Undo History

[jackibar]

I made some changes that I intended to be temporary and accidentally hit Save. I tried opening the Undo History and chose where I originally opened the song today but some of the things I changed aren't changing back! In particular a volume slider in the mixing board and the mute/play buttons. Are these not affected by the undo history? I need to get my mix back to how it was when I started somehow!!

Thanks so much for any help!

[bayswater]

IIRC, faders and knobs in the mixer are not in the Undo history. It's mostly about editing. Is there a reason you can't just put the fader back where you want it?

[jackibar]

Because it's like 20 tracks and I had them all mixed "just right" <sigh>

[bayswater]

Bummer. In future you might want to look at duplicating the mix when you have one you like and then try out other ideas on a new mix. See p763 in the manual under Mix Mode menu.

[jackibar]

Yeah, I get that. The problem with this particular situation is I wasn't actually trying to change the mix any further - I just wanted to temporarily hear the piano track and a couple other ones a little louder than the rest for a little while so I could check my sheet music and then my plan was to quit WITHOUT saving so my mix would then go back to how it had been

[Shooshie]

Yeah, I get that. The problem with this particular situation is I wasn't actually trying to change the mix any further - I just wanted to temporarily hear the piano track and a couple other ones a little louder than the rest for a little while so I could check my sheet music and then my plan was to quit WITHOUT saving so my mix would then go back to how it had been

Ahh, now you know how it works!

But picture this: imagine that every time you hit UNDO, it negated all your fader positions. THAT would be even more tragic. I think of DP as divided between state and operations. State changes are covered by UNDO, but operations are not. State, as I'm using it, covers add and delete tracks, instruments, and plugins, recording, adding editing or deleting data — meaning audio, MIDI, record automation, and perhaps a few things I'm not recalling off the top of my head.

Operations covers things you do with the controls: playback, locating the cursor, making selections, moving faders (without automation), and such. These are not covered by UNDO, because they'd don't leave a data trail. If a fader move recorded automation, it's covered by UNDO. If it did not, it's not covered by UNDO.

That may not perfectly describe it, but it works for me. Maybe you can come up with a way of looking at it that works better for you.

When you want to try things out without losing your mix, first of all duplicate your mix (Mixing Board, bottom left, drop-down menu). Rename it. Now you are keeping a running recording of your mix. To play with it without changing that recording, duplicate it again. NOW you have a copy of your mix, and you can change it all you want without altering the original.

The first "duplicate mix" tells DP that you want to keep your mix recorded, and it turns on that feature. Normally, the state of your mixing board is not saved. You must start Mix Mode to do that, and you start it by saving (duplicating) your current mix. Note, however, that this does not work like the rest of DP. You can't play with a mix, then "revert to saved." It's saving your every move. As long as the Mix mode is turned on, your moves are being recorded. So, the first duplicate is just starting up the mix mode and saving a snapshot of what's there. From that point on, when you want to play with something without losing data, create another mix and name it something else. When you go back to your original named mix, things will be right where you left them.

When you create a NEW mix, it will start with a blank slate, however that blank slate will begin with a snapshot of current fader and pan positions. But your inserts board (plugins) will be blank.

NOTE: older versions of DP did not save fader positions set with your finger, even in a saved mix. I do not remember when they changed saved mixes to include fader positions. I think it's been since version 6, perhaps. This used to cause all sort of confusion, as people thought their fader positions were being saved. Only automated positions were saved. (automation starts clean with a new mix) They would go back to an older saved Mix, only to find that their faders were not repositioned as they were. DP has evolved over time to meet user expectations. That was a big one, IMO!

Shooshie

[bayswater]

Yeah, I get that. The problem with this particular situation is I wasn't actually trying to change the mix any further - I just wanted to temporarily hear the piano track and a couple other ones a little louder than the rest for a little while so I could check my sheet music and then my plan was to quit WITHOUT saving so my mix would then go back to how it had been

Just to make sure you understand what I suggested (for the future, this won't resolve the immediate problem) you can have multiple mixes in DP. You can get a mix you like, then go to another mix, another, and so on. These are all in one project and can all be recalled in the Mixer mini menu. Using this feature is a kind of a no brainer once you have a rough mix in place.

[Shooshie]

Almost forgot: any time you want to save your current state in the mixing board, including fader positions, use Snapshot. Take a snapshot of things, and you can return to it later merely by turning on automation. Taking a snapshot inserts an automation control point in the track for each parameter you're recording. You get to specify what gets saved, where you put it, and whether it's a single point or a time range. (Note: a single point still acts as a time range in the sense that there are no points afterward to change the data, but a time range actually includes an ending point, too).

Automation Snapshots are usually the starting point for any saved mix, but they can be used without saving the mix. It's like recording automation, except that instead of doing it in real time, you're using a button, like a camera, to snap a picture of the current state of all currently enabled or specified automation parameters.

That's probably what you should have done before playing with the faders. Then, with automation turned off, you could play with everything to your heart's content, then turn on automation and immediately return to the state you left it in.

The Snapshot button, btw, is the little camera-shaped icon at the bottom-left of most edit windows and the Mixing Board.

See why DP is often misunderstood? It's so deep, and there is so much to know. It just takes time and practice. Sooner or later, you'll know all this stuff, and you'll use it as if you invented it. But it takes time to get to it all.

Shooshie

[kurtl]

Any chance you have a set of autosaves in the autosave folder that contain your previous mix?

[bongo_x]

I have a habit of hitting cmd-s every few seconds for obvious reasons. It’s so ingrained I will not be able to stop myself or even realize I’m doing it. So if I’m opening something I don’t intend to work on I nearly always duplicate it in the Finder first and open the dup. Then I can screw with it all I want and delete it afterwards.