Evening all. I am trying the new automation modes in X2 and so far its all fairly good. But.... Using a physical control surface to create automation data using touch mode, rather than just a mouse over a track fader and moving that, I am finding that once I release the touch on the physical fader, that X2 continues to write stationary fader data to the track for almost of a second after releasing the hardware fader, thus corrupting previously written mix information. Using a mouse to waggle the fader the release is instant. With a control surface information continues to be written for about 3/4 of a second after the fader is 'untouched' or released. Sounds trivial but if you mix with hardware a lot of stuff can get corrupted and overwritten that really should not. I am using a Euphonix MC mix/ Avid Artist mix but I suspect that this is a generic problem relating to external data timing derived from external hardware. Could someone else try this out and verify please so that we can get rid of this annoying delay. C

This is because with a mouse there is a notion of a mouse button up message. Most surfaces do not have touch sensitive faders so SONAR must implement a timer to guess when the user has stopped moving a fader.
This behavior is not new to X2.

I just worked with volume automation using a Mackie Control setup to use touch faders. I used the new touch mode to edit some test automation. It is wonderful.

I have always liked how the MC worked now I love it.

make sure on the track inspector under the track tab that automation write mode is set to touch and not latch or overwrite. the other thing you can do is to set the punch in/out options to the range you want edit. any automation will only be written to that range, leaving everything else unchanged.

Thanks everyone for you very helpful and insightful comments. Swamptooth/ Setting punch in out points will avoid overwrites. I have verified under the track tab that I have indeed enabled touch mode. John/ Glad to hear that the Mackie Control is working well for you. But I don't think you have furthered the point I am trying to make. Noel/ Thanks for taking time to reply. I know you are a busy man. I use protools and it's touch mode senses when and when not the control is being touched and writes the automation accordingly. This make things very fast indeed. Shouldn't a true touch mode be able to discern the touched/not touched status of a fader, or is this simply not possible? Is it not possible to discern that the data stream has ceased and stop recording data accordingly? Or alternatvely, buffer the data until the transport is stopped and then truncate back to the point the faders data stream ceased. At present it feels... A little crude and unfinished.

doesn't a touch-sensitive controller give a "un-touch" event, a la mouseup event, that could be grabbed, or does sonar just not look for it because most controllers don't fire it?

Yes it does seem very unlikely doesn't it. My guess is this has simply not been addressed until now. I do take issue with Noels statement that most controllers do not have touch sensitivity. Whilst this is probably true, I think most new ones do and this is likely to become a must in all new surfaces or even ipad based controllers.

Ok so we are just going to leave this wonderful 'touch' feature as an unfinished oversight then are we. Fabulous.

I can confirm it works exactly as expected here on an MCU, I haven't tried it with a mouse though.

creynolds


Ok so we are just going to leave this wonderful 'touch' feature as an unfinished oversight then are we. Fabulous.

It might help if we knew what controller you are using.  In my case I use the MC and it does have touch sensitive faders.

But in the setup for it you can turn them off.