Bad Tracking Experience - X3b

I think the new comping method really made things counter-productive and counter-intuitive for us tonight. I personally had a real difficult time trying to take things manually and record a vocal part by part.
 
The scenario: Vocals for a band were to be done line by line, which means the tails of one line are overlapped with the beginning of the next line. Using the looping/punch/Take methods and such for Sonar doesn't lend themselves to this type of tracking, unfortunately (or I need to re-learn this all over again).
 
First, I couldn't do this in a single track using Take Lanes, because we couldn't unmute the previous line. I had to add Lanes between two tracks, so we could accomplish this correctly. Second, every time I added a new Lane, clicking "+" always adds the lane above the previous Lane, which makes the Tn numbers out of sequence by nature and I get lost faster here in X3 than I did in X2. Third, trying to listen back to the takes we tracked, I had to go in an unmute all the previous Takes because the new comping method would automatically splice and mute.
 
Lastly, we had two crashes, both when clicking the record button. One sent a crash report, and the other didn't get that far before we gave up waiting.
 
I think Sonar X3 is going to be a winner, but right now, my woes with Take Lanes are still there, just different. I'm going to have to return to X2 for this band, but maybe I can find some workarounds in X3 to make things work better for this session.

brconflict
I think the new comping method really made things counter-productive and counter-intuitive for us tonight. I personally had a real difficult time trying to take things manually and record a vocal part by part.
 
The scenario: Vocals for a band were to be done line by line, which means the tails of one line are overlapped with the beginning of the next line. Using the looping/punch/Take methods and such for Sonar doesn't lend themselves to this type of tracking, unfortunately (or I need to re-learn this all over again).
 
First, I couldn't do this in a single track using Take Lanes, because we couldn't unmute the previous line. I had to add Lanes between two tracks, so we could accomplish this correctly. Second, every time I added a new Lane, clicking "+" always adds the lane above the previous Lane, which makes the Tn numbers out of sequence by nature and I get lost faster here in X3 than I did in X2. Third, trying to listen back to the takes we tracked, I had to go in an unmute all the previous Takes because the new comping method would automatically splice and mute.
 
Lastly, we had two crashes, both when clicking the record button. One sent a crash report, and the other didn't get that far before we gave up waiting.
 
I think Sonar X3 is going to be a winner, but right now, my woes with Take Lanes are still there, just different. I'm going to have to return to X2 for this band, but maybe I can find some workarounds in X3 to make things work better for this session.

I'm trying to duplicate what you have going on and it doesn't seem to be the case for me. Have you adjusted your comp settings in preferences/project/record?
 
I like the take lanes pushing the previous take to the bottom so that my last take is the one on top. It seems backwards to me if it was any other way. Also, I don't have any problems with anything getting out of sequence. I don't press + I just press record and it auto creates a lane in perfect order above the previous...which *I* feel is the correct way for me personally.
 
I've had 0 problems with unmuting other than when you have the "previous takes" set to mute. I'm hoping your whole problem here is a matter to tweaking your preferences. Most people haven't even noticed the options there. No crashes on this end with anything other than with UAD plugs and Voxengo on the same track bin for me...which support is already aware of. Another method I use (which goes against the grain I know) is to just clone my vocal tracks without wave data. So instead of take lanes, I just use multiple tracks. If I DID have problems with sequence or preferred last take on top, this method works extremely well also. But most times, I'm a "punch in until you get it right" type of guy so I won't even see a take lane....but that's the old school in me. :)
 
-Danny

I recently had to track vocals like this line by line for a hip hop tune I have produced. And on many ocassions the words overlapped.
 
The fastest and best way I found was to what Danny says and that is to create a set of tracks or just use alternating tracks. Time is not on your side when tracking. There is no time to fiddle the layers or settings etc.. You can still put layers within the tracks and do several takes of each line. I actually created a new track for each line, I found it was the best way to go in the end. I only ended up with about 8 tracks in all but lots of layers or takes within each track.
 
It was easy to comp this way too and in the end I only ended up with a two vocal tracks allowing for the overlaps etc. Studio One actually makes it easy to do this but I still opted for the sep tracks concept. It was just faster in the end. It avoids a lot of confusion trying to sort out the mess within the layers after it is all tracked.

Danny, other than under Auto-punch, is there another "Mute Previous Takes" I could be missing? How is it that you're able to hear previous Take Lanes while recording a new one? Thanks!

Try "Sound on Sound" under record options (left click and hold record button) that allows previous takes to be heard while creating new take lanes.
 
@Jeff - I wasn't suggesting changing settings on the fly, just setting it up correctly in the first place is a one time thing.

Punch overrides record mode in terms of hearing previous takes. If I'm understanding correctly, OP wants to hear the unmuted take from the previously comped section but not previous iterations of the looped section currently being recorded. If the sections don't overlap, Comping mode will allow that, and Punch should not be needed, but if they overlap, I think the multiple-tracks solution might be the only way to make it work