You can easily adjust clip gain by holding the CTRL key down and clicking in the clip you want to adjust and moving the mouse up or down depending on whether you want the clip louder or not.
 
How about a feature request? When you move the clip gain, make it so the waveform grows or shrinks according to how you adjust the clip gain.

Didn't know that!  Thanks!

Didn't know that either, and it's something I would use a lot.
 
A lot of good tips are presented in this forum. Would it make sense to move them to the tip of the day thread, and delete the various "thanks Craig" posts so that a) it's a more compact read, and b) people don't get the mistaken idea it's "my" thread?
 
Or we could just make this thread a repository of tips when people have them...it wouldn't have to be a "tip of the day" per se, but it would probably average out to that over time.
 
It would be a drag to see these nuggets fall back into the stream, to use a panning for gold analogy.

I would just create a sticky and call it "tip of the day! Please don't comment unless it's a tip.".

I have seen this tip before and would love to see the waveform change but the 
control move the mouse trick does not do this for me,  I use a track ball maybe that is why.
 

The waveform won't change, unless you use DSP to change the gain or do normalization (fades will also change the waveform). I know a lot of people would like Cakewalk to make it so you can see gain changes when you change the clip envelope, but personally I hope they don't get around to doing that. The way things are now I can tell at a glance what's going on with the clip's "native" audio, so if for example the level looks low, I know it's an issue with the clip itself and not automation. I adjust the automation with my ears anyway, so a visual representation of the results of automation wouldn't do me much good.
 
When Pro Tools finally got around to doing clip gain, it was a nice implementation and the waveform would scale based on the clip envelope. I thought it would come in handy, but ultimately I didn't find it all that useful...although this is definitely a YMMV situation.

Sorry Craig but you are wrong on this one. Clip gain adjustments should definitely change the waveform because that is what you are hearing. Raw audio information is not so relevant. Studio One handles it the right way as well.
 
How they get around it is when you click on the gain handle a dotted line appears that clearly displays how much gain you have either added or subtracted.
 
The reason why the waveform changing is great is because if you have a track that has a few variable levels eg waveform height varies, it is so easy to fine tune them all by eye and they all end up the same level. I could do that five times faster than you could level out the same clips manually.
 
I agree that it is a personal preference but as someone that has used it a million times in some very big sessions I could not live without it. It saves so much time as well because once a lot of clips are leveled out often (visually) no automation or further work is required. It is just fast.
 
 
 

I'm with Craig on this: if clip gain changes the visual representation of the audio, how about track gain, track envelopes, effects?  What should and what should not change what you see?
 
Either everything should or nothing should - clip gain should not be "special" in this respect.

Track gain, effects and automation is not related to the raw audio. Clip gain in a way is. Think of it as being just one level up from raw audio. It is slightly special. You are adding or subtracting gain to that raw audio therefore the waveform should reflect that change. Other DAW's such as PT and Studio One and any others that do alter the waveform have chosen to do so. They cannot all be wrong. Therefore the overall view is that it should be changed. As I said it speeds up things bigtime.  It is way faster to adjust clip gains by eye than any other method.
 
When you are working under pressure like some of us do and you are used to this feature and you have used it a lot (I would say that those who think it is not a good idea have obviousloy not spent a lot of time with this feature) you will never go back. Simple as that.
 
 
 

Jeff Evans
Sorry Craig but you are wrong on this one. Clip gain adjustments should definitely change the waveform because that is what you are hearing. Raw audio information is not so relevant.

 
I've worked with both ways of adjusting clip gain in various programs. Neither option is a "deal-breaker" for me, but while my ears know what I'm hearing, they can't tell me what the original gain was. The raw audio information is relevant precisely for what you describe - knowing if a clip has variable levels, and what needs to be adjusted. To me seeing the physical clip levels is a diagnostic tool, because for fine-tuning I prefer to use tools that i find superior to clip gain. Of course if you are committed to using clip gain to do what you describe, then I can see why you would want to see the waveform change.
 

The reason why the waveform changing is great is because if you have a track that has a few variable levels eg waveform height varies, it is so easy to fine tune them all by eye and they all end up the same level. I could do that five times faster than you could level out the same clips manually.

 
For me, fine-tuning levels with the percussive algorithm in Melodyne is way faster and more accurate than adjusting clip gain (varying waveform view or not) to even out things iike words and phrases in a lyric or to take down plosives, fricatives, and sibilants. Also, if not a lot of changes are needed, for the way I work it's also faster to drag across the region that needs to be changed and apply DSP gain or normalization. Normalization is particularly handy for this because it specifies exactly what level a peak will attain, compared to guessing by looking at a waveform. What's more, it's a destructive edit so I don't have to bounce to clip to make it permanent (e.g., for export).