Wow. I had no recollection that Render Selection default is unchecked. I never imagined that a crash or kernel panic could happen in about a ten second span between rendering one audio file and the next . . . especially without me noticing any other indication that something was awry.
Does Render Selection for Video also revert to default unchecked? Because the first thing I tried when the audio wouldn’t render was a video render using the same old ⌘R and it worked because it wasn’t unchecked. Also, I can imagine a lot of other things that should have reverted to defaults as well if my preferences were trashed and yet none of those did.
All strange . . . but thanks for the help because everything’s working now and until the next issue that’s all that matters!