Say, you mute a real track, and now desire to have it play again, maybe with a different real track substituted, at a higher volume---"change by" does not seem to work until a bar after you have set "back to normal".

I'm not seeing that as a problem. Could you elaborate to show how this prevents you from doing what you want?

Real tracks are very inconsistent regarding volume. So when a track is switched from one real track to another at a certain bar, the volume usually needs to change, up or down. If that track is simultaneously changing from being muted, it seems I have to use "back to normal" for one bar and THEN use "change by" to increase or decrease the volume.

Could you change the volume in the last 'muted' bar and then change the track in the next bar? You would have to test out to find the required volume of course.

I never thought about trying that--good idea. We'll see.

As it turned out, changing the volume in the last muted bar didn't work, but just setting the last muted bar to "back to normal" and then changing the volume in the first "un-muted" bar does work. This isn't bad as most jazz songs and standards lead into the next section anyway. Thanks for your response!

You may want to review this post from another thread where Andrew with PG Music staff comments about this issue. He details a better method that programs changes so that the BIAB algorithm apparently can read ahead and see the coming change and will select appropriate audio clips from the RealTrack audio file to be placed in that bar. This is different from using the Bar Settings commands which always occur after the BIAB algorithm has chosen audio for the particular bar. He notes this sometimes results in a RealTrack audio riff being abruptly cut off or if it's at the beginning of a riff, the audio selected, doesn't begin correctly. Using the method demonstrated by Andrew also allows panning and volume changes and automatically creates high quality professional grade cross fades, fade ins and fade outs so the results are smooth transitions. I recommend you review the entire thread, especially Andrew's follow up comments after this post. This technique has been around for years and was enhanced and upgraded in both 2019 and 2020 BIAB versions and is a very powerful and useful tool.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=605625#Post605625

My wife, retired software tester, innocently suggested not setting the track to "mute" but rather setting "change to" volume to zero! Then when the new track begins, set the "change to" the desired volume!! so simple, it works!

Great, thanks for the tip. There's often more than one road that leads to your destination.