I've recently installed BIAB2020 and am making my way through it.
Just a question - what does the "=" sign in front of a Real track mean?
Eg "=Drums" (in green)

Hi Keith,

It means that the style contains both MIDI and Realtracks.

It's possible that when one of these styles are loaded, and if you have auto-substitute realtracks for midi, that the MIDI tracks will not appear in the mixer.

Regards,
Noel

Hi Noel, thank you.
However if I freeze (say the drums track) the "="disappears.

I think I recall reading something in the release notes during beta testing that stated an 'equal' character ('=') indicated that the track had been customized / changed in some way:

Thanks Trev. I was thinking the '=' in the Style name.

Appreciate the correction.
Noel

Hi Noel,

'tis OK, I was thinking the same at first, but I also vaguely recalled Peter mentioning something about the equals symbol, and had to go actually hunting.

The single character symbols have become more and more confusing for me.

Here's a good post from LloydS that highlights the variations

Using the same character in different places to have completely different meanings is a little confusing (well for me, at least).

I did ask for them to be all listed in spare white-space on a form once (the StylePicker I think) but it never happened.

A question recently came up regarding additional instruments on a track and Andrew from PGMusic advised some of the newer styles they've used the new medley feature. That particular style had a banjo and guitar on the same track playing simultaneously. I think they also had a track with two mandolin's on it. That was one of the situations Dr. Gannon referred to I believe.

From the Manual on New Features

“
Custom style settings don’t interfere with song settings
If you have customized track settings of a song (e.g. by overriding the settings in a style and putting a different RealTracks), the program will now ignore the settings in the style that might affect the sound (such as custom panning, reverb, double-time, etc.).

Tracks that have been customized are indicated by an ‘=’ in the track name.”

See https://www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2020upgrade/chapter2.htm

Tony

How does instrument substitution on a track that causes an equal sign "=" differ from track substitutions that cause a tilde "~" sign?

If the track name at the top has an "=" in front, this just means that you have chosen a RealTrack for this track yourself (i.e. it is not the default RealTrack that is part of the style).

The "~" symbol in front of the track name in the Mixer window means that the RealTrack has different tempos available, and will auto-substitute if you change the tempo of your song. The "~~" symbol means that the substitution based on tempo is being done.