totally astronomical of anyone else that uses BIAB and that RealTrack of being able to accurately duplicate the unique track you've created. Remember, the BIAB search engine will have all of the additional RealTracks audio of each instrument to apply to your track so using two RT's of the same instrument but different style will double the amount of audio BIAB can choose to use with each individual instrument having different audio than the other. Five instruments provides 5 times the time of audio recording to use and so on. Note that I'm saying the same instrument in this example but the additional realtrack audio recordings will increase the same if you use any instrument. Assume for this conversation a single track in your project uses all 10 available slots and the average RT audio recording for an instrument is one hour. Using this method increases that one hour to 10 hours. So even the BiAB user with the most basic package can easily and quickly create tracks that are for all practical purposes, nearly impossible to duplicate.
These techniques are available to both MAC and PC users.
These multitrack techniques are the same as what the Beatles, Geoff Emerick and George Martin used to create their masterpiece LP, Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band on a 4 track recorder. BIAB gives us double that as an 8 track recorder. Multitrack techniques provide the means to use a device with limited physical tracks, to virtually unlimited tracks. Add to that fact BIAB includes thousands of hours of recorded real audio that will play to any key or tempo by some of the world's best session players and artists that's recorded with quality equipment in studio quality environment, the ability to use and add your own unlimited midi and you have a very robust multitrack recorder. I have a very enjoyable time replicating old school techniques as a hobby with my Biab software. Of course, all of this can be done with modern DAW's effortlessly and it's not a hobby everyone will enjoy or want to pursue. I'll say that it takes more skill to do these things in BIAB than in any DAW.
I'll end here by saying one of the major obstacles to musicians making quality recording is they do not fully understand or even know the ins and outs of their DAW, multitrack recorder or other gear. Using BIAB as a multitrack recorder is a grand way to learn the program thoroughly.
