Originally Posted By: Charlie Fogle
I went through this today to give it a fair shake. And I could see how it might be a useful work-around. But it is most certainly not anywhere nearly as good as having additional mixer tracks!
5 minutes was obviously not enough time for you to give it a fair shake. It's not a work around, it was a major new feature over the last two year version releases. Work-around to what? It can replicate all the functions of using F5 bar settings to mute, return to normal, volume and pan automate... I agree, the new Utility Tracks are much easier, streamlined and powerful.
- you cannot see all of your tracks at a glance without opening the picker and then the medley dialog (which took a long time to load btw)
Why is that necessary? Once it's programmed, you hear it.
- you cannot freeze/unfreeze these medley tracks individually
Yes you can.
- you cannot control when the medley tracks play except with presets (chorus, 2 bars, 4 bars, etc.)
Not true. Those are only pre-sets. You can manually program changes to occur on any measure of any length.
- you cannot mute/unmute individual tracks in your medley
Yes you can.
- the mixer is never updated to reflect what track is actually playing
I believe you mean to reflect what instrument is playing rather than track. The meters show the track playing and you hear the instrument.
- you cannot set reverb and tone on the individual tracks in a medley
Yes you can but again I believe you mean instrument rather than track. Regardless, you can do that too.
- you cannot apply a plugin individually to tracks in a medley
Yes you can regardless if you're referring to instrument instead of track. The tracks play and react normally with no regard to whether the track contains 1 instrument or 10.
- you cannot apply bar settings individually to tracks in a medley
The tracks respond normally to bar settings as far as I know. Using the RT Medley gives the user access to many unadvertised automatic, professional quality BIAB programmed features like cross fades, fade ins, fade outs, smooth transitions between instrument changing, having a single measure fade one instrument while simultaneously fading in the next instrument, multiple instruments playing simultaneously, playing grace and lead in notes between instruments changing and more.
- and probably other "cannots" I didn't even see in my 5-minute evaluation
Fortunately, there are many more can's you've missed -
I continue to feel strongly that to tout 77 tracks is misleading at best. It is an interesting work-around with limited application. No one uses it because it is a bit kludgy and counter-intuitive while also being less functional than true mixer tracks.
What's misleading? I can use this feature to replicate the arrangement of a 77 track DAW with the resultant sound indistinguishable between the two. Everywhere the DAW changes instruments, I can change instruments, every cross-fade between soloists, I can cross-fade. Each sub-mixer for each legacy channel is a 'true' mixer track... as mixer tracks they will function exactly like a ---- Mixer Track!

I appreciate you taking time to give this feature 5 minutes but I hope any other interested user will not give credence to your assessment as being knowledgeable and complete.

Here's an example how quickly and efficiently this tool can replicate a common DAW function:

If you have a song where you want to have two tracks of the same acoustic guitar playing simultaneously, one panned hard left and the other hard right with each guitar having a low cut filter, compression, reverb and a limiter, that would require you to generate and export two guitar tracks to a DAW. It would require either applying the four effects to each track or to create an effects bus for those four effects. Using this tool, the task can be completed in a single render onto a single track... faster than you can ever do it in a DAW..

So, I gave it a few more minutes and read everything in the manual but it never mentioned how I would individually apply a plugin effect to one track in my medley. I tried applying a plugin and, of course, the plugin affected every medley track the same. Can you maybe explain how I can apply a plugin to only one track in my medley group?

I tried entering 3 bars for the value of when to change RealTracks but, of course, that didn't work. It only worked when I chose one of the presets. So I guess I must build my song so each instrument change on the medley track happens at exactly the same number of bars? Again, the manual did not explain how I might do this. Maybe you can explain it?

And try as I might I cannot find any instructions for how to freeze individual tracks within the medley group. It either freezes them all or none of them as far as I can tell. Any idea how this can be done?

Same question for bar settings. And for reverb. And for tone.

I am gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you actually know how to do all of these things and I would love it if you could explain them because the manual does not. If it can really do all you are claiming then it may be useful. But, as a seasoned software user and designer, the fact that I could not figure this out does not give me a lot of hope these things are actually possible.