Feature Request: Solo Button That Attenuates But Does Not Mute Other Tracks

Question

This would be a change in the design of the solo buttons, but it could be made backwards compatible.
I want to be able to solo a track and not have all of the unsoloed tracks be completely muted, but rather to be able to attenuate them 10 or 20 db, so they'd be a lot quieter but you'd still be able to hear them. Very useful to hear the part still in relation to the other parts, without screwing up the mix or the routing to do so.
To be compatible with the existing way it works, you could have a solo accompaniment-controlling volume control that, when at the minimum level would give you the current expected behavior of "solo" but if set to a higher value, would audibly play the non-soloed tracks.
Macs   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

This is a cool idea. However, let's look at the 'mechanics' of how this would be implemented...
Theoretically, any audio objects could have their volume reduced internally by X dB. In other words, faders wouldn't be seen to move; instead, each audio object would have its volume attenuated internally and transparently. A global reduction of, say, 25 or 40 dB (user-definable) applied internally to every audio object would probably not be such a hard thing to do.
But if the goal is to have an accurate balance of audio playback underneath the loud, semi-solo'd instrument or track, the mechanism for reducing the volume would have to be aware of whether or not sends are pre/post fader to make buss-based effects have the proper amount of send. And reducing the level of tracks that use distortion or compression plugs would have to be reduced in such a way as to preserve the input level to those plugs so that their sound remained consistent. That's a heck of a lot of figuring-out for Logic to do, and would require a lot of sophisticated programming to accomplish.
And what about MIDI tracks? The only way to attenuate the volume of such tracks would be to send MIDI volume commands to each used MIDI device which would approximate that 25 or 40 dB cut. There are two concerns here:
1. There is no standard by which a CC#7 value of X reduces the volume of a MIDI device by Y dB. Every manufacturer sets their own response curve for how CC#7 values affect volume. So even if a volume-reducing CC#7 value were sent to lower the volume of each piece of outboard MIDI, there's no guarantee that the balance of each piece of gear would be properly achieved.
2. And what would be the benchmark CC#7 value of the track from which Logic calculates a CC#7 value for volume reduction to that device? Well, in the absence of at least one static automation node pre-set for each MIDI track, there's always the static position of the MIDI fader. But I'm not so sure that fader level is always reliable or accurate. So to create an absolutely safe 'mode' in which to recall the volume of MIDI gear when un-solo/dimming, as previously mentioned, you'd have to deliberately write in at least one static automation node for each MIDI track. And it's not always practical or desirable to set such a level in advance, particularly when you're just getting started on an idea and throwing up sounds and parts.
So just to make solo/dim functional, a lot of additional legwork would be needed to safeguard levels of MIDI tracks.
If MIDI gear's audio is heard in Logic via Input modules, it might be easy to reduce the volume on those Input object, but then again you have all of the same problems I describe above, and, not everyone uses Input objects to get MIDI-based audio into their systems.
Yes, it's a cool idea, but I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to accomplish.