iTunes had bugs where at times data populated in the application did not get written out to the files.

Yate works with the files. There is no per field linkage between the two applications. Yate in fact does preserve and update the sort and description fields ... but is does so based on what is in the files when it loads them.

The sort and description fields are not library only such as rating, etc. iTunes/Music reads these values from the files whenever they are updated. When Yate updates a linked file it tells iTunes/Music to update the file and then forces all empty fields to be empty. If it didn't do this you could never empty a field.

Dragging the file into Yate will not fix the issue as the information is missing in the file.

There is however a command to fix this. Apple Apps>Import Fields from Apple App. This is a last resort which should only be used when you feel there is a disparity between what is in the file and what should be in the file. The command copies all the basic metadata from iTunes/Music to Yate and therefore the file. It overwrites what is in the file by copying the fields via APIs.

Unfortunately there is no easy workaround. Yate works with what iTunes/Music is doing now. It has to assume that the files represent what they have in their library as that's what the application is supposed to be doing and in fact does. Whenever fields did not get written to the files it was a bug.

An action can be written to do a field by field comparison of what iTunes/Music has and what is in the files. It hasn't been done in the past as in the far majority of the case the files are or had been properly written.