Hi guys, I've not posted in  a while.  I've been plugging away and enjoying.  I've come across something that bothers me when tracking live.  When I turn on a send, it starts at unity.  When tracking and someone asks for some verb through their phones, I hit the send and it blows up in their ears while I'm trying to turn it down.  If they ask for a little more drums or some other instrument, it blows them out of the booth.  The knob cannot be turned down while greyed out.  Is there a way, a .ini setting, or anything that I can set so that when I instantiate a SEND that it starts turned down all the way?
 
One thought I had was a track template with verb and delays on and down, but I worry that that might unnecessarily eat cpu.  Then I don't know what different individuals want in there headphone mix.

Sorry. No such option, yet, though it's come up many times. Workarounds would be:
 
- Mute the channel while you add the send and get it turned down before you unmute the channel or change it to Prefader.
- Initally set the destination to some unused hardware channel (or dead-end bus used expressly for the purpose), and then redirect it after you get the level down.

Thanks Brundle, I did a search and found it has come up again and again.  I know that it has been this way for some time, I was hoping maybe a rolling update would have captured this. 
 
I was just sitting here experimenting while thinking of a workaround... I saw that multiple sends don't necessarily kill cpu per se,  so here's a thought.  Track template.... blank track, add four sends to a generic buss (in my case NULL BUSS) since that's the max that can be seen without the up/down arrow.  Make sure the OUTPUT of the NULL buss is set to NONE.  This idea gave me an error that I don't want to hassle with every time I add a track.  Make sure the OUTPUT is set to anywhere BUT turn the VOLUME DOWN.    Turn the sends all the way down.  The sends are instantiated and doing nothing and sending a big fat nothing to nowhere.  Lots of double negatives, but I hope I get this across.   Export the track template.  I called mine 4 sends.
 
Insert -> Track template -> 4 sends.  Leave the PREVIEW buss alone since nothing is going to it or leaving it anyway. As someone needs a verb or headphone mix, you can switch the SEND destination and the SEND amount stays all the way down.  Aha--- one more trick.... Hide the NULL BUSS then export the track template.  then when you add from track template, NULL BUSS is still hidden.

See there, just being around you guys after a long absence really get the creativity going... Thanks :D
 

Cool. Not to minimize the importance of being able to set a lower default send level, and at the ever-present risk of being labled a fanboy... I like to think of obstacles like this as learning opportunities. Sometimes you find a better/faster way of working as a result of having to try somehting different or you just learn something you didn't know that might come in handy or help you avoid some other problem later when you're in the throes of creation.

Once I read other threads, I realized my plight was not liable to change, so I had some breathing space and a moment's time and started experimenting.  I could see a line in PREFERENCES being: New SENDS set to -inf or New SENDS set to UNITY.  That would be a great "rolling update" change.  In the meantime, I think what I've experimented with and come up with might provide a different flexibility.  Someone might want to set the SENDS at 9 o'clock or some other setting that would give a little through and allow a thumbs up or down from the booth.

I avoid this and other potential problems by simply not making routing changes during playback. It's a habit I developed long before I ever started using computers for recording. 

Bitflipper,
 
Your method is probably best.  I do a lot of things on the fly in the daw that I just take for granted.  
 
And when rushing, I cringe at such errors as people ripping off headphones and verbalizing me rather unpleasantly