Say I record a take of voice, then decide that there's a problem with one phrase and want to rerecord it.  What I would like to do is to split out that phrase (leaving the take lanes un-expanded), mute it, then rerecord the phrase, and then crossfade the new clip with the old clips by dragging it out to overlap with them.
 
What often happens is that, especially if there are a pile of old muted takes underneath, when I attempt to crossfade two of the active clips, a muted clip (or clips) will also join in the fun, and there will be a giant crossfade between the active clip I'm dragging and the muted clip.
 
Is there a setting or technique I can use to avoid this?  Presently I find that I sometimes have to drag unused clips to a second track to avoid having overlap problems, which then seems to cause the muted clips to crossfade themselves on that track, and leaves the clips in a less efficiently accessible organization, which is annoying if I want to go back to them.  I do not want to expand the take lanes and play around with trying to get the crossfades there - I have done that but it takes more time than simply dragging out the clips on the track itself.
 
I don't see why the software would be set to default to crossfading between unmuted and muted clips - although I can imagine the utility of doing so occasionally, I can't think of any specific examples of when that would be useful to me.
 
Thanks

I'm not sure why you want to leave the take lanes unexpanded, so perhaps there's some aspect to your workflow I don't fully understand. That said, it seems the easiest option would be record the phrase in another take lane, and after recording, use the Edit Tool instead of the Smart Tool. (Take Lanes behave more like layers with the Edit tool, as it doesn't invoke the "automatic" Smart Tool comping functions.) Assuming what you punched is in a separate take lane, you can fade in, fade out, etc. You'll need to create the crossfade manually, as you can't overlapping tracks in a single take lane to do automatic crossfades.
 
If there are two overlapping tracks, you can also use the DSP Crossfade function. However it's destructive, so make sure it does what you want before continuing.

Thanks.  It's of course possible to record in take lanes, and yes the edit tool is useful there.
 
The reason I'm interested in doing it without take lanes is that it's quite easy, in the middle of, for example, recording myself singing at the computer (which is completely silent without moving parts for this very purpose), to record, audition, split-split, mute, record, audition, mute, record, audition, mute, and so on.  I understand that many people like to use take lanes for a similar purpose, but I find that it's simpler and less busy to do everything on the track level.  If for some reason it's impossible to avoid crossfading the muted takes, it's still simpler to dump the old takes into a track set as Archived than it is to use take lanes.  It's possible under some circumstances just to let the muted takes crossfade themselves up a storm without interfering with active clips, though this is obnoxious if later one wants to compare takes.
 
Since, as I believe, though there may occasionally be a reason to create crossfades between unmuted and muted clips, there's no reason always to do so, I assume that there's a setting or technique which would prevent that behavior.  I'm looking for help finding that setting or technique.

Actually, the fact that crossfades aren't automatic when working in take lanes is another reason to work at the track level, as there the crossfades are taken care of. 
 

I guess I don't understand what you're trying to do. Is what you want is a combination of comping and traditional track-oriented editing within the comping framework? When you say "I find that it's simpler and less busy to do everything on the track level," is there a reason you don't want to do it on the track level? It seems that the track level would be optimized for the type of editing you want to do.
 
I have a feeling I'm not understanding a crucial part of your workflow. Maybe it's that you want to be able to work on the comping mode parent track as if it was a traditional track? If that's the case, I don't think there is a solution because the parent track is a graphic representation of multiple tracks, not a single clip. Or something like that  Hey, it's late...
 
 

all I want to do is to be able to crossfade between unmuted clips on the track level without a bunch of other crossfades being made by muted clips in the background.
 
I can't think of a single time I would want to crossfade between an unmuted clip and a muted clip, but even if there are such times, I don't think it should be the normal behavior of muted clips.

while I'm on the subject, another odd thing about working at the track level is this:
 
Say you have three clips with two crossfades at the overlaps, and another muted clip underneath the middle one - this could happen if you are re-taking a phrase in a vocal.  I find that (at least sometimes) if you then mute the middle clip, it pops behind the already-muted clip.  Then if you click in that space (which being the same phrase, the already-muted clip will look very similar to the new take) and unmute, you've now unmuted the old phrase.
 
If I can see a clip, and mute it, I don't want it to be suddenly also hidden behind another clip - I only want it to be muted.