No way to disable record automation- and other frustrations
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 3:01 am
So I'm a 10 year ableton user. I recently opened my own studio and intend to use Live as my main DAW for tracking, editing, and mixing, and I'm running into walls that I never knew were there. I don't do much electronic music, and sure live is great for that but for analog, simple, recording rock live off the floor stuff, it seems to be failing.
Problem 1 simply put is that there is no way to disable automation writing while recording.
Say I have a vocalist recording in the booth and a producer here in the control room. While recording a vocal line the producer wants me to turn down the whole mix so we can hear the vocalist a bit better, then turn the mix back up to see how the vocals sound more in context. All of this is now automated, and I have to go and manually delete the automation otherwise on take two the same volume changes will occur which is not acceptable. Another example is if during recording we want track 3 a little higher and we turn it up, it now has this automation to it. The overall volume of the track is not up, but rather turns up at the time I turned it up while the recording was taking place.
Having any change made at all while the global record button is armed and the track is playing recorded should be something that can be disabled. This issue is pushing me away from live as my main DAW, as well as issue 2.
Issue 2 - No automatic send delay compensation
I've seen many posts about this and I've come to the conclusion there is no solution, only irritating workarounds. Say I have track 1, my drum overheads (output to master). I compress it and EQ it. Then, I also want parallel compression so I send it to return A (pre or post, doesnt matter, also output to the master) and put on more compression, more EQ, maybe some reverb. The issue is that since there are more effects on the return track there is a slight delay because of the necessary processing, and it creates major phase issues that ruin the sound. I have the option of trying to use the track delays and fiddle until it sounds OK, but I can never get it perfect, and I shouldn't have to waste time on this when it is more than possible to have it done automatically, as many competing DAWs do.
Cubase has both of these features built in, and I'm thinking I'll head in that direction if Ableton has no solutions to these problems, only lame workarounds.
Problem 1 simply put is that there is no way to disable automation writing while recording.
Say I have a vocalist recording in the booth and a producer here in the control room. While recording a vocal line the producer wants me to turn down the whole mix so we can hear the vocalist a bit better, then turn the mix back up to see how the vocals sound more in context. All of this is now automated, and I have to go and manually delete the automation otherwise on take two the same volume changes will occur which is not acceptable. Another example is if during recording we want track 3 a little higher and we turn it up, it now has this automation to it. The overall volume of the track is not up, but rather turns up at the time I turned it up while the recording was taking place.
Having any change made at all while the global record button is armed and the track is playing recorded should be something that can be disabled. This issue is pushing me away from live as my main DAW, as well as issue 2.
Issue 2 - No automatic send delay compensation
I've seen many posts about this and I've come to the conclusion there is no solution, only irritating workarounds. Say I have track 1, my drum overheads (output to master). I compress it and EQ it. Then, I also want parallel compression so I send it to return A (pre or post, doesnt matter, also output to the master) and put on more compression, more EQ, maybe some reverb. The issue is that since there are more effects on the return track there is a slight delay because of the necessary processing, and it creates major phase issues that ruin the sound. I have the option of trying to use the track delays and fiddle until it sounds OK, but I can never get it perfect, and I shouldn't have to waste time on this when it is more than possible to have it done automatically, as many competing DAWs do.
Cubase has both of these features built in, and I'm thinking I'll head in that direction if Ableton has no solutions to these problems, only lame workarounds.