VCA faders not working reliably in DP 10.01

[MW1]

I'm encountering all sorts of problems with the VCA faders in DP 10.01 causing random level changes to channel faders on a project I'm currently mixing.

I have the project organised into about seven or eight groups with a VCA assigned to each group. There is a considerable amount of automation in the project and quite a number of tracks are bussed to aux channels - a typical scenario for using VCA channels to make adjustments and keep the relative automated levels intact.

However, each time I opened the project I found that the levels for an arbitrary number of faders had changed. In some cases the faders had been reset to minimum level (silent). This also happened on occasion while the project was open.

It seems as if the VCAs were re-applying the attenuation that I had them set at whenever the project was re-opened. It seemed particularly to affect tracks with no automation enabled.

Anyhow, it got so bad that I was forced to delete the VCAs altogether in order to get things back under control.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour with VCAs?

[Drumwizard]

It seems that this problem (for me) is gone after last Mojave update (10.14.6). But it still happens in old project for VCA Fader with tracks that was created before update.

[Phil O]

There is a problem with VCA faders and I've submitted a techlink on this. MOTU's response:

Hey Phil,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

I may have already reproduced this, but I want to be absolutely sure before passing this along to our engineers so that they may fix this. Do you mind sending over a screen-recording of this behavior from start to finish? It will help me make sure my steps have been the same. I can also use it for additional material for the bug log in the event this is indeed a bug (sounds like it already). Please let me know!

Best,

Matt

Hey Phil,

Well done on the screen-recording! It's exactly what I needed. With the recipe visualized, I'm going to see if I can reproduce this on my end. If I can, which seems likely, I'll send over this bug report to our engineers for fixing. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Best,

Matt

[MW1]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not sure it's directly related to any particular Mac OS version as this is happening to me on Mojave 10.14.06.

Anyhow, I'm glad MOTU is aware of the issue - hopefully they can sort it out for a future update.

[Phil O]

Still having this issue in 10.11. I've sent off another message to Matt explaining that the problem persists. Anyone else seeing this?

Phil

[Drumwizard]

I no longer have this problem, but my friend is still having it. Both on Mac Os Catalina and on Windows 10. Does anyone else have this problem with VCA?

[Phil O]

Still having the problem here.

[Drumwizard]

There are new details related to this problem.

The problem appears if Automation Play is disabled on the channels controlled by the VCA (on Mac OS and Windows).
Also on Windows Disable Fullscreen Optimizations has to be checked in the DP.exe Properties.

[Phil O]

The problem persists on my end regardless of automation play configuration.

Phil

[Phil O]

Got an update on my Techlink. MOTU is working on this and from Matt's message: "I expect this to be resolved in the next update for DP10 (TBA - not sure when it will be released)."

We'll see if his prognostication is on point.

Phil

[mhschmieder]

Aha, and I'm still on Catalina too. Not sure why this post didn't show up when I searched "VCA", "VCA fader", "VCA faders", "VCA group" or "VCA groups" -- the term VCA was a 100% miss on all accounts.

Sorry for my duplicate post from this past weekend, but it may elucidate additional aspects of the problem as well, due to some other mix settings that also jump around on re-open or when switching which named mix is active in the mix drop-list.