Wow, you guys are amazing, thank you for all the help!

Okay, so here are the results.

1. I disabled the 'speed up generation of realtracks' in Options > Preferences > RealTracks. Closed BIAB, restarted my computer, opened the samba and waited for what seemed 5 or more minutes for the tracks to generate. Unfortunately as far as I could tell there was no appreciable difference in the amount of distortion during playback.

2. I took Noel's suggestion of right-clicking the songsheet & chose "This song has playback problems... disable fast generation" in song settings, hit play (waited another 5 minutes or so), and that actually did eliminate *most* of the static-distortion. I let the song play continously for about 15 minutes and monitored it. Some slight distortion still crept in a little here and there, but mostly it played back cleanly.

In the end it seems obvious my best solution is to get a newer laptop with a much more beefy CPU & RAM than the older slower one I put this on. I've only been using BIAB for 2 days & I know I'll be wanting to do more ambitious projects, so, time to pony up some $$.

Thanks again for your help. What a cool community! I really appreciate you taking the time to help out a clueless newbie with a tech issue.

Cheers! smile

Zac