Volume settings not holding between sessions, plus

[alanmonasch]

I am using LX 6.4.8 on my new iMac. I set the volumes of the various tracks, then save and then exit. When I open again, my volume settings need to be completely redone as they have changed dramatically. Is this a known problem?

Also, I am noticing a number of things that are making work in Metro difficult, including being unable to see tiny bad MIDI notes to remove them, no matter how much I zoom in on the track. Also, the track display does not move with the progress of the song and often the line showing the current position of the song is not present until I click in the track window. The event editor jumps on its own to positions that are not where the edit point is. Selecting a track in the section screen is not enough to have it selected for mixing; it needs to be clicked until the notes on the track are selected before the track will be exported. And I still do not know why the cryptic "Modify Outputs and Busses" exists and, say, "Add Output" and "Add Aux Bus" do not. Also, sometimes the Apple DLS Music Device show "EFX" on the aux bus in the mixer and sometimes it doesn't, even when I have put it there myself. Lastly, newer DAW software shows a tree diagram of inputs and outputs, which helps see the signal path; perhaps that needs to be the new paradigm for input and output information.

[Jerm]

What OS?

[alanmonasch]

OS X 10.6.1

[Jerm]

It is possible we are not fully snow leopard compatible yet.

[alanmonasch]

Please allow me to clarify: The positions of the faders do not change between sessions; the actual audible volume levels get dramatically louder when I save, exit Metro, restart Metro and reopen the song, and I have to move the faders to new positions to get the same audible levels they had before I saved and exited.

As of yesterday I am using OS X 10.6.2, and the problems I mentioned persist. I have a new problem, one that started before I upgraded from OS X 10.6.1 to 10.6.2, and I do not know how to fix it: I forceps-selected notes from one track and copied and pasted them in another, and I cannot get them to sound in the new track regardless what I do, even though the meter for the track shows they are generating output. Since I copied them, I know I can still hear them in the track I copied them from.

So, do you plan Snow Leopard compatibility, and is it difficult to achieve for any reason?

[Jerm]

Please allow me to clarify: The positions of the faders do not change between sessions; the actual audible volume levels get dramatically louder when I save, exit Metro, restart Metro and reopen the song, and I have to move the faders to new positions to get the same audible levels they had before I saved and exited.

This sounds to me like perhaps you have not saved automation so that the instruments settings of your external gear is being reset between sessions. Are you using external MIDI on this piece?

I forceps-selected notes from one track and copied and pasted them in another, and I cannot get them to sound in the new track regardless what I do, even though the meter for the track shows they are generating output. Since I copied them, I know I can still hear them in the track I copied them from.

This sounds like the output on the new track is different that the output on the first track thus the fader may need adjustment or the output may be going to the completely wrong place. In the graphic editor right (control) click on the title bar of the track and follow the output to see if the data is going to the correct place.

So, do you plan Snow Leopard compatibility, and is it difficult to achieve for any reason?

Yes we plan to have full compatibility soon although these problems may not be related to the new OS.

[alanmonasch]

I was checking with you to see if there were known reasons for what I was encountering. I can tell you that I do not use external MIDI on this piece, and I have not applied any automation.

Things have changed slightly since I wrote. The track that wasn't playing now plays, except it does not play when it is soloed. I do not know what I did to get it to play at all. I do need to take a much closer look at the signal chain, though, as you suggest.

I fear that the other problems I mention preceded the new version of LX, yet I hope that the Snow-Leopard-compatible version will help.

[alanmonasch]

The track outputs to the DLS Music Device, as I would expect, but for no reason that I know of after many years of working with Metro, on this track, the DLS Music Device outputs to Built-In Audio-1, and I cannot find the natrual place in Metro to change that. That's because I'm going to have to remove the track, make a MIDI track using "Modify Outputs and Busses," and put the MIDI data on that track.

The fact that I somehow set up the wrong kind of track can be seen as my stupid error. I think the fact that I had made such an error and had such a hard time finding it after this many years of working with Metro is an artifact of something I mentioned earlier, the entire "Modify Outputs and Busses" paradigm and its presentation. That paradigm is clearly the most difficult part of Metro for beginners to understand. It touches on the relationship of ports, tracks, faders and outputs and the use of aux busses.

As a programmer, I can see why it is convenient for you to have a screen for modifying, rather than adding, outputs, and for having that screen be flexible enough to handle any kind of track on any output, and for it adding, deleting or changing tracks from the same screen. Yet as a user, I want to add an output when I want to add an output, and I do not want to have to think about all the other outputs at the same time, and I most certainly don't want to be thinking about busses to the extent that each time I use this screen I have to check that it specifies the same number of busses I had already set up. When I want to add a bus, I just want to add a bus. And I would actually expect "Add Audio Output" and "Add MIDI Output," which is less flexible for you, the programmer, but easier for the beginner, and easier even for me, the experienced user, to work with.

And I want an overview of the signal chain, of course. The fact that I am on a computer rather than behind a rack of equipment with a slew of cables should make it much more directly easy to see what's going on. Before I saw other DAWs showing tree diagrams for the signal chain, I thought that even a matrix, a table, a grid on screen would help clarify things.

Your product is a work of true genius and your incredible dedication, and I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart. Yet I think you know that the outputs and busses and tracks and ports and faders area is a place where you as a programmer might have been too close to your product and not able to put yourself in the shoes of someone faced with using the program. I realize that this area is deep in the design of Metro and unlikely to get attention as you run to keep your product robust, so I recommend that you consider having a professional documentationalist write an overview of the subject of outputs and their use, someone who will take it from the user's point of view. Scoot's writeup helped a little, but Scoot is also very close to the program and does not have a beginner's mindset either.

[alanmonasch]

Now I am truly in trouble: Even when I delete the track that showed DLS-Music-Devi-3. DLS-Music-Device and Built-In-Aud-1 as its outputs, when I use "Modify Outputs and Busses" to add one output on port DLS-Music-Device, the last output of the new output is Built-In-Aud-1 immediately after it is created. I fear I will have to start up a new project and export and import each of my tracks and hope that the problem does not follow me into the new project.

[alanmonasch]

I solved my problem but I hardly know how. There was an instance of the DLSMusicDevice on Track 1 that I did not put there, since I have one on the aux bus, and it is the one on the aux bus that was in the list of outputs for Track 1. When I deleted the unwanted instance, most of it was removed, but the power light and the word "bypass" remained on the screen, and recreating the track brought the power light and "bypass" back to the effects screen. I notice that when I turn the power on and off to the instance on the aux bus, the phantom light on Track 1 in the effects screen goes on and off as well. And there is a duplicate of DLSMusicDevi-3 in the pulldown output selection menu for each track, and I do not know how it got there, but when I select it for a track I can see that it has DLSMusicDevice and Built-in Aud 1 as its outputs.

[Jerm]

Hello Alan,

I think your commentary is very interesting. I don't have time right now to thoroughly analyze it but I will within the next week or so.

In the meantime if you email me a copy of your problem Metro document (if it has audio, try to minimize it and save as a bundle file) I would be glad to take a look and see if there are an obvious problems.

Jeremy

[Jerm]

I...and I have not applied any automation.

There is automation on this piece. If you go to the event editor and filter notes, you can see there is quite a bit of controller 7 (volume automation) on track 3 drums.

Things have changed slightly since I wrote. The track that wasn't playing now plays, except it does not play when it is soloed.

Which track is this?

[alanmonasch]

I posted a response yesterday but I do not see it today.

The troublesome track was the bass track, but as I said in my posting of Nov 12 at 4:00 PM, this turned out to be two problems, both of which I was able to fix almost completely. The output of the bass MIDI track was indeed routed to an audio output, BuiltInAud-1, which was the first problem, and the second was that there were two instances of DLSMusicDevi-3, one of which was outputting to BuiltInAud-1 and the other to Aux-1, as it should have. I set out to remove the one that outputted to BuiltInAud-1 and found an instance of DLSMusicDevice on it in the Effects/Synths screen for the first track, the Polysynth track. I removed it, but when I did, there was still a power light and the word "bypass" on the screen, which is the last remaining problem. It does not affect my output, I don't think, yet it is an indicator that I may have trouble with this project in the future.

[Jerm]

Can you email a picture of this so I can get a better idea of what you are talking about?

If you press command-shift-4, select the window and press space bar, I think a picture will be placed on your desktop.