So I am laying down a bass line in sections because I am having difficulty transposing what is in my head to my uncooperative fingers.  So I set up a loop, say, from bar 10 to bar 20, and do the part over and over until I can do it right.  However, if I am a little slow, because I am playing bass standing up, like you should, I can't hit the spacebar before the next loop around starts.  Now I would think this would simply create a new lane, and on that one lane would be the little piece that represents the time it took me to get to the keyboard.  But it's not.  That little piece is now on EVERY lane.  Huh?  Worse, it destructively overwrites every single take with that little bit.  The reason I am not freaking out is that I always have a 2 bar lead-in to the actual part I am trying to lay down, so the little chunk doesn't wreck my takes, but it does mean I've got to go into every single lane and delete that chunk.  That doesn't seem like a chore, until you realize that the ending part of the song took me 60 takes.  Thus this post.  In any case, THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING.  Is this a bug in X3e?  This is not a fluke, it always happens ... probably because I am doing something wrong?  Maybe.
 
PS: I am using the word "poopy" because if I used the word I am actually using I'd get kicked off the forum.

Comp-recording will always use the last take until you select another one. What this means is that the "little bit" is considered a partial take and it will select that partial as last take, then fill in the rest with the next to last take. In order to do this all the other takes obviously also have to be split. But that's all it is; they're split. Nothing is overwritten and there is no need to delete the bits. Just select the starting bit along with the rest of your favorite take and playback will be seemless.

To expand on Sanderexpander: you can clean up by deleting the last partial take lane, and then swiping through the entire previous take (starting outside the clip) with the Comp tool to "heal" all the splits at once.

a) You just have to reset the split using the comp tool (move the split where it should be and it will reveal what was being covered up by your newer take... it will now be audible and in the Parent Track).
 
b) What I do to get rid of those annoying hunks of unwanted take residue is select the top nugget, hold Shift, select the bottom nugget, hit delete. The entire stack of empty/unwanted nuggets go away (non destructively so you can just drag it out again if you cropped it too close).
 
The other way is to Lasso and delete the nuggets (right click to engage the lasso and drag it so it touches all of the unwanted clips, then hit delete. Speeds things up but not as much as a Shift Select... however it's easier to control in case you need to skip certain takes or something).

Incidentally. I submitted a feature request once upon a time, asking the Bakers to add a function that automatically throws away that last partial take when it's less then some user-configurable length.

I was doing some comping yesterday where I had to do the Shift/Select thing to clean things up and/or creating splits to get rid of silent tails and stuff.
 
What I wouldn't mind having implemented is some kind of keybinding that allows you to just hit an arrow key with a modifier and the selection(s) jump to the other side of the split.
 
You know how when you make a split it will select either the clip(s) on the left or right of the split based on your settings? With this if I have it set to select the clip(s) to left of the split (which I prefer for most things) but actually want to have the clip(s) on the right selected I'd hit the arrow key/modifier and the selection would jump to the right.
 
That would make trimming the starts/ends of massive piles of take clips quite a bit faster I think.
 
Perhaps there is already a binding for that.
 
As far as the teeny tiny slivers... those are definitely annoying but I can usually zoom WAY in and do what I have to.
 
What would be REALLY cool I think is if there were a Delete Special option or something where you could get a dialog to specify "Delete all clips shorter than X". There could be a bunch of other options too for bulk deleting things without meticulously combing through the entire session. It gets a little crazy having to constantly open Lanes view on each track.
 
Still waiting for a Hide Lane feature as well.

OK, thanks.  I see how to 'better' handle these.  That said, Cakewalk should:
 
a) fix their comping algorithm such that the last take goes to its own lane and doesn't splatter over all the other takes.
 
-or perhaps more desirable -
 
b) specify a "delete all clips shorter than X number of bars or ticks" as suggested by Beepster.
 
At least I am doing things correctly, but I consider this annoyance a bug not "the way things work".

To Sandexpander
 
You can't just ignore this annoyance, as the bits inhibit deleting all empty lanes (cuz they ain't empty).  So not only do you have to delete the bad takes, you have to delete all the bits too.  Its called "housekeeping".
 
Suppose you have a difficult part to play.  I could use auto-punch, but what seems to work best is comping on two tracks.  I select the first phrase on Track 1 and do that over and over until I get an acceptable take.  Then go comp on Track two for the 2nd phrase.  Back and forth.  If I don't CONTROL the number of take lanes that get created, it will get completely out of hand, as in last time I did this I had 81 lanes at one time.  So these bits are something that needs to be addressed by Cakewalk.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to do but wouldn't it be easier to set up an auto punch region within a loop? That way you start recording and do as many takes as you want without the hassle.

I think one of us is not understanding the other correctly. In no way, during comp recording, will any new take be "splattered" over old takes. At most, older takes will be split by the beginning and end points of newer takes. This has no effect on their playback. I don't see how this inhibits deleting all empty lanes. If you make the lane empty, they'll go. Do you mean that you don't like selecting all content in the lane rather than a single clip? In that case you can do as brundlefly suggested and use the comping tool to select over one entire take, "healing" all splits in one go.

Also, if I want to delete a take I usually use the small x button at the take lane header. Seems more elegant than deleting clips and then takes. If you do this after your loop recording and delete the last take with the partial, you're done.

I don't really get what you mean about getting a high number of takes if you don't control the number of takes. Or rather, I get it, but I don't see it as abnormal. If you need 81 passes to play a part, then you do. I don't see any way to reduce this other than playing better or comping/repairing better.