I complete a project, save the sgu, revisit one or more times to add/change a realtrack with no problem, then go back next day to make a change and several realtracks have been replaced by artist tracks, and I can't change them back to ordinary rt's, even by loading a new style. What's going on?

Did you review or audition any artist tracks while making changes? Are you using Control+Z to undo changes?

I'm trying to figure out what maybe triggering this action. Obviously it is not what you desire.

One thing you might want to try is saving your project under different names as you go along. Song 1, Song 2, Song 3, etc. That way when something undesirable happens you can back track and get a better idea of why it happened.

I generally save under a new name about every five to ten minutes and place all my files in a song folder on my desktop.

What versions of Band-in-a-Box are you using, George L? 2020, 2021, 2022, etc? As well as the build too, which you can find under Help | About Band-in-a-Box as a 3 digit number in brackets next to the version year. And can you walk us through the exact steps you're taking when adding in RealTracks and making those changes? Such as any menus or buttons clicked? Or better yet, if possible, a small video of the process? We can certainly speculate what may be happening, but without more details on what exact steps you're taking it will be difficult to isolate exactly what may be going on here.

I had exported my song to audio and imported the tracks into Cakewalk, my normal MO. I decided to try a different bass realtrack, and when I brought the sgu up in BiaB, the tracks looked normal in the mixer window for a second or two, and then 3 of the 6 tracks, including the bass, showed "Artist" instead of the instrument name. When I tried to change the track type or replace the track with an new RT, the mixer continued to show "Artist" as the track name, and the newly chosen part did not show up. I was in a hurry to finish my project, and I think I finally erased the track completely, saved and reloaded the sgu, and then loaded in a new RT, but I'm not sure of my exact sequence of steps. All of that was yesterday, and today everything seems normal - all RT's show up in the mixer correctly, including the 2 I did not mess with. I had a similar experience a couple of months ago, and once again managed to blunder my way through. If it happens again, I'll try to document everything. FYI, I'm running 64-bit 2022, Build 918 under Windows 11 on an Acer Nitro 5 laptop with 24gb ram.

Thanks George for the update.

FYI, the current 2022 Band-in-a-Box, BiaB, for Windows build is 920. Build 920 is available +++ HERE +++. However, in this instance build 918 is likely not causing your issue.

Speaking VERY broadly BiaB can consider EVERY song project audio track to be an Artist Performance Track or APT for short. If the song title is in the audio file name, there is a good chance BiaB will consider the file an APT.

Editing and saving a Realtrack creates an APT. BiaB then recognizes the APT.

Regeneration of a RealTrack changes track data. There is no audio created (the audio exists in the RealTrack folder) so there is no APT opportunity.

When using the BiaB audio editor, Ctrl+Z removes edits. A second Ctrl+Z should restore the RealTrack.

One way to avoid an audio file becoming an APT is to rename the audio file to something that doesn't include the song title. For example "RT1553 guitar, lead, sw16 185 MySong.WAV" could be renamed as "lead guitar".