X2a - Lanes Are Still Pains!

Conar


  Lanes are worthless now - 8.5 style were the truth, even with all its bugs. whoever handles UI @ Cakewalk is really out of touch with what feels and flows right.

Keni


As for the mute/solo buttons? I hardly ever use them as I choose to handle them on a per/clip basis (k)... So all this to have big buttons?

Beepster


I have a feeling we aren't going to see any significant changes to the lanes until X3. I've got a lot of good suggestions for them but I'm not going to type them up in here yet again. Frankly I'm disappointed that they seemed to have put most of the focus on all that Win8 stuff and didn't fix some of the more meat and potatoes stuff. Also seems a lot of folks are having new troubles with the patch (I'm assuming all the new Win8 stuff is screwing up what was already there and working).

Anyway... that's my rant on the patch. I'll just wait for the next one because I don't think this ones gonna solve the issues I personally have.

@TheSteven... What I have been doing to convert lanes to tracks is just cloning the entire track then clicking the little x (delete lane) button to get rid of the ones I don't want. This has been very useful for my method of comping. Essentially after I'm done tracking a bunch of takes I go back and listen to them one by one in relation to the mix, make elaborate notes on everything (the notes section is AWESOME and I don't know how I managed without them now), clone the track then purge everything else. I do this because trying to comp in the same track makes the clips not blend properly for some stupid reason so in a solo section or whatever I'll have three or four of that segment to choose from and they get their own track and I make my final decision from there. This method does make it a real pain when it comes to mixing and applying effects though because I haven't fully mastered saving and loading entire channel strip presets. I have to get everything as close to how I want it BEFORE the clone and then be very aware of any adjustments I make. The FX part is easy because if I change something on one and want the rest to match it I can just drag that effect instance from the first bin into the others. It's the PC modules I'm have a hard time with transferring over so I tend to do that stuff in a bus that all the related tracks are sent to and leave the track PC more or less as is. This does have one benefit though. It means I'm paying REALLY close attention to each individual clip so if one part is getting slight washed out I am more likely to make some fine adjustments to make it fit.

...

Well... that turned into a much longer post than I intended. lol

Hi, guys. ;-)

TheSteven

Beepster


@TheSteven... What I have been doing to convert lanes to tracks is just cloning the entire track then clicking the little x (delete lane) button to get rid of the ones I don't want. This has been very useful for my method of comping. Essentially after I'm done tracking a bunch of takes I go back and listen to them one by one in relation to the mix, make elaborate notes on everything (the notes section is AWESOME and I don't know how I managed without them now), clone the track then purge everything else. I do this because trying to comp in the same track makes the clips not blend properly for some stupid reason so in a solo section or whatever I'll have three or four of that segment to choose from and they get their own track and I make my final decision from there. This method does make it a real pain when it comes to mixing and applying effects though because I haven't fully mastered saving and loading entire channel strip presets. I have to get everything as close to how I want it BEFORE the clone and then be very aware of any adjustments I make. The FX part is easy because if I change something on one and want the rest to match it I can just drag that effect instance from the first bin into the others. It's the PC modules I'm have a hard time with transferring over so I tend to do that stuff in a bus that all the related tracks are sent to and leave the track PC more or less as is. This does have one benefit though. It means I'm paying REALLY close attention to each individual clip so if one part is getting slight washed out I am more likely to make some fine adjustments to make it fit. 

Thanks for the info.  Its always insightful to see what techniques others are using.
Still learning how to get around with multiple take lanes. Just figured out that I can lasso a bunch of lanes then by holding down the Ctrl key & double clicking on the header bar/title bar of one of the takes select the group of takes for mass splitting, trimming, fading, etc.
At the moment I avoid using PC on tracks with multiple take lanes, I think I remember something about X2 adding the ability to save all the settings used on a ProChannel track, but if so, I still need to figure it out. 

Beepster

the notes section is AWESOME and I don't know how I managed without them now

Are you talking talking about using Project/Info...?

Funkybot

STinGA


Truly I'm lost, what is the problem with take lanes compared to layers? I know before the X2a update there were bugs, but, in terms of functionality, I just don't see the problem.

What is it? Or are they? 

I don't get it either, it seems like Keni's point seems to be (and I'm paraphrasing here) "lanes are impossible to use because I can't make them the size I want." If that's the last complaint about Take Lanes, then there's already been huge progress from X2 to X2A and I'd call it a resounding success. Adjusting zoom/view settings would be an easy thing for Cakewalk to address in a future update. Once I figured out how to promote lanes by using the mute tool, it made comping takes together a breeze. So while I think there's some room for improvement, I'm actually quite happy with lanes.

STinGA


Hey Keni,

I am not getting the problem of empty lanes when loop recording, I was pre X2a but since, I've been loop recording plenty, and not one empty lane.

However, once I've comped and bounced my midi to a single track the lanes are left empty, I'm sure they could be removed in the process. That said its a 2 second job to remove them after.