I've been a user of Cakewalk going back to pre-Sonar days.  I've never had the problems I'm now experiencing with X3 and now Platinum.
 
I may be unusual in that I do not do any synth/midi programming and never have.  I also don't use clicks very much - most of what I do is live recording of ensembles with overdubs.  It is very unusual to use clicks and grids as most of what I do is jazz, folk and classical and most of the people I work with don't want to use clicks.  As a result, editing involves finding the cut point, overlapping the cut point with the new clips beginning paste point and then trimming once side or the other to match - the only snap function I would ever use is snap to clip boundary (how it works now also pita these days). At this point I would trim clips individually with different edit points and crossfades as one might have a cymbal decay on one track that isn't on another clip that needs a different fine edit point due to a vocal line (or whatever)
 
I'm finding Platinum almost impossible to use for multitrack editing.  Up until now I would use the layers to paste into and do my tweaking of moving/editing/crossfading in there - and when I pasted I could still move/manipulate each clip independently.  I could also see all the layers in each track if I wanted to and paste into a particular layer with no problem.
 
I'm finding that the take lanes has changed this -

• I can no longer have more than one track showing its take lanes at the same time.
• When I paste into a track I have no control over which take lane the pasted clips go into - or more accurately, on a single track you can achieve this.  On multiple tracks it seems quite random as to which take lane the clip ends up in.
• The clip will paste into the take lane with already extant audio - AND THEN I CAN'T SELECT THEM INDIVIDUALLY - they play together at the same time.  If I select clip and move it to an empty take lane, it takes the masked clip with it.  I've tried this with the paste special to overwrite - "replace old with new" (not ideal as I then can't use the old audio to line up a phrase common to the old and new pasted clip) it will work with one clip but not another.
• Selecting a clip when in the lane view and then selecting a clip in other tracks means that all the clips in that time range on the other track(s) are selected.  There is no way I can see of selecting individual specific clips inside specific take lanes ACROSS multiple tracks and slip editing or moving them individually.

This is causing me no end of grief as this is a LARGE part of what I do.  I do enjoy using the new comping powers for single overdubs - very nice! - but it's come at the expense of any kind of ease of multitrack editing. 
 
There are workarounds I can figure out but they are really time consuming.  It would seem that Sonar is being optimised very much for programmed sounds and one at a time audio track recordings - ie modern electronic music production.  Is it time to jump ship? Am I getting something horribly wrong with the new paradigms of tracks and take lanes? 
 
This is my first post on the cakewalk forums and I've been using Cakewalk since the late 1990s...  I bought into it because Apple had just discontinued PC support for Logic. Cakewalk also didn't have restrictive copy protections (computers were always crashing and re-installing your software was a common solution in Windows 98...).  There were many other aspects of their unusual approach that I liked (ease of import/export, unlimited bussing, hardware integration, OMF support, backups).  I've resisted the blandishments of ProTools and Logic despite almost all my peers using one or the other as I didn't respect those companys' attitude to their user base.
 
But if I can't get simple multi track editing to work easily I won't be able to make my deadlines and have to move to something that works better for pure audio.
 
Any suggestions?
 
 
 
 
 

For the "only one track can show lanes at one time" you have to disable  "Auto Track Zoom" which can be found in the Track View "Views" menu.
 
To paste in a specific lane "Select" the lane first (there is a little area that will turn blue like when selecting tracks). I prefer to create new lanes (click the + button on an existing lane) when pasting material into tracks.
 
And by doing that it should avoid clips landing over top of each other (but I can't say I've had that happen... but I work differently then you I think).
 
Try that out and let us know how it works out.
 
Cheers.

Beepster
To paste in a specific lane "Select" the lane first (there is a little area that will turn blue like when selecting tracks). I prefer to create new lanes (click the + button on an existing lane) when pasting material into tracks.
 

 
I'm afraid that's not going to work. Paste just isn't lane-aware in this way. Clips will always paste to the same lane they came from or to the highest numbered lane if pasting to a track with fewer lanes than the source track.
 
I could be wrong, but IIRC, it wasn't possible to paste to a specific layer before lanes replaced them, either.
 
The bottom line is that if you want something to go to a specific lane, you need to drag and drop instead of pasting. And there may still be some situations where the result is not as desired/expected, especially when dragging between tracks with different numbers of lanes.

brundlefly

Beepster
To paste in a specific lane "Select" the lane first (there is a little area that will turn blue like when selecting tracks). I prefer to create new lanes (click the + button on an existing lane) when pasting material into tracks.
 

 
I'm afraid that's not going to work. Paste just isn't lane-aware in this way. Clips will always paste to the same lane they came from or to the highest numbered lane if pasting to a track with fewer lanes than the source track.
 
I could be wrong, but IIRC, it wasn't possible to paste to a specific layer before lanes replaced them, either.
 
The bottom line is that if you want something to go to a specific lane, you need to drag and drop instead of pasting. And there may still be some situations where the result is not as desired/expected, especially when dragging between tracks with different numbers of lanes.

Ah. I just assumed but that would explain why I've developed the workflow of ALWAYS dragging instead of Ctrl V/P'ing.
 
Much more cumbersome but it guarantees what I want to occur actually occurs.
 
They should seriously fix that kind of thing though. These are the little things that make Lanes STILL seem half Baked. I like them and all and get things done but they are indeed finicky.
 
Cheers.

Turning off autozoom will be a great help to start with - thanks for that! I shall experiment further. I remember being able to paste to specific layers with no problem, but it was a while ago now and I may be wrong.
 
Thanks for your suggestions.

Dragging and dropping is very difficult with high numbers of tracks - it's MUCH easier to find your splice point first and then paste in via CTRL-V. (I've done high track count mixes (75 tracks on one project) with multiple edits and each track for each edit needing different crossfade points)
 
The selection criterion in Platinum has also been causing me a few issues - if the clips edit tool is not selected (ie you were editing a mix automation line on one track before doing a clip cut/paste) then the audio clips aren't selected.  That took me a while to figure out. It means that before you do anything you have to double check what edit tool is selected on each individual track.  That really slows me down. 
 
My feeling that the amount of things that need to be remembered for simple operations has reached a point where the new workflow enhancements aren't really enhancements and the operation of the software is no longer intuitive.  The way the smart tool has developed seems to put far too much complexity on it - and the specificity of where you touch each clip having different effects makes high track count editing really tough when you have many small clips - one is constantly zooming in and out to try and find the right area to select....
 
In short, it feels as if this software has jumped the shark!

I'm not sure what you mean by Clips Edit tool but just remember that clicking on the bar that appears at the top of the clips is the most reliable way to slect and move then. Think of it as a handle.
 
Of course not all tools will select it but that's the first hotspot to go for in those instances.
 
You may already know that but it's worth mentioning.
 
Also you may want to learn how to "toggle" between tools while editing. There's a few hotkey actions that make bouncing around between commonly used tools pretty easy (but I can't recall them at the moment).
 
As far as "jumping the shark"... well the extra complexity is necessary for many of the features to work well/quickly. You just have to read up on them and get used to them. Total pain at first, I agree, but it's a skill that needs to be learned just like an instrument. The big procedural changes seem to be over now so you can safely adjust your workflow without worrying about having to relearn everything over again in a year.
 
Cheers.

Nickda2bass
Dragging and dropping is very difficult with high numbers of tracks - it's MUCH easier to find your splice point first and then paste in via CTRL-V. (I've done high track count mixes (75 tracks on one project) with multiple edits and each track for each edit needing different crossfade points).

I meant to suggest drag 'n' drop mainly for lane-to-lane moves. For single-lane track-to-track moves/copies I also prefer copy/cut/paste.
 
Everybody's workflow is different, and it's easy to become to dependent on the way a particular tool/gesture works, and get thrown by a change. My experience with the ever-evolving tools in SONAR is that there's been a net improvement with just a couple of problem areas, and that keeping up with the evolution has been a pain but worth the trouble.
 
When it comes to comparing workflows between versions, it's hard to conclude that something has really gotten more difficult without a very specific example of the way you would have performed a task previously vs. what's necessary now.
 
As I mentioned earlier, it wasn't possible to control what layer a clip pasted to in X1 and earlier, so I didn't really understand how lanes have made anything more difficult in this respect. My feeling is generally that lanes are lot more powerful and easier to work with than layers at the expense of using more real estate.

If the Take Lanes aren't working for you, why not use multiple tracks grouped into an aux track instead? Then you can do everything you used to do with layers.
 
Regards,
Dan