Fader automation with surface

Hi Ardour,

I have had a go at automation of the fader before for tracks. My issue last time was I wanted the fader automation “on top of” the fader levels I’ve set.

Say I record the automation to bump up the bass in the chorus. Then I find the whole bass level now seems to high. I can’t just turn down the fader, and have the automation pushed down relatively. It doesn’t seem to work like that.

Answers before (2-3 years ago) were to automate the output level of a plugin, or create a VCA.

I now have a control surface. Is writing the automation to the output level of a plugin going to work? It didn’t seem to when I just tested it.

Is VCA still the best way to do what I’m after, or is there anything new around this in Ardour since 6.x?

Cheers all!

You got the gist of it, the third option you missed would be to automate using region gain as well. But that won’t help in terms of control surfaces I do not believe.

Seablade