Best practices for comping recordings

Is there a tutorial on the best practices for comping tracks in X1?

I understand the loop record to multiple layers (or tracks).  My question is more about best practices in constructing the comp track.  

I can see a couple of ways of working:
1. Keep all the candidate tracks on separate layers and manually tweak the cross fades.
2. Make a single layer with the comp track and use the auto cross fade function to blend between clips.

Are there better ways?  My frame of reference is Propellerhead's Record which has a comping function that works very well.  I had to read the manual to really get what they were doing, but once I did that it seemed to be astonishingly powerful.  The help in Sonar seems to gloss over this area; they don't really get into the details of how to build the good track from all of the raw materials.

I would really appreciate tips or just a steer to a good tutorial on this.

Thanks,
Andy

Thank you for the reply.

When you make your precise comp, do you find yourself leaving the clips on separate layers and manually cross fading, or do you stack the clips on the same layer and use auto cross fade?

Great.  Thank you.
Andy

I haven't seen any good tutorials, sorry. I have been using Cakewalk/Sonar for many years so I can add a few things to Andy's reply.

I record everything onto the main track. I make 2 copies of the main track. I don't use the clone tool I just do the work. In the past, using the clone tool would cause minor issues to crop up. I suspect it was one of my many plugins but could have been sonar itself. Haven't tried it in X1 yet, just a habit of hand making copies... anyway, So now I have 3 tracks. The "Recorded TracK" next is the "Working Track" and finally the mix (comp) track.

I do it this way because, I'll have 5-10 full takes, on average, to sift through on any given instrument. It's rough sifting through them when closer to 10, but it's sure fun making them. haha This way I can work with a couple clips at a time in the working track and once I get those into the comp track I can split and delete all leftover takes in that time frame. Of course I use fades to blend things up. X1 has force me to learn a new work flow since things have been changed. I have nothing in stone for ya about this part of the task since I am having to learn a new way. Lot's of mouse clicking atm to split and pull fades in... and selecting the time of the fade.

I recently tried to use "bounce to clips" on a few takes I wanted to combine into one clip, but it was greyed out and not an option. I have no clue why I can't choose it when selecting a few clips. /shrug Worked fine in all the previous Sonars. So it looks like I have to change my work flow into some sort of bounce. IF I can't find how to get clips to "Bounce Into Clip"

BTW, both the Record and Working tracks have layers shown.

HTH at least a little,

Rob