COOL IDEA: Reamp Tracks / Multi- Tracks! (Or tell me a better way to do this)
Guitar is one of the most popular instruments, and lots of guitar players experiment with reamping. (Sending a dry unprocessed signal through a VST or external amp.)
So while this may sound like a somewhat kooky idea, it will have a broad appeal. The problem when reamping, is maintaining the relationship between the dry tracks and their associated "wet" tracks.
This is easy if you are using VSTis; the track just contains the DI signal which is routed through a sim, which can be easily changed or frozen. Reamping is easy when dealing with just VSTs.
However, when you are reamping with hardware devices or real amps, you usually print the DI track and the wet track(s). You do this so that you can reamp later with the DI, but you also need something to listen to on playback.
When an amp is recorded, it usually involves the DI, and two or more mics. This means that it is usually maintained as at least two tracks, but possibly more. (I sometimes maintain this relationship with DI in left, single mic in right, but this is not always convenient and has its own issues.)
Once a project is going, it is difficult to maintain the relationship between the Di tracks and their associated wet tracks. There may be stereo wet tracks from stereo effects units, or there may be any number of mono tracks. When recording, there are any number of takes and overdubs, which are sliced and edited. Ultimately, each track gets edited down to a single DI which can be used for final reamping. However, there are many individual tracks for rhythm, usually double tracks L/R. And then leads and melodies.
Honestly, this is usually too difficult to manage, so I often just record wet. But it shouldn't have to be difficult.
What I am proposing (and maybe there is a way to do this already), is the introduction of "reamp tracks" or "multi-tracks". This would be a special track with N-channels of audio that are all linked together. Visually, this would look like a single track in the project, but there would actually be multiple lanes of audio within this track/clip. (It might be possible to expand and view the multiples, side by side.) A reamp clip would contain the DI, and any number of stereo and mono 'wet" tracks. There would be an easy ability to select which track(s) are played back, and each separate lane would have its own inputs and outputs.
In use, you would set up a "reamp track" like a normal audio track, except that you would specify individual inputs and outputs for each of the internal lanes. On playback you would select which tracks are active and the outputs could go to different places; the master bus for playback or perhaps a reamp bus for routing out to hardware.
Automation would be applied to each of the internal lanes in the same way. Edits would apply to each of the lanes. Reamp clips could be copied/moved between other reamp tracks. (It might be necessary to make all reamp tracks be -say- eight tracks, not all being used, but it would solve the problem of having reamp tracks of differnt "width".)
While working with reamp tracks, once you set up the multiple ins/outs for each internal lane, they would look just like normal audio tracks. There would be a waveform representing the clip. Instead of mute/solo buttons, there would be a drop down allowing mute/solo to be set for each internal lane.
The purpose of this is to allow easy management and working with guitar (or other) recordings that have multiple "facets" that represent the same thing. To the millions of recording guitar players, this is the killer feature we have been waiting for.
It would also be useful for other instruments/applications. Perhaps choral or multi-mic vocal recording.
Cakewalk should get a jump start on implementing this; now that the idea is out there, its just a matter of time before someone does it.
