How to solo a track

[wwzeitler]

So there's the XMPT column in track view, which, as I understand it, means that if I SOLO a track (opt-click), tracks marked XMPT are not muted. Ferinstance, you wouldn't want the output mains muted when you solo an audio/MIDI track.

But that's exactly what's happening. (BTW, I do entirely MIDI projects (no audio/wav files), everything in Vienna Ensemble Pro — if that matters.) So I alt-Click the Play arrow to mute a MIDI track. But PLAY is disabled on my Main output also (as well as other aux tracks) even though XMPT is enabled on them.

Tech support said:

i believe the difference here is that Option+click is different from Solo mode, since it's actually muting all other tracks. XMPT only applies to Soloing a track.

To which I've replied:

But I thought opt-click was HOW you soloed tracks. "...it's actually muting all other tracks" isn't that what soloing is? Except that it's also muting Main, etc.

I see there's a mute button on the Mixing page. Don't see one on Sequence or Track. Is there a way to do a proper mute on Track/Sequence? Maybe use the channel strip?

[dix]

I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but I can tell you how not to solo a track in DP:

The single most important thing to remember, is that option clicking Play-Enable, while DP is in Solo gets a completely different result than if you click on Play-Enable when NOT in Solo mode. Option, clicking a track's Play-Enable while in Solo mode solos just that track - very useful. I do this constantly sometimes multiple times a minute. However, option clicking Play-Enable when NOT in Solo Mode disables all output (apart from the track clicked) from all tracks, in every folder in the entire project. It's effectively a key command to crash Digital Performer, and my number one complaint about DP. When I inadvertently do this, I immediately have to force-quit and open the latest auto-saved version to regain output from the project.

Why these two behaviors can't exist using separate modifier keys is a question only MOTU can answer. I probably suggested it 20 times over the years. Another solution might be to add Solo and Play-Enable to the undo history.

...anyway, sry for this little soapbox, and sry if this isn't completely on topic, but keeping this one rule in mind, might help you with efficient soloing.

[stubbsonic]

The single most important thing to remember, is that option clicking Play-Enable, while DP is in Solo gets a completely different result than if you click on Play-Enable when NOT in Solo mode.

Yea, that was my first thought. SOLO mode is not active. On my transport section there's a button with an S that activates solo. Or clicking on any of the solo buttons in the mixer.

Option-Clicking (when solo is not active) has a general behavior in a few list contexts of de-activating all but the one you click-- it's a useful little short cut, that also happens to work that way when you click on a play-enable button. So as @dix was saying, it makes a big difference whether you are using option-click for play-enable- vs doing it while solo is active.

This is because DP uses the play-enable icons BOTH for general play enabling/muting, AND for solo selection from the tracks overview list. Hope that makes sense.

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[wwzeitler]

Apparently what I was missing is that if you click the 'Solo Mode' button (the big 'S' button at the top), alt-click on Play respects the XMPT setting. If you don't have Solo Mode selected, it doesn't respect the XMPT setting.