Here's what I did (running V4):

Recorded a guitarist/vocolist as he sang/played his stuff.

Produced a cd of those takes, let the "artist" monitor (via headphones) playback of the cd on a separate cd player . . . he first sang along with the cd as I recorded . . . then, we made another set of takes as he played the guitar to the cd.

Result:

I put all three sets of takes on the Vegas timeline aiming to sync everything up, then mute the original track (containing both guitar/vocal) and use the other two tracks (one guitar/one vocal) to render the final result.

I found that I could sync the first thirty seconds of the three takes perfectly. Then, the sync of the first track drifted away from the other two.

In this particular case, it didn't matter. Once I synced everything up, I muted track one and used the other two which, strangely enough, remained in sync over a period of up to three minutes or more (we recorded five selections that averaged two to three minutes using this method).

For my own edification, I'd like someone to explain to me what I'm actually seeing here. I'm guessing that temporal reality probably lies within that first track and that the two subsequent tracks, somehow, went off sync at exactly the same rate, so that, while neither will line up perfectly with the original track, both line up perfectly relative to each other.

Is there someone out there who can enlighten me?

Thanks.

Caruso