I think I may be about to embark in an extremely tedious vocal track clip gain restoration

8 songs. Two lead vox each. Two takes of each voc track. Recorded simultaneously with the band in the same room. Some poor mic technique (and apparently oblivious tracking engineer... not me). Etc.
 
Le sigh.
 
It's coming along though. Soundin' pretty crazyballs even if there seems to be hundreds more hours that need to be done on it.
 
I believe in the whole mixing premise of "Do no harm"... but ya. Some of this is broaching on necromancy.
 
In other news...
 
hello.

hrrrm... mayhaps this is one of those moments where I should simply learn how to do it in the Reap.
 
But learning new things is for dorks!!
 
WAT DO?!

Fer realz. Lurv that dood.
 
I have actually been doing pretty advanced level stuff in Reap for a while now but very specific things that SONAR seems to crap the bed over. I'm thinking I may need to learn me some Reaper automation soon if only for hardcore raw clip kerfutzery such as this (less intensive automation seems to be fine for my current needs within SONAR such as simple level/pan/bus automation and the like).
 
However right now for this task simply listening and hatcheting out the "non voc" data on those tracks is acheiving the effect I want. It's crude and rude and I'll have to go back and adjust the crops/fades but yup... that's the effect I was going for.
 
Gates/Expanders IMO are merely a temporary solution to a huge arse "intern" level pain in the ballz problem. Here at Beepster Inc. though the CEO is the only intern we have... and he's kind of sleepy and useless... and mildly annoying (don't tell him I said that last bit).
 

Tell me about it. I've just embarked upon the gigantic task of recreating a 20 minute, 100+ track Sonar project in Reaper (something I previously thought I would never do). Not only do I have to recreate long effect chains for each track, I also have upwards of 10 lanes of automation on many of the tracks with all kinds of crazy automation curves controlling the effects. I can't bounce all of this effect wizardry to audio files yet because I'm not done with adjusting these effect chains, and the project has become so unworkable in broken down old Sonar that I have no choice but to start it from scratch. I'm actually saving screenshots of these automation envelopes and recreating them in Reaper. I'm having to make loads of text notes for each track, and I've even resorted to writing out basic EQ & fx settings in these notes because I don't want to get into managing hundreds of preset files (and some plugins are real arses about where you can save presets so there just doesn't seem to be much consistency & that burns my brain). I worked for god knows how long today and got 5 tracks done (and these are ones with not much automation). Plus I managed to set up all the buses. It's one of those "well if you do some every day you'll get it done eventually but god knows when" kind of jobs.
 
The trouble is it's really easy to get overly confident with monotonous tasks like this and make mistakes. I've already made some arse-ups. 
 
I'd love to use azslow3's Sonar to Reaper transfer tool but I don't think it's at the stage yet where I'd trust it on a project like this, and it doesn't yet do effect automation. Still, there is something to be said for rolling up the old sleeves and taking on something ridiculous. 
 
I think these nootropics I've been taking are helping though. I seem to have a much better attention span than I did. Perhaps that's why I went from the position of "no way on earth am I taking this project on" to "why the hell not, let's give it a whirl."