Lanes? Once Again I'm Complaining...

I'll give it a shot...not that I'm against improvements, but for me, lanes are useable now. I've actually warmed up to lanes after some initial skepticism...something about having to do composite vocals

Here's what works for me. You may have already figured this out and found it still doesn't work for you, but maybe the following will be helpful. 
 
1. Make sure you're using them as intended. They're really takes and not tracks, and the object is always to whittle them down to the best takes for a particular part. If you have tracks that are carrying around 8 or 10 takes...start editing! Otherwise, use conventional tracks and track folders. The "poster boy" application for lanes is composite (loop) recording, and that's where they work best.

2. I use Lanes pretty much when finalizing a particular track, so what concerns me is seeing lots of lanes at once, not a lot of tracks. The fact that they "auto-zoom" to all the same size is something I find helpful as I'm usually comparing phrases in clips and it helps that they're all the same height. But, you might prefer if it followed the standard auto-zoom protocol where you could select one take and change its size independent of the others...you can always suggest that to Cakewalk.

3. Auto-zoom on tracks in general is your friend. That way you don't have to resize tracks to access the track lane button. I don't know if you're an auto-zoom fan or not, but man, it sure sped things up for me once I got used to it. Give it a keyboard shortcut and you'll love it.

4. When editing loop-recorded clips, delete the clips that don't have good takes, and change the order of take lanes so that the best takes where you do most of your work are at the top of the stack, and the other ones are further down.

5. The Isolate function is a really quick way to do loop-recorded edits if the tracks don't need a lot of detailed editing.

Do any of these tips help?

Thanks Guys...

I understand what you're describing with auto-zoom on, but so far every attempt to use it (I did exclusively for weeks) is total frustration for me... Same with Smart Grid... I have them both turned off and expect to leave it that way for now... I can't get it to display what I want when I want it as it has a mind of it's own and there should be only one "boss" here... ;-)   They have always been takes to me whether on layers or lanes... I've tried going back to the (very) old system of using separate tracks instead of a single but the amount of re-setting fx and such related things is too much too...

Yeah, nice to clean out bad takes as you go, but all too often I'm in another room loop recording and don't want to break my performance flow to re-listen and start editing while I'm in a "performance mode"... I usually end up with a dozen or so takes and want to scrutinize them when needed 'after' performance...

When editing there are typically too many lanes to fit on screen... They don't get small enough... something I didn't have much trouble with when using layers...

Zoom for editing? Linear zoom is ok, but without vertical zoom to accompany it, editing is very difficult for my eyes...

Track lanes before recording? I tried that but it won't switch to lanes until something is recorded...?

And now with a typical song's worth of tracks (approx 24) I can't comfortably use lanes as they continue to occupy so much screen, that something must immediately be removed from screen....

I played with using folders, but then I don't get the track info visible and the screen becomes even more cluttered... What was the story with X1? Changed to remove clutter? Now with the myriad of windows (inspector/browser/multidock/tv and the convoluted appearance of folders wasting more space etc.... My screen appears far more cluttered than ever before...

I'm not a believer in any kind of religion (per se), but I'm praying for some miracle to alleviate this issue for me... It's so "in-my-face" that I can't get around it and it's always an issue...

I'll try using the auto-zoom again, but I don't hold much hope for that... and that would barely scratch the surface of my issues with lanes....

I don't know about other users... I know many people simply get used to whatever they're given, but for me, the system was working so well that X1 and X2 have been an exhausting affair with no real satisfaction other than the PC modules.... I wish I could be back in 8.5.3 with the PC modules as vst plugins... I would be far happier...

Thanks again for the suggestions... I will try again to use these ideas...

Keni

I think it's unlikely you're editing different tracks with multiple lanes simultaneously, right? So just collapse everything except for the current track of interest.

I have a rule that if I don't have my performance after 4-6 loops, I ain't gonna get it in 7 or more...I just wipe 'em and start over. Definitely keeps the clutter down (as well as the option anxiety).

Keni, you really seem like a decent sort, and frustration sucks. And I certainly don't want to dismiss your frustrations with "well, it works fine for me." But, here's the thing. Once I got acclimated to X2, I now find that I'm cranking out more music and narration projects than ever before, in less time, with more efficiency and a higher fun factor. True, it took some "unlearning" and "re-learning" to get there, along with deciding in some cases not to argue with Sonar and do things the way it wanted me to do them, but there is "light at the end of the tunnel" and I would be devastated if I had to go back to 8.5.

Let me just add a self-serving plug that all the videos referenced in my sig were all done with X2, and I think they not only sound pretty good, but I feel the music is better because I was able to get things done faster and stay more creative. Don't lose hope! Kick back and let Sonar X2 take the wheel for a while. Some of the decisions Cakewalk made that originally caused me major head-scratching have ended up to where they could now say "I told you so." The track lane implementation is one of them; it's only recently that I've been able to use them efficiently.

Keni.... to get control of auto zoom. Click on a track so it's the "in focus"/active one. Resize that to the size you want. Now resize any one of the others to the size you want (minimised works for me). That's it. Every time you change track focus the in focus track automatically opens to the size you set.

Shift + Z turns it on or off at any time and it's a per screenset setting meaning that you can have several different size setups to recall as required. I find it right up there with screensets in workflow improvements.

HTH

Repeatedly re-sizing tracks so that I can access the lane display button (or menu access to the same)

First shortcut I searched on when I started using X2: Shift+T toggles take lanes.

I hope I'm not hi-jacking ...

Anderton, how do you handle drum editing, or editing anything that you may want to do crossfades? In the layers of X1, I shift-dragged the layers around to get the crossfades I wanted. It's a bit easier because layers are thin and it isn't much to drag things up or down a layer or two.
Do you work the same way? Is it the same idea with take lanes?