Hello, Sometimes I need to insert , say, 4 bars to match the song loaded in ACW. I have already imported the song , created the bars, chords, etc.
My problem is that I cannot ind the way to insert bars ONLY in the CHORDs. WHen I insert a bar, the audio ile, also creates those bars (silence) in the audio waveform. Any help is appreciated.
THanks in advance. Montxo
BIAB 2026 ULTRAPACK - WIN11 for GIGs: "laptop HP X360 - i7,RAM 16GB " + SSD 500GB for BIAB library
I've been playing around with this issue since I first read your post. It seems that it applies to all tracks and not just the Audio track. I'm guessing that this was introduced when the stem splitter was added to BIAB because I'm pretty sure that in older days, audio on the Audio track and note-based lyrics were unaffected by inserting bars. I have not yet found any way around this issue. I'll report it to the developers and give them a link to this thread of yours. If they have any ideas, I'm sure that they will pass them on.
The only work-around that I can think of is to reload the Audio track once you have finalised the chord track with ACW, and the chords are in place and the tempo is mapped.
Yes this is recent behavior - I would say it introduced in 2026. Along the lines of making every track the same? But it does have some negative reprocusions. Having you tried to freeze the Audio track so it can't be changed?
I've been playing around with this issue since I first read your post. It seems that it applies to all tracks and not just the Audio track. I'm guessing that this was introduced when the stem splitter was added to BIAB because I'm pretty sure that in older days, audio on the Audio track and note-based lyrics were unaffected by inserting bars. I have not yet found any way around this issue. I'll report it to the developers and give them a link to this thread of yours. If they have any ideas, I'm sure that they will pass them on.
The only work-around that I can think of is to reload the Audio track once you have finalised the chord track with ACW, and the chords are in place and the tempo is mapped.
Yes this is recent behavior - I would say it introduced in 2026. Along the lines of making every track the same? But it does have some negative reprocusions. Having you tried to freeze the Audio track so it can't be changed?
BIAB 2026 ULTRAPACK - WIN11 for GIGs: "laptop HP X360 - i7,RAM 16GB " + SSD 500GB for BIAB library
When you use the insert/delete bars command, audio tracks will shift accordingly - This is been the behaviour for a few years - prior to that it was considered a bug that insert/delete bars did NOT do that. Perhaps there could be a setting for it.
Yes, a setting would be great because very often you need to insert or delete bars in the CHords page but not modifing the audio. Thanks. Cheers
Originally Posted by Andrew - PG Music
When you use the insert/delete bars command, audio tracks will shift accordingly - This is been the behaviour for a few years - prior to that it was considered a bug that insert/delete bars did NOT do that. Perhaps there could be a setting for it.
Last edited by Montxo; 01/23/2602:01 AM.
BIAB 2026 ULTRAPACK - WIN11 for GIGs: "laptop HP X360 - i7,RAM 16GB " + SSD 500GB for BIAB library
I queried Chatgpt to review a lengthy reply I wrote to some suggestions made in this thread. Chat concluded my core argument is essentially this: * Chord Sheet structural edits and audio editing are different domains * Forcing them to be coupled creates more harm than benefit * BIAB already provides the proper place to deal with audio alignment and edits: the Audio Edit Window * That’s a reasonable, defensible position—and frankly a more architecturally clean one than adding yet another global preference.
So, Chat and I conversed and agreed to the following response.
_______________________
No, a setting is not the best—or preferred—solution.
In practice, the need to insert or delete bars on the Chord Sheet without modifying existing audio overwhelmingly outweighs the opposite use case. Automatically inserting silence to match inserted bars is not only inadequate, it reintroduces long-standing workflow problems.
This design choice effectively reintroduces the long-standing “Abrupt Endings” issue BIAB users struggled with for years when editing RealTracks using Bar Settings. In those cases, bar edits frequently truncated audio mid-phrase, producing unnatural and musically incorrect results. The current behavior now does the same thing to pre-recorded audio. The inserted silence almost never aligns cleanly with a musical boundary and frequently slices through a phrase in an unnatural way.
Unlike RealTracks, BIAB has no automatic mechanism to create smooth transitions for audio when bars are inserted. As a result, the silence insertion creates anomalies that the user must manually repair anyway.
Importantly, this functionality already belongs in the Audio Edit Window. Any audio—whether imported, recorded, moved between tracks, or opened as audio—is already subject to comprehensive editing, manipulation, and alignment tools there. That is the correct and sufficient place for managing audio timing and structure.
Coupling Chord Sheet bar edits to forced audio modification solves a perceived problem while creating a much larger and more frequent one. Decoupling these behaviors restores flexibility without removing any existing audio-editing capability.
I posted a screenshot to demonstrate that manually editing and auto silence insertion can be exactly the same except the user always has complete control over the normal audio editing feature.
Yes this is recent behavior - I would say it introduced in 2026. Along the lines of making every track the same? But it does have some negative reprocusions. Having you tried to freeze the Audio track so it can't be changed?
Nope. After testing, regardless the track type, Legacy, Audio or Utility, tracks with audio on them lose the Freeze Button. This auto bar insertion feature is applied.
Hello, Sometimes I need to insert , say, 4 bars to match the song loaded in ACW. insert a bar, the audio it also creates those bars (silence) in the audio waveform.
Let's start with the root issue. I noticed when I was testing ACW this year, amongst other gaps and issues it has, if it you import an audio file that's 100 bars long and let's say your intial song was set up for 50 bars by default, it is not easy to solve that problem. ACW should make the song bars equal to the bars in the audio track. (problem solved)
Beware, AI chats will often tell you what you want to hear.
Studio One (latest version), Win 11 23H2 , i9 -10940X 3.3 GHz, 32GB Mem, a 4K 40" monitor, PreSonus Studio Live III Console as interface/controller. secondarily test on Reaper, Cakewalk, and S1 on Surface Pro 3 Win 10 (latest versions).
< Beware, AI chats will often tell you what you want to hear. >
True, but I only used Chat for punctuation and condensing long phrases. Grammar, not factual information.
As for the root issue:
What’s been described here is a difference in architecture between DAWs and BIAB. BIAB uses song form (bars, tempo, and chords) internally to generate tracks and determine the timeline. Audio that is not derived from BIAB is analyzed to blend with BIAB’s generated tracks.
Conversely, DAWs use audio exclusively to define the timeline.
BIAB can use audio as the starting point when opening a project, which adjusts the timeline automatically to match the audio. Importing audio into an existing project does not change the project’s bars or structure, because doing so would alter the intentional song form, so BIAB shouldn’t do that by default.
When you use the insert/delete bars command, audio tracks will shift accordingly - This is been the behaviour for a few years - prior to that it was considered a bug that insert/delete bars did NOT do that. Perhaps there could be a setting for it.
+1 A simple "Freeze" button for audio-tracks would be perfect.
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