jonboper
Recording multiple takes into one track, has been a part of Sonar since...Sonar 8? X1?
 
The fact that the behavior of those takes now requires a video series to understand is ridiculous. I used track layers to A/B takes, which was easy enough to do with the Solo and Mute buttons. Track layers were an amazing addition when they happened - I loved them. Now? Shaking my head.

Just going to quickly point out I'm not promising any material I come up with will ever make you or anyone entirely happy with Lanes... just some techniques I've developed that goes beyond the official documentation and vids. There is of course always going to be a matter of personal taste/preference involved but hopefully (if I ever get around to finishing them) it'll help some people get around them easier.
 
That said... if you want to a/b Lanes or specific lane sections I can think of two methods that might help.
 
1) Use the Solo buttons on the Take Lane controls. To do this you would have to make sure that any clips you want to compare are unmuted. So if you intend to do this simply select all the clips you want to compare (you can select the clips themselves by using Shift + Left Click, or Lasso select, or Ctrl + Left Clip for one clip at a time or to remove clips from the selection group OR... and this would actually be the best if you have multiple clip segments in the same lane you want to audition... use the Take Lanes Control area selection which will select all clips in the Lane. If you use the Lane selection option you can of course also use Shift or Ctrl + Left Click to select multiple clips... essentially there are a TON of ways to select so I just wanted to make sure you had most of the options). Once you have all the desired clips selected simply press K on your keyboard and they will all become unmuted (make sure you don't include any already unmuted clips in your selection or I think that one will end up muted). Then just use the Take Lanes Solo button like you would have with Layers (you can only solo one lane at a time so it acts like an automatic a/b control). Once you are done just reverse the process by selecting all clips you want muted and then pressing K again.
 
tl;dr
Select all Clips or Lanes you want to audition except for any ones already unmuted
Press K to unmute all the selected clips
Use the Lane solo buttons to a/b that takes.
Select and press K again to mute the clips.
*Note: Also be sure to "Unsolo" the soloed lane otherwise material in other lanes will remain inaudible no matter what.
 
2) With the Smart Tool simply click in the bottom half of a muted clip you want to hear. This will mute any audible clips in the same range (except in a few situations that I won't go into) and solo the desired clip. So to a/b ANY clip in the same range you just click in the bottom half of the clip. That's the Comping Tool doing it's thing and the process is called "Promote". It's really just an automatic "Clip Solo + Mute All Others in Range" action.
 
Cheers.

i have to say i'm learning more from reading everyone's posts then from my original question two weeks ago!! @beepster (or anyone) if you make a vid please let me know either by IM or email, i really want to see it. meanwhile, i found from you guys that the solution to my original question was simply the new default for recording is comping if i just enable "overwrite" life is good.  

If you want to record with overlap just select sound on sound mode. It's not Sonar's fault if you select comping mode when you don't want to record a comp.

As for comping multiple parts, firstly I don't understand why you would need to flatten before you have done the whole track but even if you do, it isn't hard at all to "get your muted chorus back". Just hit the (un)mute button of whichever chorus take you want to hear. Personally, my workflow is to comp but not flatten until I'm done.

Kylotan

You record measures 1-20, then later record measures 19-40, with a small and deliberate overlap. Your first take gets truncated if you're in Comping mode, even though 'comping' is not the intention here.

 
That's an intended behavior, and is also a good design, because it allows users to adjust the split point between the first take and the second take easily. But if you don't want the first take to be truncated, you can just lock the data of the clips in measures 1-20 in advance.

Kylotan

You record a verse and a chorus separately. You comp the verse, flatten comp. Now all your chorus takes are muted. There are several ways to dig yourself out of that problem, each of them painful. 

 
You can easily unmute the muted lanes by unsoloing the Comp lane. It's not painful. 
 
 

Kylotan

• You drag a 3 measure clip into a take lane over the top of a 2 measure clip by accident, and then drag it to where you really meant it to be. What you might not have noticed is that you've now destroyed your 2 measure clip. (A less catastrophic version exists where the 2 clips merely overlap; at least you can slip-edit it back later when you realise your error.)

 
That's also a good design. It automatically creates a split point between the original clip and the clip dragged into the lane for easy split point adjustment. Since this is not what you intended (you dragged the clip there "by accident"), you can just undo the action or if you want to prevent any existing clips from getting truncated or destroyed, you can just lock the data (and also the position, if you like) of all the existing takes in advance. This can be done in less than 5 seconds if you use a keyboard shortcut.

Great video! 👍