Orientation: What I think is wrong with Lanes

I've been pondering what seems to be the most compellingly unfriendly about Lanes, and I believe with a few minor tweaks (from my perspective) Lanes could be far more intuitive and useful.

1) Color: Tracks should have a lighter shade of Gray than Lanes at all times, and a selected track should get a configurable color shade that's COMPLETELY different from the other shades of gray (like a classy aged Orange if one so chooses; highlighting the Track # isn't enough). The fact that Lanes use the exact same color scheme as Tracks makes it easier to get lost or confuse a Lane with a Track. Yes, they are indented, but, on a large monitor, the indention is not nearly enough, especially when using Track Folders. In track folders, the tracks are indented, making the further indention of Lanes within a Track within a Folder a compounding mess. 

2) Buttons: Increase the button sizes of tracks or shrink the button sizes of the Lanes. Having larger Mute/Solo buttons for Lanes is a win over X1's Layers, but with them now the same size as the same buttons for Tracks, this can easily get confusing. With the increase in demand for "touch" features, I suggest increasing the size of the Track buttons (or maybe changing the shape to a slight rectangle, perhaps).

3) If a Lane is Solo'd, that Lane's audio should show up in the collapsed Track when Lanes are not displayed. 

4) Move the Lanes back to the track where Layers were instead of expanding below the track wasting valuable real-estate. This was one area where Layers rocked. To make this work, simply shrink the width of the track header to 1/3 width and in crease the Track # (the digit) size.

5) Fix mutes so they are more intuitive, not technical. And if I want a previous Take to play through, let me, by showing the mute status of each Lane while recording (this is not the case today).

6) In the Track View, add a double-thick Line between tracks vs. Lanes. Make that line a configurable color.

7) More I could add, but these above are the most important, other than just fixing all the weirdness people have reported on the forum.

The more and more I use Lanes, the more I realize that there is no way any customer would want Lanes to work exactly the way they do. They are very obviously slapped into X2 and not developed into X2. It seems they're very modular in code instead of integrated fully. 

The reason I have come to this conclusion is that, per the suggestions I mentioned above, those suggestions would be more difficult to implement (more work on that team) than to simply import a lot of the existing Track software to cut some serious corners. The buttons, the way Mute works, the way the Edit filter works independently of the Track, etc. All of this is very modular.  There seems to be very little feedback to the Track status as to what mode each Lane is in, so the Track has very little built-in intelligence of the status of its own Take Lanes. Conversely, there seems to be little control over Take Lanes at the Track level. Even though Track Mute/Solo supersedes the Lanes, it cannot control the Lanes' Mute/Solo, albeit the Record Arming sometimes can.

To make a practical example of my perception of Lanes, imagine shipping five music CDs to a customer, and although each CD comes in it's own protective case, you wish to ship them all in one larger container for a more protective and practical consolidation. 

In a practical world, you only need to address the larger container to the recipient in order to get the five CDs to the customer. What if FedEx or UPS required you to individually address each CD to the customer, even though they are all sealed up in the larger container? Would that make any sense to you? 

My perception of Take Lanes and how they were implemented into X2 is much like my example above. For instance, if you wish to set all the Take Lanes to show Volume Automation, simply setting that Edit Filter on the Track doesn't do that correctly. You have to set the Edit Filter to Volume Automation individually or as a group-selection. That looks to me like an example of hasty modular coding and disparate functionality where it shouldn't be. In my opinion, Tracks and Take Lanes are integrated, but quite loosely.

brconflict


2) Buttons: Increase the button sizes of tracks or shrink the button sizes of the Lanes. Having larger Mute/Solo buttons for Lanes is a win over X1's Layers, but with them now the same size as the same buttons for Tracks, this can easily get confusing. With the increase in demand for "touch" features, I suggest increasing the size of the Track buttons (or maybe changing the shape to a slight rectangle, perhaps). 

3) If a Lane is Solo'd, that Lane's audio should show up in the collapsed Track when Lanes are not displayed. 

Please don't increase the button sizes of tracks.  (I even want smaller buttons, a smaller track height, as I use a laptop)
Changing the shape is good. Maybe lanes should have round buttons?



#3 is my top request!

Funkybot


I've been looking at Studio One again ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zLQ9-y5JD_g

Now, I hate to be that guy, but you have to admit, the above video demonstrates how lanes should work in Sonar. ... 

Yes! The swipe-comping in that Studio One video looks great ... I really hope Sonar adds something along those lines as they improve their take lanes.

We need only one function back - rebuild layers/takes...