It seems like a handful of problems on this forum recently have come about because the Comping record mode is very unintuitive, making it hard to layer recordings, line up adjacent takes, or punch-in new audio. It's easy enough to switch off, of course - but it seems weird that this behaviour is the default. It seems to only be useful if you're recording multiple takes through the whole song - because if you're only doing part of the song, eg. recording extra chorus or verse takes, you'll want to hear the part leading in to whatever you're re-recording (and certainly won't want it muted by default).
 
Am I missing any great applications of this new mode? Maybe most of you don't record in sections?

Acapella artists and Brian May may find it useful. Perhaps Michael Jackson would use it building up a loop (he's still alive right?). If all use it simultaneously it might trigger the end of the universe.
 
I agree I think comping should be default.
 
My major annoyance is not seeing the waveforms or midi tracks (graphically) during recording in the takelanes until the stop button is pressed (when looping).
 

No... I don't agree that comping should be default... Though I think it is as I remember having to change that immediately...

When tracking a band recording to click, it's very handy, but even in this "modern" day and age, I find most bands simply want to capture their' performance...

Don't get me wrong. I work with people who do record live performance to click so as to use such features, but they are not the majority for me... And for that matter, production style recording is more meat and potatoes for me... There I need to be flexible and sometimes need comping but more often, I'm comping overdubs and its current abilities (comping mode) don't work best...

Maybe the addition of some new abilities for it will help...? We'll see...

Think I might have the two muddled...
I generally use it for vocals. e.g. getting a crap vocalist to sing the same line over and over again, obviously I don't want them to hear what they last sung, unless they are doubling.

I'm a trombonist, and i use comping all the time. First, I'll do a whole selection several times, and then I'll do several punches in some sections. 
 
It gives me a pretty complete performance, and if i can stay with the whole welection choices, the playing is in context and usually more convincing as a performance, even if I'm using several different takes.

The OP sort of hit the answer on its own. As soon as "layering" gets thrown out, that is not the intent of comping. Its ideal use is to create one take from multiple takes (track level) although it can layer takes (ala double tracking) by Ctrl-promoting multiple phrases.

Sound-on-sound is the best choice if the content between takes is not meant to be "mutually exclusive," barring the Ctrl-promoting bit above.

I use comping all the time for improvisationally singing melodies or playing in bass lines/leads when composing... it allows for a lot of expressive freedom and the ability to just vamp for awhile then audition/select parts from various performances resulting in pretty awesome stuff.
 
Fortunately I don't have to deal with "crap vocalist"s... but I am pretty crap at keyboard and it is also useful to vamp on orchestral bits and then select from the various bits.
 
All in all, the most fantastic innovation for songwriting in a long time...
 
If we could just get a better "arranging" system, like comping... I'd be in hog heaven
 
 
 

btw, I've been recording both stream of conscious and in sections for a long time... punch in/out is part of the process for doing things in sections... set your loop points outside of the punch points and you get the lead in you desire...
 
I routinely comp in "sections"... harmony's on verse 1 are never the same as verse 2 as I comp them separately... much more interesting that way.

Some of you are mistakenly thinking I'm asking about the benefit of comping in general. Not so. I am asking about the benefit of the comping record mode, which actually makes my comping work harder.
 
Example: if I want to re-record vocal line 2 in a verse, I can see why I'd want the previous take of that line to be muted, but I probably want line 1 to NOT be muted, so the singer can match their performance, be reminded of lyrics, etc. This goes double if I'm recording lead guitar or similar where I'm going to cross-fade it.
 
I can go some way to addressing that with punch-in and punch-out points, meaning I hear the lead-in and lead-out of the section I recorded. But now I have no recorded audio on the second take before or after those points, so I can't cross-fade smoothly. Maybe it's okay for vocals. But wouldn't that have worked exactly the same way in Sound-on-Sound mode anyway?
 
Basically, the only situation where I would personally see a use for the Comping record mode is where I'm recording multiple takes of clips that basically have significant gaps before and after the clip... and in that case, it's trivial to just mute the previous clip. So I'm still unsure why this was switched to become the default recording mode, creating unintuitive results in other circumstances.

I think somebody a while back had a feature request, whereby you could set it so it records a second before or a second after punch in (or whatever user defined amounts). Monitoring would stay the same. I guess it could be set by a slide bar...