Comping

[msnickybee]

Am I right in thinking Mixcraft (Pro6) doesn't have any specific 'Comping' tools?
I collate lanes/takes (lovely new feature!) using split/cut onto a spare track.
Any other way?

And is there a way to boost a vocal track so I can see the waveform better? Other than making the track width screen height? I record at -18dB and it's too small! (but works for me otherwise)
I'm not sure about the "normalise" (ctrl+k) function to be honest, is there something I can do to eg boost to say, -6dB?

Thanks!!!

[Vibrant Audio]

There are a couple of keyboard shortcuts that come in handy when comping:
Ctrl-T splits a sound.
Alt-Drag to drag a copy of a sound.
Shift-Drag to preserve a sound's time offset while dragging.
Alt-Shift-Drag to drag a copy of a sound while preserving it's time offset.
And of course, the lanes function that you already mentioned.

You can find more keyboard shortcuts in the Mixcraft help file under "Keyboard Controls".

As far as increasing the height of the waveform display, it looks like you already know how to resize tracks. If that's not enough, depending on the track, I suppose you could: raise the volume, mix down that single track, and then import the new louder track into the project.

There are plenty of DAW's that allow you to increase the size of the waveform display. Sounds like a feature request for Mixcraft 7.

Regarding "normalise", Mixcraft does a standard peak normalization. This simply finds the highest peak in the clip and increases the gain of the entire clip until that high peak is at a maximum level (typically 0dB). So, if you have a peak at -3dB and the maximum level allowed by the normalize function is 0dB then the entire clip will be increased by 3dB.

[msnickybee]

Thanks for the keyboard tips! I do use most of those, I just read Sound on Sound magazine...and see all the folks in there bragging about their latest Sonar, Cubase, Logic, ProTools blah blah track splicing/splitting/twisting and spinning stuff! I realise Mixcraft is supposed to be straight forward (and I really do appreciate that!), and I've no desire to switch to eg. Cubase (tried it years ago), and Reaper looked way too geeky even for me...

There are plenty of DAW's that allow you to increase the size of the waveform display. Sounds like a feature request for Mixcraft 7

So yes, it makes it SO SO difficult to chop vocals about (I make a lot of mistakes) when you have to make the waveform the size of the screen to do it!!! And I don't want to normalise my lovely -15dB (ish) vocals just yet, and blow all my levels before I've comp'd things around a bit.

Thanks as ever!