What I've done in the last two sessions, is, migrate the Tracks/Lanes over to a Folder/Tracks format. It accomplishes much of the same thing, except, editing works, Mutes work, Navigation is WAY easier, and you can see ALL of the data when the tracks are all collapsed. 

So, in essence, this is a great workaround for me for a less-than-desirable feature of Sonar.

If I could just have Sonar add tracks in each folder per take automatically, problem solved!  

I'm not so sure I like them either. Then again, I think it's maybe because they don't like me. For example, I'm a punch-in nut. I don't ever even collapse the take lanes to use them. I do everything on one track until it's right or just create another track for comps if need be.

Yet, the other night, I had this issue where this extra voice was coming in out of nowhere. I muted the tracks and it was STILL there. I happened to open up take lanes on a back up vocal track, and low and behold there was a voice there that was not being muted nor did it show up anywhere in my tracks. And...get this...it was K'd which means, muted.

So something weird happened there, but I still don't have any idea as to what it could have been. What I think happened was, V-Vocal was used and then applied, and the muted track appeared on the top instead of the bottom. When I K'd the track....it double K'd the original vocal take leaving the V-Vocal take to still be active. Whatever the case, I've never had this problem until take lanes came to be. The little I have used them, though I have found them to be cool in some ways....I've also found them to be a pain due to restrictions.

Simple fix...use multiple tracks to comp if need be this way you can make them as big as you need them to be without all the restrictions we get using take lanes. :)

-Danny

mmorgan


At first Take Lanes worked well for my normal work flow and I was fine with them, although I wasn't all that thrilled about the increased real estate they took up. 

Then I wanted to do a guitar instruction track for a friend and the work flow that I used resulted in some really trying times (start/stop; start/stop; start/stop doing voice overs). That experience made me much more sympathetic to the issues that some are having. So as many have said I think TLs could use a bit more love.

As for the PC: I love the concept and I think it is well executed. I also like many of the dedicated PC plugs although...I sure wish I could use some of them when I am required to use a different DAW. On the other hand the recent issue of the CA-2A as a standard VST is an interesting development. My vote: turn all of them into VSTs (and keep the PC versions)...

...and send some love to Take Lanes. 

Regards 

Very hard for me to send the Lanes Love.... That's really stretching my spiritual abilities too far! ;-)

Visually I find the Lanes very distracting as they appear much as folders do and as tracks and my eye wanders far too much trying to see what I want... With Layers, the  imagery was so distinctly different that I never once had such an issue...

Maybe they can put Lanes "inside" the track as Layers were somehow? Then people who love Lanes will still have them and people who prefer the Layers approach could have such a style as well... and of course make it user selectable for those who prefer Lanes listed below a track...?

I too would vote for making all the Cakewalk plugins both PC and standard VST so that they can also reap the benfits of selling them separately to anyone regardless of which Host they choose...  I am finding it (PC) quite easy to work with and don't really need the standard VST's, but I may run into something and want/need it... Say going back to X1 (which I didn't like even more than X2 other than Lanes) so I could take a song back and forth between them depending on the work at hand... X1 when I'm tracking/editing and X2 when I'm mixing?

Ahhh... I long to see the next incarnation with a solution to this dilemma! ;-)

Keni

I too have sometimes used tracks-in-folders for comping in X2... But as Brian mentioned, it's not a full solution when tracking...

As I never use punch-in anymore, I tracked in Lanes, then manually distributed the Lanes to separate tracks where I performed my comping.... this works but is so much extra work that it's very hard to force myself to do this when the solution (for me) was already in my hands before the X generation....

OK... I won't rant (more) at the moment... but Lanes have been a continuous thorn in my side since we received it and have managed to steal so much of my joy in some other things X2a does allow me to do,,,,

Keni

I wonder if there's a way Sonar can generate a thumbnail of each 3rd-party plug-in and put it in the PC. I get distracted, sorry.

I agree with Keni, something I didn't think to articulate earlier, which is, it seems Cakewalk maybe thought Lanes would be easy to navigate when only using Tracks/Lanes, but when you add Folders to the mix, it gets unwieldy....and FAST!

Keni
Very hard for me to send the Lanes Love....

 
Keni just to be clear: my comment was directed at Cakewalk not my fellow users.
 
Regards

mmorgan

Keni
Very hard for me to send the Lanes Love....

 
Keni just to be clear: my comment was directed at Cakewalk not my fellow users.
 
Regards

Not a problem Mike...

I believe we agree.... I was just adding a touch of my "humor" which is not always apprciated... ;-)

Keni

My only real complaint for them is that when recording take #2 I can't hear take one. This irritates me. I personally would rather it set up so if I don't want to hear previous takes I could mute them but they would otherwise play. For instance: If a singer wants to double his track, they want to hear the 1st take while singing the 2nd. I prefer to just record it in the next take and then later on, move it to another track thus saving me the step of assigning inputs on a 2nd track prior to recording it and having to adjust the mix levels again in his headphones for the new track.

I don't like them either. If you accidentally open one - your audio goes to a lane and you cannot undo it - You have to cut and paste to get the take back to the normal track and before getting rid of the take lane.

NW Smith


I don't like them either. If you accidentally open one - your audio goes to a lane and you cannot undo it - You have to cut and paste to get the take back to the normal track and before getting rid of the take lane.

That's a good point. I didn't really think about that, but it does seem to be the case. With Layers, you could at least disable them for a track.