Steve, it was a pleasure and I know I talk a lot but I really like to share my knowledge with interested folks!
I'm a bit confused by Yamaha's comment "it's better to get it done on one pass rather than edit later....."
I can record each track one at a time a build a complete song or record every one of the 16 tracks at the same time but that wouldn't work well for the ability to multi track different ideas one at a time.

Hi Rikki, I agree with you, Band in the box 2012, with real tracks, has come alive...This version is a 100 percent improvement....I have had it for about a week now..I notice on some computers, it hogs some resources..On my good laptop, it flies...For folks that have glitches with it..I suggest, Go into your PC performance and select "best performance", and not "let windows control"...After I changed this setting..No glitches...I also loaded the PG program onto my internal hard drive, instead of the supplied USB drive..(I think the USB drive causes glitches)..

PG Music is on top of it's game.....foR song writers...you should try it.."Band in the Box"..

After listening to demo's on BIAB site for 2012 edition, drums sound to me as they always have, flat. Wish they were punchier.

Hi Fran,
great to get some feedback.
I find it brilliant.
I think some of the Real Tracks started to become available about 3 years ago. My laptop at that time really couldn't handle them. Glitchy. The real drums have been about a bit longer. What I actually tried doing with those was use them in my PA800, ie chop them up into short loops to use with my styles. The available memory in the PA800 was too small & not upgradeable , so I gave up on that notion.
Basically put biab away again, ecept for the odd midi style I converted for my pa800.

Just over a year ago, I got a new laptop, came across the actual demo's, I was sold, I was finally able to run the real tracks properly. I upgraded to the little usb drive so that I could get all the real tracks etc. I installed onto my laptop also, why have an external drive.

The other thing that made it better was the early version didn't have the elastique or something like that, so now instead of having 500 gigs it's down to 100 or so, because we were able to do away with a lot of the loops.

Fran do you also use Real Band? If you haven't had a chance definately look into it too.

I'm sort of getting interested in recording mp3's because my PA3X has the ability to play them, never bothered adding the function to the pa800.

Anyway back to Real Band, if you're a midifile user or use mp3's this program's really worth looking into.
You could load in a midifile , it will work out a chord progression if it hasn't got one,( don't know how accurate it is , but can be fixed) and you can actually replace a midifile track with a real track.
So if your midi drums are lousy, replace it with a real track. If you've got a strumming midi guitar track, replace with a similar real track. You don't have to do much, when you regenerate the guitar track it just follows the chord changes.Save as a song, or as a wav file.
Imagaine some nasty little arranger song , with lousy drums,replace with a real track.

They keep adding more & more of them with each upgrade. Definately worth buying the paks. I think I paid $99 or something for my last upgrade including the real tracks & program. Each of the REal TRack sets would have been $29 each. & I certainly got more than 2 sets.

Sorry George, he meant I should get my drum part down PAT through one pass, because editing drums later would be really, really tough......So I need to get my drums down EXACTLY how I want it in one pass......I can then Multi-track like you say

BTW.....KORG says the PA1 PROx I tried yesterday won't do what I want, they say no PA will.....2nd person there to say that.....But should I go Arranger the Yamaha 910 is my ticket because of the ability to record my acoustic guitar, harmonies, and of course drum tracks.......I guess I will have to chew hard on getting my drums in one pass.....That does really hurt my flexibility.....

Hi Rikki, yes I have the whole library, bonus paks etc...

You touched on a useful feature...Reading an audio file and laying out the chords (Reasonably acurate)..then you can take the chord progression, add composite styles, VST's and real drums and tracks..and you can get a backing track that really kicks butt..This can be done without playing a single note

It is also a great feature for learning tunes from CD's etc...