Audio Level Auto-Decreasing (SOLVED)

Is MIDI involved in any way?
If you bypass Guitar Rig so there's nothing in the audio path, does this still happen?
If you turn off automation read, does this still happen?

Does it decrease more every time you play, or do one major drop and stay there?

More information, although so far it means nothing to me:
 
There are two electric guitar tracks in this project, and I realize now that they are both behaving this way. There is volume automation on only one of the two. The other four "pure" audio tracks (3 vocals, 1 percussion loop) are working fine, as are all the MIDI tracks (Addictive Drums, Session Drummer 3, DimPro bass and Sound Center clavinet).
 
Both the guitars were recorded using basically the same setup, and I am now going through the settings, trying to see what may be causing this. After the precipitous drop in volume on these two tracks, the settings in the console view and the track view look the same as before to me. The tracks that are acting crazy are not in any groups or assigned to any bus other than master. They do have reverb sends set up, but so do some of the tracks that are working normally. I don't even know if I can delete those sends, or if it's worth it to try.
 
Still hoping for ideas from y'all, though.
 
UPDATE: I have been tweaking the mix all along as I record this project, so I tried exporting a mix. I had already played the project, so the guitar tracks were in their low-volume state, but the stereo mix came out fine, both guitars up where they belong. But they are still almost inaudible when I play the multitrack.

Anderton
Create a new track.
Ctrl-drag the audio which has problems to the new track. 
Mute the old track.
Does the new track exhibit the same behavior?

 
I dragged the rhythm guitar (the one with no automation) into a new, empty track, and the level seems to be correct, so yay! But the lead guitar track (the one with many pieced-together clips and lots of volume automation) did not want to be dragged. When I grabbed it and started to move it, the only thing that moved was the automation envelope. I could not move the clips with either the smart tool or the move tool. I'm sure this is in the manual somewhere. If not, I'll be back asking you about it tomorrow.
 

Anderton
Also, does the volume drop happen before or after Guitar Rig? If it happens before, if you're using an amp with distortion there would be less distortion. If it was afterward, the tone would remain the same - only the level would change. Even assuming GR isn't involved, this would be useful information.
 

 
There is some GR distortion on both these guitar tracks, and I can still hear the distortion even at the super low level.
 
 

Anderton
One more thing: When you re-start playback, is it always from the absolute beginning of the song? If you feel like doing something random to see if it makes a difference, create a copy of the project, select all, and move all the clips right so it opens up a couple measures at the beginning. What happens then?
  

 
I have restarted playback at various random places -- the very top, a few measures in, halfway through the song -- and the same thing happens each time with these two guitar tracks. Since dragging one of them to a "virgin" track seemed to fix my problem (and it's bedtime), I'm not inclined to experiment further tonight, but if there's anything to be gained I'll try messing around with a copied project tomorrow.
 
Craig, I want to thank you for helping me on this. Late on Sunday night! I'm grateful that this forum is here, and that you (and a few others, you know who you are) are so willing to share your knowledge. I hope some day I can be useful to someone here.

Anderton
Asking questions is useful, because it elicits answers that will likely pertain to others as well.

In my many years of working with computers, I have learned that it's better to get the darned thing working than to know why it stopped working. Your answer got me back in business -- thanks again -- but in this case I can't help wondering what caused this goofy problem, and why this workaround, works.

dcumpian
I've seen weird stuff like this with some Kontakt libraries due to the fact that there are several ways to adjust levels in Kontakt and they can conflict with each other. You might check if you have any other automation in the track by turning on Automation Lanes and see what shows up.
 
Regards,
Dan

He doesn't mention that the tracks were generated with Kontakt, so I assumed they were just regular audio tracks.
 
The reason why I asked about MIDI was that this kind of issue is fairly common if you have controller 7 messages where MIDI reads something like a low level on a fade out, then returns to the beginning but misses a piece of data that resets the level. But he said MIDI wasn't involved in the track. 
 
The next step is to find out what in the virgin track is different from the other track.

Bounce the lead track to a new track and it will reflect the automation and such. Mute the original track and see if the problem persists in the bounced track. This might actually be a better test than dragging the audio because you can uncheck different mix enables and see if one particular mix enable causes the problem to occur.
 
You can also clone the track and bounce the clips to themselves, and drag them over as a single clip.

Anderton
Bounce the lead track to a new track and it will reflect the automation and such. Mute the original track and see if the problem persists in the bounced track. This might actually be a better test than dragging the audio because you can uncheck different mix enables and see if one particular mix enable causes the problem to occur.
 
You can also clone the track and bounce the clips to themselves, and drag them over as a single clip.

I bounced the lead track to a new track, with all mix parameters enabled except Audible Bounce and Live Input, which were both greyed out anyway. The new track is at the correct level and plays fine even after a restart, although it is now frozen with Guitar Rig and BT Analog Phaser effects. I'm out of time for the next couple of hours, but I think I will bounce again without the FX, then add the FX back to the bounced track, and see if that works.


 
As I mentioned earlier, I don't need to know why this happened, but I'd like to...

Under Preferences>Project>MIDI
 
There is a check box for 'Zero controllers when play stops'.  
 
This used to mess up some of my Reaktor sounds, which for some reason had pitch assigned to the mod wheel.  
 
With this preference checked, the Reaktor preset would drop 1 whole note in pitch, and it took me FOREVER to figure out I needed to remove the check for this parameter.
 
Bob Bone
 

As the songwriter/arranger/producer of this track, I am invoking my privilege to give up and blow this song off.
 
Turns out the track bounce idea only worked once. I deleted the first bounced track and tried it again with the FX not enabled. I got a track with audio so low as to be almost inaudible. I tried to redo the lead guitar track. Inserted a new audio track, set Guitar Rig and levels. When I started playback, levels dropped to nearly inaudible. After stopping and restarting, levels were even lower. Tried the same thing again with yet another new audio track, and got the same results.
 
Something is seriously screwed up, and I have not gotten to the real root of the issue. Right now my concern is that other projects might begin to exhibit this behavior. Have not checked that yet. Thanks to those who tried to help. If I find an answer I'll let the group know.

I know this is dead obvious,, but did you ever look at the GAIN level? 

 
 

Anderton

dcumpian
I've seen weird stuff like this with some Kontakt libraries due to the fact that there are several ways to adjust levels in Kontakt and they can conflict with each other. You might check if you have any other automation in the track by turning on Automation Lanes and see what shows up.
 
Regards,
Dan

He doesn't mention that the tracks were generated with Kontakt, so I assumed they were just regular audio tracks.
 
The reason why I asked about MIDI was that this kind of issue is fairly common if you have controller 7 messages where MIDI reads something like a low level on a fade out, then returns to the beginning but misses a piece of data that resets the level. But he said MIDI wasn't involved in the track. 
 
The next step is to find out what in the virgin track is different from the other track.

I got that, I was really saying to check if there is any other automation on the track that the OP isn't aware of. Guitar Rig is just as complex as Kontakt in it's signal path and automating a parameter for any of the racked modules could cause something like this. Opening the Automation Lanes lets you see all of the automation at once. There might be a surprise in there.
 
Regards,
Dan
 
 

dcumpian
 I got that, I was really saying to check if there is any other automation on the track that the OP isn't aware of. Guitar Rig is just as complex as Kontakt in it's signal path and automating a parameter for any of the racked modules could cause something like this. Opening the Automation Lanes lets you see all of the automation at once. There might be a surprise in there.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

Thanks for the followup, Dan. I'll be looking at this later today and tomorrow, and I'll check all possible automation. This issue has turned out to be more widespread and intractable than I first believed. Basically, I am screwed on ALL my work if I don't find a real solution.

js516

Larry Jones
2.) Why won't the lead guitar track let itself be dragged to a virgin track?

Each track has a dropdown list that allows you to select what you want to edit (the edit filter). If this is set to an automation envelop, then you will not be able to select the clips.

Thanks, Joseph! So much I don't know...

I'm not opening the champagne yet, but I may have discovered the source of the problem. It is -- as a couple of you have suggested -- in Guitar Rig. I should clarify that I'm using Guitar Rig 3, the version bundled with Sonar a while back. Never bought the full version or any upgrades, because 3 seems to be all I need.
 
That said, I found a module nestled out of sight at the bottom of the GR interface labeled "OUTPUT." It has a control labeled "PRESET VOL," with a button next to it labeled "LEARN." I noticed that the preset volume knob TURNS ITSELF ALL THE WAY DOWN WHENEVER I STOP PLAYBACK.
 
I had some trouble embedding this image, but you can click on it to embiggen.
 
I suspected the "learn" function was involved, and when I right-clicked on the volume knob, the dropdown menu included a "Clear" command. So I "cleared" it, whatever that might mean, and now the volume knob stays put when I stop playback or restart the track.
 
I don't recall ever messing with this control, and in fact the module containing it is scrolled off the bottom of the Guitar Rig UI, where I would not ordinarily be looking, however apparently I did something with it while in a trance. I'm cautiously optimistic that this is a real fix, but because of previous false positives I'm not ready to mark this thread "Solved" quite yet. I want to do more testing.
 
But that reminds me -- how do I mark the thread "Solved" when the time comes?


Thanks everybody, for your kind concern.

Anderton
But you said the problem happened if Guitar Rig is bypassed...

I forgot I said that, but you're right. In light of what I discovered today I must not have. I apologize for the bad information -- it's hard enough to fix something when you know what's actually wrong, not to mention when a clown like me is feeding you incorrect symptoms. This is one good reason to do more testing. The good news is, if I misled you about that, you're off the hook for not figuring this out. In my defense, Guitar Rig was supplying a lot of gain boost, so when I deleted the plugin I may have thought I was hearing the same problem -- loss of volume. I should have paid closer attention.