Thanks for the suggestion Crotchety. I understand what you’re suggesting and I’ve been exploring using “Delete overlaps” as a workaround too. This operates as you describe, and can help things - however, like all workarounds, it limits the user in ways the standard work flow doesn’t.
The biggest issue is that “Delete overlaps” effectively discards all earlier take sections that weren’t active at the time you comped the track (they are discarded from the Lanes view, that is - the earlier take sections haven’t been destructively erased of course, but they are now unavailable to you for ease of comping using the Lanes feature).
This is a significant limitation. When working with a client, even after doing a rough comp (and then recording new additional takes), the player invariably asks to hear some of those earlier (and previously unchosen) takes again. This is understandable, and is a natural part of working with any DAW to arrange music. Once a new performance is added to a track, older previously unused takes often suddenly become useful, as sections of these earlier takes may now work well with parts of the newly recorded takes.
For example, imagine a saxaphone player adding additional takes to an already comped sax solo. Perhaps the first half of a new take will work perfectly with the second half of a previously unused early take. If the engineer already used “Delete overlaps” on the track, those earlier takes are no longer readily accessible on the current track. This is by no means an isolated example. In my experience, musicians - particularly session players - remember their earlier takes, and will regularly ask to hear them again while comping. I will repeat - this was not a problem with earlier versions of Cubase. It is a new issue with Cubase 6.
Anyway - glad to hear some good conversation is going on about this issue! I have confidence Steinberg will come up with a effective solution, and I hope the ideas here can add some value to that effort. I would also imagine many Nuendo users (who often work in client situations with session players) will have a particular interest in seeing this addressed.
Aj
P.S. Conman, we’re not talking about overdub/replacement issues… this is a thread specifically about issues that arise when creating iterative comps with Cubase 6’s redesigned Lanes function. I’ve edited the initial post to make that more clear.