ya know what'd be a cool feature in logic?

If you could select all the tracks in your project, and raise/lower the volume on all tracks simultaneously , including the ones with volume automation!

Why can't logic do this! Or can it? Please tell me it can!

Hey Ben

You can change the volume of thr main output channel. That'll raise/lower the vol on all track simultaneously.

Or if you wanted to select just a few tracks, not all of them, you could:

create a stereo bus, and set the output of the tracks you want to control to the bus.

HTH
Hamish

stereo bus idea is great, thanks!

Yep, busses are the business.

Otherwise there is always:

1. cover/uncover your ears
2. move closer/further away from your speakers

etc

Brilliant ideas. #1 seems especially revolutionary.

I was merely asking if there was a way to raise the overall decibel level of a track with volume automation on it, so the whole track becomes equally louder relative to the other tracks, without having go in to the automation lane and adjust everything.
maybe it's a dumb beginner question (is that a problem?) but i don't think it's THAT dumb.

Thanks for the sarcasm

Ben! Noooo!!

I was making jokes! No sarcasm intended at all :) I'm so sorry, I thought you would join in with some jokes too.

Its not a dumb question, its actually a really good one. its one of the fundamental concepts of mixing - being able to pick and choose many elements of your mix and treat them as one element.

The fact that you asked the question in the first place means (in my opinion) you're thinking about exactly the right things in terms of mixing.

Setting up multiple submixes (eg one for drums, one for bass, one for all guitars etc) gives you really great control over your mix.

As for dumb questions, there are no dumb questions (becasue i already asked them all!)

Oh man, I gotta work on my sense of humour.

Sorry Ben :)

LOL ok, it's all good no worries.
I was put off by your humor because it didn't seem to be a response to the actual question that I asked...
I'm slightly touchy because I'm a mega noob and I'm not entirely confident about whether what I'm confused about is obvious to the rest of the world.

Regarding stupid questions, to quote George Carlin "There are no stupid questions?? Then what kind of questions do stupid people ask?" :P

LOL!

Great, that means I can start asking questions again! Thanks George.

PS I'm a noob too - only been learnign Logic for 3 years or so. I learnt everything I know from reading the forum and contributing as much as I can. Its such a great resource. And the Hub too.

What was the joke? I cover my ears all the time and it works fine... I don't get it... ;-)

Also, you can slap a gain plugin on the track you want to preserve your automation on, and then you can adjust it up or down and keep all the relative changes.

good call, Morry. I suppose gain is synonymous with volume?
But not on my guitar amp! Hmm :/

Gain on a compressor boosts the volume of the compressed signal. But gain on a guitar amp creates saturation/distortion. Is this a different use of the word gain or what? I've been wondering about this for awhile. Thanks

It comes down to where the gain is in the chain.

For the compressor, the gain is last in the chain; the comporessor has alrewady done its compressing so its just a volume control in this case and won't cause distortion unless you run the master output into the red.

For the guitar amp, the gain is first int he chain, and it controls the level of the guitar into the preamp. Turning up the gain increases the level into the preamp, which makes it react differently to the signal. The hotter you run it, the more the the amp will react, to the point of distortion and beyond.

In other words, turning up the output after the compressor won't add distortion because there wasn't any to start with, but turning up the level into the amp will make the amp components react in their unique characteristic way, by adding saturation/distortion

Hi again

Just adding to Morry's suggestion...

Volume automation is always last in the chain - it moves the channel fader up and down.

So if you add a gain plugin to the channel, it will still come before the automation - because the gain plugin comes before the channel fader. Which means the automation will override the gain plugin.

Unless.... (and thanks to Rounik for this trick)

instead of automating the track volume normally, insert a gain plugin on the channel and automate that instead. Then you can use the channel fader as you like, and it won't be affected by the automation.

OK thats enough out of me for now

Cheers
Hamish

That works brilliantly, Hamish, great tip.

I think the moral of the story might be that if I spent more time on the early production stage getting everything as perfect as possible, before going into arranging and adding automation, etc, I wouldn't have to be thinking about this as much.

I just watched a good video on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_JReiE1uFk&list=FLqucLjuKqSKT1NCl1chl8yw&index=1&feature=plpp_video

The "gain" plug-in is something I use frequently when I don't want to mess with temporal variations in volume automation. Just put it last on your channel strip chain and turn it up or down as you like. Rob

There is a pretty good workshop on this topic here:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep05/articles/logictech.htm

don't forget you can select a track's automation events with the marquee tool and move their levels as a group.