A new habit, I’m trying to get used to –…

Hey guys, it’s Andre.

Volume automation is a pretty nice feature in every DAW. It’s pretty simple and easy to use, but there’s one thing which really annoys me while using automation — your faders keep clinching to the value you’ve chosen in your automation and every time you want to change the overall volume  of a track by using the faders (at least I’m used to simply pulling faders), they automatically go back to the old value.

Okay, that means changing the volume with automation. Select the track, switch to volume automation view, make the track view large to do small volume edits with automation (on a 13 inch laptop, that means you can see nothing but the one track, you’re editing at the moment), then switch back to the smaller size and the normal waveform view — how circumstantial!

To avoid getting your fader jammed and unable to use while automation, there’s a function called volume trim, which enables volume automation just like the normal volume automation without affecting your faders. Check out how it works.

Select volume trim as view for your track and start doing your automation. The curve looks a bit different from the normal volume view, but works the same.

Your volume follows this curve and shows you the value at the volume meter.

Now use the fader to lower the overall volume and see what happens. The volume automation curve stay the same, but the overall volume of the curve is getting lower.

Pretty useful, isn’t it? I’m now trying to use this one more often, because I’m getting sick of having faders I can’t use only because of one little automation.

Cheers and have a great day.