Is there a way of preventing Logic from jumping up/down track views when a control surface is connected?

[wing]

I've noticed an annoying feature that takes me out of the zone, and it's most particularly noticeable on larger session with potentially hundreds of tracks. I have my tracks ordered by group/type, so for example let's say I go up to automate something on my hi-hat track. When I go to click on the track to write in automation, suddenly Logic will scroll down somewhere random, and now my screen is focused on let's say a vocal track which is toward the bottom. This is just an example though, it doesn't happen only with the automation mode, it could be when I try to click on a track merely to edit regions - point is I lose the view of the track on my screen and suddenly I'm looking at a totally unrelated track and have to manually scroll up. It can really screw up my focus and flow.

 

I find this really annoying, but I can't tell if it's a bug – I think it's an attempted "feature" that has to do with my mix control surface connected (in my case I'm using an Avid Mix over Eucon). I believe what it's trying to do is re-arrange the banks or something, and the control surface is trying to force the view to match. But obviously I'm not concerned with the control surface when I'm clicking on a track to edit it.

 

To be clear – I've turned off vertical (and horizontal) auto-zoom. I've also gone under the preference menu for control surfaces and tried both checking and unchecking "Control surface follows track selection" – this setting in either mode appears to have no bearing on what I'm experiencing. Does anyone have any idea about this? Is there a preference to fix this? Or could it be a bug? FWIW I'm running Catalina with Logic 10.6.2 (choosing not to upgrade at this time as I'm in the middle of scoring a feature).

 

Thank you!

[des99]

Hmm, that doesn't sound like proper behaviour. What *should* happen *generally* is that when you click on a track, the current fader bank (usually of 8 channels, but depends on how many control surfaces etc you have configured), moves to encompass the selected track, so the selected track will always be available on the faders, as will the tracks surrounding it in the current fader bank).

 

With Logic, there are configurable for display "Control surface bars" which visually show you the tracks/channels covered by the current fader bank, so you can watch them move as you select different tracks accordingly.

 

If you select a track, and Logic scrolls "randomly" (if that's truly the case) then it sounds to me like your control surface config is broken or not set up correctly. Does it work on a small test project, and stop working with larger numbers of tracks? Or is it always wrong? When you select a track, what do the control surface bars show? Is the current fader bank correctly shown on the controller, and it's just Logic's view that is incorrect? Does it behave like this if the controller is not connected?

[wing]

Hmm, that doesn't sound like proper behaviour. What *should* happen *generally* is that when you click on a track, the current fader bank (usually of 8 channels, but depends on how many control surfaces etc you have configured), moves to encompass the selected track, so the selected track will always be available on the faders, as will the tracks surrounding it in the current fader bank).

 

With Logic, there are configurable for display "Control surface bars" which visually show you the tracks/channels covered by the current fader bank, so you can watch them move as you select different tracks accordingly.

 

If you select a track, and Logic scrolls "randomly" (if that's truly the case) then it sounds to me like your control surface config is broken or not set up correctly. Does it work on a small test project, and stop working with larger numbers of tracks? Or is it always wrong? When you select a track, what do the control surface bars show? Is the current fader bank correctly shown on the controller, and it's just Logic's view that is incorrect? Does it behave like this if the controller is not connected?

 

I appreciate you helping me narrow this down. What I can say is I've never seen Logic behave this way on large projects when the controller is not connected, hence why I am able to tell it has something to do with that.

 

I actually just discovered by digging around that there's a whole bunch of preferences in Avid's EuControl that relate to track selection. They have a lot of vaguely phrased terms that aren't even explained in the manual (shocker lol). Here's something I've observed - when you switch banks on my control surface, it paginates Logic's view of the arrangement accordingly. Hence why I'm thinking it's more likely intended to be a feature. I believe then when I go to automate a track or select a region elsewhere not in my current banks' view, it is wanting to scroll back to what it thinks is the first selected track of the bank. There are several options in both EuControl and Logic around track selection behavior so it seems like I'm going to have to kind of play around with trying different settings until I solve this perfect storm. It's one of those things that was bugging me all week but it's hard to replicate on demand if I open the project as I've tried to right now, so then again it could be a sporadic bug for all I know!

[des99]

Here's something I've observed - when you switch banks on my control surface, it paginates Logic's view of the arrangement accordingly. Hence why I'm thinking it's more likely intended to be a feature.

 

Yes. And it should work the other way around too - when you select tracks in Logic, the controller updates it's view based on the current fader bank.

 

I believe then when I go to automate a track or select a region elsewhere not in my current banks' view, it is wanting to scroll back to what it thinks is the first selected track of the bank.

 

If you are selecting a region, and Logic is automatically selecting the corresponding track, then that is configurable behaviour in Logic - you can turn that off (and I have always had that turned off).

 

But yes, have a play around with the options, and let us know what you discover. If you can't find anything that affects it, post back with specifics of the exact procedure you can do and what happens on the controller, and we can investigate further.

[wing]

If you are selecting a region, and Logic is automatically selecting the corresponding track, then that is configurable behaviour in Logic - you can turn that off (and I have always had that turned off).

 

Actually yeah I have that off already – not a fan of that behavior. So I can definitely rule that one out.

 

Based on all settings I'm looking at, there really shouldn't be a reason for the banks to 'scroll' the view to an irrelevant track, but like I said a lot of the Avid settings are a bit unclear and aren't even in their manual. I'll update here as soon as I am able to narrow down the issue more precisely. Thanks!

[wing]

Hi there, figured I would offer an update in case anyone else witnesses this behavior. After a long week working and trying to observe when it happens, I think I narrowed it down to after I twirl open (or close) a summing stack or group. So let's say I have my drum summing stack collapsed and I scroll up to it, twirl it open so I can see the tracks, and click on my kick track to make some edits – that's when it jumps back down. It's pretty disorienting and distracting in a project with lots of tracks. I wish there was a way to disable this but what I think is happening is the mixer interface is re-populating its bank list of channels any time a summing stack is opened or closed (since you can't look at tracks on the mixer unless they are open).

 

I'd be curious if anyone else out there has witnessed this behavior and if so, what's your setup? Thanks!