Ableton Forum

It seems that you can't automate delay time using clip envelopes.

If you insert a delay (e.g. a Simple Delay or a Grain Delay) you get an envelope for the delay time but it has no effect - even if you have it going from maximum to minimum with a medium (e.g. 6 sixteenths) delay time.

I seem to be able to automate every other parameter successfully, so I do't think I'm doing anything wrong...

This is in Live 6.0.10.

There is a workaround: put it in a Rack and automate a Macro mapped to the delay time.

I couldn't find any other mention of this on the forums. Is it a bug, or am I missing something?

wouldn't it sound like crap?

Depends what you're trying to do! I'm using it to create a kind of "stuck buffer" effect. Works nicely...

Yeah, I suppose that is understandable.

Although I can also see how they would choose to not allow it to be automated, for this reason

Who can say? Only Abe..

If they didn't want it to be automated, why create a clip envelope for it? There isn't one for effect on/off (which they don't allow you to automate).

Besides, there are many other reasons to want to automate it, even if you're doing more normal things. For example, you might want a short delay to double up a vocal for most of a track, but then want a longer delay for an "echo" at particular points (without having a second instance). Or you might want a long delay to get shorter each repeat for effect.

And under any circumstances where you change the delay time while the track is silent, you're not going to get anything weird sounding, it just saves you uses multiple instances unnecessarily. Just like any other parameter or any other effect...