sock monkey
 "Just save different versions of the song, and have them open side by side if you must."
 
No this would not be what we are after. The idea is to switch mixes while the song is playing. I guess you've never used a digital mixer. You would see what I'm getting at. 
 
Actually I think a full on multi channel pro tools rig works this way. Sonar is a great DAW for songwritting but lacks to many features for full on studio tracking. Like internal wave editing. 

I have used a digital mixer and I know exactly what you mean. While I agree that such a feature would "in theory" be nice, as soon as you start to think about it it becomes practically impossible. How do you decide which features are part of a "mix"? Just the fader settings? How about panning? EQ? Compression? Bus routing? Reverb? Other plugins? Automation?

This only really works if the hardware is fixed. I suppose Sonar could do it by giving you the same material as a digital mixer - like, EQ and basic dynamics on every channel, and a multi effect or two. But my guess is nobody would actually end up mixing that way because everybody wants to use his favorite plug ins and so on.

I have used a digital mixer and I know exactly what you mean. While I agree that such a feature would "in theory" be nice, as soon as you start to think about it it becomes practically impossible. How do you decide which features are part of a "mix"? Just the fader settings? How about panning? EQ? Compression? Bus routing? Reverb? Other plugins? Automation?

This only really works if the hardware is fixed. I suppose Sonar could do it by giving you the same material as a digital mixer - like, EQ and basic dynamics on every channel, and a multi effect or two. But my guess is nobody would actually end up mixing that way because everybody wants to use his favorite plug ins and so on.



To me this explains the benefits of having mix scenes. You could have a "save as mix scene" command that brings up a dialog box that lets you choose what to save as part of a scene and what to leave "as is" ( Pro Channel, effects bins, sends, busses, etc. ) Almost like a project template but a more on the fly approach. Project templates could have default scenes that they open with on new projects and then be saved with the project.
You could have several alternative mixes, save them as a scenes and always be able to revert to any previous version with one mouse click without leaving the project.
As it is "save as" is cool and you can keep alternative mixes in the original project folder and share the same audio folder but scenes seem like a cool idea to me. Just some food for thought.
 
Rocky

If this includes multiple different plugins it will never be an instantaneous switch and in that case you might as well have several versions of the same project the way it is now.

Look, I would honestly love to be proven wrong. I just don't think it's technically or practically feasible at this point in time.

So this thread has given me an idea...making a normal template that's a complete 48-track digital mixer with dedicated tracks, plug-ins, instruments, meters set up the way I like, everything...but that loads with most of the tracks archived and hidden. When hidden, track numbers that are shown retain their track numbers instead of rearranging themselves, which could be convenient. Tracks load with their colors, too...
 
I dunno, maybe this has possibilities.