How to automate track gain?

Did enable write automation?

gelybar

Frostysnake


Did enable write automation?

Yes, and with other parameters it works fine.

I always though that gain was not automatable by design so that you can raise or lower the entire track volume while keeping your relative volume automation changes.

You can fully automate Gain, but you have to do so outside an Automation Lane. In either a Track or Take Lane, select Clip Gain, and you should see a Red envelope. That can be edited with the pencil tool, or, like I do, with precision dots. Unfortunately, I don't think you can automate Gain by the knob, which I don't care to.

I prefer Gain automation to Volume Automation, simply because I can get this right before beginning the mixing process, and never, EVER have to worry about automating volume afterward. If I need to bring up the level of a guitar for an entire mix, I just grab the fader and change it. Never needed Automation lanes for that.

Beware, though, that there are some very easily found cosmetic bugs in X2a for Clip Gain views in Take Lanes.  You may have to select between Clips and Clip Gain at times when the Take Lane doesn't display what the View calls for (i.e. Still see the Gain envelope when you shouldn't).

You need to enable the write mode on that track and it will record your fader movements. You also need to enable the envelope the volume envelope. 

The volume envelope automated the fader. The gain envelope doesn't! There 2 different envelopes and gain stages. 
CJ

AFAIK In X2 you can only automate Clip Gain from inside takelanes, and thats manually.

Thank you all! If I understand correctly, track gain can't be automated, so it seems the manual is wrong.

Now I'm thoroughly confused. Why would any DAW maker call Volume, Gain yet give them each their own respective controls? If this is what they did, then I'm tossing the manual out--its confusing enough as it is.

but be careful, because if you add volume and gain to a group then volume is shown as gain and gain is shown as volume.  same confusion with midi tracks - except they don't show a name for volume or pan and only velocity is clearly labeled.

imagine how i felt first time i added midi volume to a group and midi pan to a group.  ugh.  

Have you tried right-clicking the fader you want to automate and set it to "write" from there?

This is probably not what you are after, but it's not a bad idea.
 
From Eli Krantzberg's X1 Groove3 video...
You can use the Pro Channel Tube Plugin with Drive turned all the way down. Then use the input and output to do gain staging. In the video, Eli used the draw tools to draw automation on the output control on the tube Pro Channel module.
 
By doing it this way, he could still use the track fader to adjust the overall level of the track, but could draw in time specific fader oscillations. I thought it was a nice trick. Before I noticed this, I sometimes would draw in complex fader automations and then be selecting large ranges and moving them up and down.
 
Alternatively to the Tube PC Module, you could use the Controls Tab of the FX Chain PC Module to adjust gain.
 
A nice thing about these methods is that it enables you to adjust the gain anywhere in the signal chain. You can even use the FX Chain in the FX Bin to adjust the input gain.
 
From my understanding, the input gain on the track itself cannot be automated. I have wanted this in the past also. I often record whole concerts at once and some songs are quieter than others. For those quiet songs, I might want to bring up the gains to keep the levels right into all the FX I'm using to mix the gig. So, in these cases, I often use the gain not to get the levels set about where I want then fine the loudest moment in the track and then normalize to -? whatever the loudest moment is. This kinda cements the gain into that track for that tune. So then as I move on down the line, I don't have to remember what gain levels I used for what tracks.