vintagevibe

No. You have to research to understand it. It gives you capabilities unavailable by just grouping faders. Seems like it's geared more towards professional mixers than composers.

 
Yeah, there was another thread about it. Honestly, I can't completely warp my mind around it even after reading about it and watching more videos. I guess that I'm not facing any situation where it'd be crucial - nothing I saw left me thinking: I can't already do that.
 
And I could probably create an equivalent of a VCA fader on steroids in Logic's environment. :P

I just don't get the VCA mystery either. Sonar groups faders, and will maintain any offsets between the individual faders. If it isn't obvious, maybe it's *dubious*?
 

The people that can't figure out what makes the VCA feature useful, seem to be spending most of their cpu cycles demonstrating that they don't understand it rather than considering the information available and trying to understand it.
 
It's no big deal. Eli Kranztberg's upcoming video, comparing Cubase's well established "linked channel" capability with the new VCA features will be out soon and then everyone will have a chance to understand what the difference is.
 
 
 
 
edit grammar

If you read past some of the less informative posts, this seems like a decent thread about VCAs:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/739911-protools-vca-group-vs-regular-group.html
 
It looks like sends and track automation are two big aspects where VCAs can factor in.
 
 
Edit: Another good explanation of PT's VCA implementation:
http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=1006767&postcount=37
 
 

mike_mccue
The people that can't figure out what makes the VCA feature useful, seem to be spending most of their cpu cycles demonstrating out that they don't understand it rather than considering the information available and trying to understand it.
 
It's no big deal. Eli Kranztberg's upcoming video, comparing Cubase's well established "linked channel" capability with the new VCA features will be out soon and then everyone will have a chance to understand what the difference is.

 
Some of us have better thing to do than come on the forum and write about things we pretend to understand...

stevec
If you read past some of the less informative posts, this seems like a decent thread about VCAs:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/739911-protools-vca-group-vs-regular-group.html
 
It looks like sends and track automation are two big aspects where VCAs can factor in.
 
 
Edit: Another good explanation of PT's VCA implementation:
http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=1006767&postcount=37
 
 

Thanks for that! I'm definitely checking them out. :)

No problem!  I was curious myself, and took MQ's post as a good reason to go looking... at least for a few minutes. 
 
But I do have a better understanding now.   Whether I remember it a month from now, well...

stevec
No problem!  I was curious myself, and took MQ's post as a good reason to go looking... at least for a few minutes. 
 
But I do have a better understanding now.   Whether I remember it a month from now, well...

The thing is that one reads that and thinks - there must be something else to it, I MUST be missing something. But for every exemple I read, I keep thinking - I can do something similar.
 
I still believe that certain features are included to make up for bad design and implementing unnecessary hardware paradigm into software - you create a shortcoming which has no reason to be and which requires a new features to be solved.
 
A lot of those things don't really have a name in Logic - you just do it. There's no pop up menu and right-clicking and enabling. Logic most often takes the shortest path to a destination, instead of transposing the hardware paradigm into software.
 
And as I type this and do a quick search, here's what I find... Apparently, they do have a name for it. :P
 
http://www.logicprohelp.c...c.php?f=1&t=111205

As for the rest, what Cubase calls Linked Channels seems to be the equivalent of Groups in Logic. Though in Logic, you can also hot link channels temporarily by simply selecting them. Which to me makes sense - if I select multiple elements, it's because I want to perform an operation on all of them.
 
Tracks which are part of a Group in Logic can be individually routed to as many outputs and busses as you have, or to the same output.
 
From what I remember, Sonar worked similarly. Grouping didn't mean bussing. The difference in terminology is one of the reasons why things get so complex I guess.
 
 

True, a lot of sites refer to a sub-mix bus as a "group" instead of a bus, which does confuse things.
 
For the PT page about VCAs, there seem to be some fine points about grouping VCAs, how sends are handled, and how faders react when hitting the bottom of their travel, but without going through SONAR and trying those things using groups I have no idea whether they'd would react the same in the end... just under a different name.  There's a lot to absorb.
 
For temp groups, yeah, SONAR does something similar by selecting multiple widgets and then Ctrl+dragging - works great (and for just about every widget type).