Heh... well considering the previous tracks are just sketches of what I'm working towards I'd prefer to turn down the suck. ;-)

I should have got a production credit for that...

CakeAlexS


I should have got a production credit for that...

Actually Robert Fripp did this with some 117 guitar tracks for a song called Indiscipline, I believe. I could be wrong about the track, but I do recall he did something outrageous like that.   

On the whole, I'm with Beepster, and I'm an old school Sonar user (at least a decade now). Take Layers seldom felt different than using multiple tracks for editing. A lot of times, I'd actually just use multiple tracks for comping instead of layers. 

Now, lanes are still FAR from perfect, but after watching one of the videos on comp'ing and getting the tip about using the mute tool plus the Ctrl key to promote a single layer, I'm now enamored with how quickly I can comp a track using lanes. My workflow looks like this:

1. Setup track, loop section, record to new lanes
2. Record as many takes as needed
3. Expand Lanes
4. Solo a lane (use Ctrl+Mute Tool to do this) to find the best take of each section
5. Cilck and drag while holding Ctrl (+Mute tool) to promote the best section of each take - this mutes all the other takes within the selection range so you end up with one active track for that time range

Done. The process of performing the comp literally takes seconds and is a complete no-brainer now.

No splitting up clips and clicking and dragging to move around little bits and pieces from prior takes to "build" a whole new take. No weird leftover clips or empty bits that I don't even remember where they came from. No constantly pressing Q to mute/unmute clips. None of that mess. Just promote the section of each track I want to hear with a single click and drag motion and I'm done. 

Also, if you need ZOOM in a lane, click and drag an expanded lane in the Track View and resize it. All the open lanes will resize vertically. Click and drag to shrink it when done.

With regard to the discussion of QA, or lack there of...

It's pretty obvious that Sonar could have waited and fixed more things before release, but they _chose_ not to. I've been out of the software development business for a couple of decades so I have no idea at what level this kind of decision is being made, but Cakewalk is just following the current trend in how you go about releasing new software to the masses.

When we bought a PS3 to run dance programs for the women in the family, I bought Skyrim just to see where gaming had gotten to. The discussion on the Bethesda forum following its release was _exactly_ like what is contained above in this thread. Almost word for word. It took at least 4 patches (I think, I lost interest and stopped following things) to get Skyrim to a point where there was a chance of finishing the game. People (the hard core gamers who wanted to finish the thing in a weekend and move on to something else) were screaming blooding murder while a few others kept telling them it was there own fault for buying something on its initial release.

So it looks like this is just the way things are done now, and if you buy a first, or second, release you are in fact buying the privilege of beta testing the product. In other words, you are being used. You can either wait and buy a fairly stable product, or be among the first to try it out and deal with a bunch of bugs.

No different from Microsoft, Apple and Google products. The only scenario when you would expect it to be different is airliners where are crash is actually a crash. Millions are spent testing.

if you buy a first, or second, release you are in fact buying the privilege of beta testing the product. In other words, you are being used.

 
Nah, not at all.   As with all things it's certainly not that way for everyone.
 

CakeAlexS


No different from Microsoft, Apple and Google products. The only scenario when you would expect it to be different is airliners where are crash is actually a crash. Millions are spent testing.

I sincerely hope that the Boeing 787 is not an example of things to come. But it does seem to be a trend. 

Ha! :)

+1 It seems to me Cakewalk didn't finish their thought when creating Take Lanes. The concept is great! For example, how are you suppose to promote your comped takes/lanes to the parent track and have Sonar display your keeper comped together clips (and crossfade) with out also showing your muted clips (getting int the way of crossfading)? Not to mention isn't Sonar processing those muted/unused clips taking up CPU power? There should also be an archive button on the take lanes for the unused clips. OK Cakewalk, so there I am with my keeper clips of a stereo overdub on two mono tracks spread across three take lanes per track.....now what do I do? Maybe I shouldn't go here but to me this is the big pink elephant in the room..... Pro Tools Playlists....same concept except their playlist/track lane workflow works well. I DO NOT think Cake should copy PT but it's a good example of the same idea and workflow-wise makes more sense than the current state of X2's take lane workflow.