Hi Charlie,
Thank You so much for your helpful explanations and your hints. At least it looks as if I am not completely off track with my observations. I am not so happy having to deal with 3 different programs (RB, BIAB Standalone, VST) in parallel with my DAW, but it seems to be all I can do at the moment.

Your example about the hired session musician is great. More or less that's the job I expect from BIAB. However I would rather expect the musician aligning with the rest of the band somehow, not necessarily bringing his own band with him and playing the song completely his way and in his tempo. That's probably why I am not so keen on creating the song in the BIAB standalone version upfront. But if I have to do so, I still can mute the rest of his band and copy only him.

For the desired (slight) tempo changes in my song I will have to find some solution. Most songs I do with constant tempo, however sometimes small tempo variations within the song will give it a more natural human touch. That's another good argument for having midi files at hand. Tempo changes are handled by the DAW automatically, without degrading the sound by further audio stretching operations.

I use the Ultra+ version of BIAB. I think the libraries cover the traditional American music styles very well. I can't think of anything that couldn't be found there. (If unavoidable I will also find a way to convert the RealTracks to midi).

Where I would like to see more content of, is the New Age stuff and all kind of other styles from around the world. Let it be African, Oriental, Asian, Balkan, Eastern Europe Gypsy styles, etc.
Especially the African rhythms and oriental instruments are something I am very keen on.
Although I am not a big fan of it, even Hip-Hop, EDM, Rap and other contemporary styles might come handy sometimes.

Thanks once more for your help!

Cheers
Roland

BiaB2023 Plus, Win11, AMD 6-core, 32GByte RAM, RME Fireface UFX, Samplitude ProX7, REAPER 6, Studio ne 5, Melodyne Studio, Toontrack SD3, iZotope MP4, NI Komplete 12, Korg Collection, etc.