Questions & Answers

Volume Automation Settings Suddenly Ignored

+7 votes
2,557 views
asked Nov 21, 2017 in Studio One 3 by xavieralvarado1 (270 points)
I'm experiencing an odd automation issue and it's extremely frustrating and causing lots of lost hours. It is happening on "light" sessions with 8-10 tracks. It seems like out of nowhere my automation settings, volume in my case, are just ignored on playback even though you can see the volume fader moving. What you actually hear is fixed at unity basically. I actually didn't notice it until I created the mixdown file and heard some way-too-loud- backing vocals cutting through. The only solution for me was to delete the entire automation volume "track" and redo it all. CRAZY waste of time.

Do we know if there is an 'open ticket' for this issue? This is mind-boggling for software of this caliber.

11 Answers

+1 vote
answered Nov 22, 2017 by jamesmaxwell (990 points)
Same problem here. My only "solution" (i.e., non-solution) was to export everything I could and rebuild the project in Logic Pro X...

I'm curious; you say "light" sessions, in terms of track count, but is your score relatively long, by any chance? I seem to start experiencing this as I get further into long tracks (i.e., > 15 minutes, or so). I haven't specifically noticed it in shorter tracks.
0 votes
answered Nov 23, 2017 by xavieralvarado1 (270 points)
No long sessions. Happened just yesterday on a basic 8 track, 4 minute session.
0 votes
answered Nov 25, 2017 by jamesmaxwell (990 points)

And does your "solution" of nuking the volume automation event/track and re-writing all of your changes actually fix the problem—as in, it hasn't come back since you did that? If I thought it would actually get rid of the problem for good, I'd be willing to try, but it's going to take a long time for me to do that...

0 votes
answered Nov 30, 2017 by xavieralvarado1 (270 points)
No, it seems completely random and has resurfaced even after clearing out the automation.
0 votes
answered Feb 24, 2018 by veditambishoen (140 points)
I have the same problem as wel.. Does Presonus has a solution for this problem?

Kr
0 votes
answered Nov 16, 2018 by hermanwilliams (570 points)
Having the same issue.  It just started today.  Quite annoying.  Thinking that maybe copy and paste to a VCA track, but this really should not be happening in the first place.
0 votes
answered Nov 16, 2018 by hermanwilliams (570 points)

Workaround that worked,  Create a VCA track , link tracks, copy the Automation edits from the original track , paste to the VCA track.  

Tested successfully 11/16/2018.

0 votes
answered Jan 24, 2021 by lassieronen (450 points)
I'm experiencing this too. The track level automation works fine when listening to the track, but any export option (offline, real time, or bounce to mastering) are ignoring the level automation. I even tried to add a Mixtool to the channel and automate the level with that - same result, the automation was ignored. It's so strange.

Bugs like this are unacceptable - you need to trust that there is no difference between an exported file and the thing you hear when playing back.
0 votes
answered Apr 27, 2021 by lassieronen (450 points)
An update:

I don't have the definitive answer but I have clues how to fix it.

I noticed that this issue when your export screen "freezes" towards the end of the export process. I never paid attention to it because you get a full export at the end - but the freezing seems to be connected to ignored automations.

I tried a ridiculously simple solution: Make the track longer by adding 5 minutes of empty space at the end. This way, if the freezing happens in the last part of the export it will not affect the audible part.

I also noticed that "shaking" the export window by dragging it around the screen might prevent the freezing from happing. This sounds like voodoo black magic, but this is what it has come to :D Hope these two ideas could help people experiencing this issue.
+1 vote
answered Jun 12, 2022 by davidbrown73 (160 points)
If you have dropout protection set pretty high under the performance tab that can be an issue. Sometimes it's as deceivingly simple as presonus not being able to handle all of the stuff going on at once and the dropout protection simplifies it to a point where automation is removed entirely
+1 vote
answered Jan 8, 2023 by geebo (160 points)
Greetings all - i had the same problem, and fixed it by Duplicating Track (complete) then deleting the original track. Not sure why this works but it does!
...