Envelopes: I need them, my life depends on them! But I don't know how to...

After all these years of using envelopes in Sonar (X3 now) I still am not able to perform these operations:

• Copy envelopes around, e.g. select envelops from one automation lane and copy into another automation lane in same track or different track. This is supposed to be possible in Sonar, but I've never been able to get it to work.
• Lower or raise a selected region of envelopes. When I try it, after lassoing a region of envelopes, and the mouse cursor changes to indicate I can lower or raise the region, I try dragging the selected region, and the region that moves doesn't correspond with what I lassoed. Instead the region is arbitrary, and includes nodes before and after the region I lassoed. Is this a bug?
• Copy midi controller events (e.g. pitch bend or mod wheel) to an automation lane as envelopes, and vice verse.

I consider envelopes to be an extremely powerful feature for music making. To me, controlling various parameters over time (e.g. volume, sends to reverb busses, synth filter cut-off, etc...) is the foundation of music, and being able to manipulate and move envelopes around with ease would be extremely liberating for me.
 
OK, now I'm stepping down from my soap box. Can someone please point me to a tutorial or video that will show me how to do these things (if they are indeed possible)? I want to know all there is to know about envelopes in X3!
 
Thanks!
Mike
 
 
 

I'm out of my depth. I NEVER use simple instrument tracks. I always use a regular midi track. Just easier for me. So I'm not much help.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJiqjyJnAvg
 
This video shows how to add automation on lots of tracks at the same time for the same type of envelope for creating separation between tunes when lots of songs are in the same project.

mleghorn

• Copy envelopes around, e.g. select envelops from one automation lane and copy into another automation lane in same track or different track. This is supposed to be possible in Sonar, but I've never been able to get it to work.

To clarify one point, it's possible to copy and paste automation from one track to another (as others have described), but I do not think it's possible to do this between automation lanes on the same track...which would be really handy IMO, but I've not been able to find a way to do this.

Cunning! :-)

One big problem. Envelopes for midi events (like CC1, CC11, etc) work fine within Sonar but DO NOT work when rendering to an audio file if you're rendering in real time. If you set up some midi envelopes and play them back... they do what you'd expect, automate whatever midi thing you're wanting to automate. Render out to an audio file using fast bounce, works like expected. Render out in real time... nothing will get automated. It'll be as if those envelopes aren't even there.

For lots of streaming samples where fast bounce is too fast for the samples to stream correctly, this is a huge problem. I've submitted a bug report several months back, got confirmation that this is indeed a bug but no fix in X3, X3a or X3b. I sent another email expressing disappointment that this hadn't been addressed, getting this huge bug fixed but haven't received a reply yet.