Maybe I’m misunderstanding the “Show Automation Lane on Touch” option, but using an Arturia Minilab 3 connected to a MIDI track as the input device does not result in the affected automation lanes showing if they were not already manually opened for editing on a MIDI track.
I have the “Show Automation Lane on Touch” option enabled in the Ardour 8 preferences, and I also have the output of the MIDI track connected to an external MIDI device which receives the correct messages.
Ardour also receives the messages and shows values in the automation lanes, but only if those lanes were already manually opened.
Is this the intended behavior, and if so is there a way to have Ardour show affected lanes when external MIDI controllers send messages to a MIDI track?
“Touch” here means precisely that: Ardour needs to receive a touch notification, not the actual message sent by the adjusting the controller. That means a button press event if you are using the mouse, or a separate notification from a hardware controller if using that. Most such devices do not send those notifications.
tl;dr: you need a touch-sensitive controller. Those usually only come with devices that also have motorized Faders (e.g. FaderPort, Console 1, UF8, X-Touch, etc)