JJJ, I think we understand your question and several have now answered.

You have been around for a while and know as well as many, there are multiple ways to do the same thing in BIAB. Some of those ways provide different options along the way, but in the end the output is the same. The soloist menu and the F5 for setting who plays what and when are a perfect example of this.

But, maybe some of this is before your time, that is, before we had RTs doing our solos. Back in the old days, the Soloist feature was applied only to midi soloists and only on the Soloist track. At that time you could choose a soloist in the "style of ...", and the midi engine would create it - trade 4's and rotate multiple soloists on the same track. This may have even been before F5, although I may be forgetting things as this would go back almost a decade.

Then RTs came along with dedicated soloist recordings. So a RT soloist could be placed on any track. Combining that with F5 pretty much made the Soloist feature obsolete for RTs.

However, the RT solos were added to the Soloist menu. Many of the original features did not apply when using RTs and I believe they may not to this day. But you know how BIAB likes to have multiple ways to do the same things...

Hope that helps. I fully appreciate that BIAB can be a bit of a sticky wicket and is difficult to fully comprehend but I think my understanding is not too far off the mark. Some things you only learn by being around a long long time.

Good luck.

Dan, BIAB2024, SoundCloud Win11, i7(12thGen), 32GB, 1TB SSD(M.2 NVMe SSD), 2TB Libraries, 1 TB(WD-Black), 2TB SSD(M.2 NVMe SSD)Data, Motu Audio Express, Keystation 61, SL88 Studio, Reaper