Gordon...

re automation.

frankly ive never been happy with any daws automation features.
whether drawing such in or recording fader moves.
maybe its my vision impairment...but overall automation is a pita and i lose patience quickly as i never seem to be able to get the result i hear in my head.
lets take volume automation as an example...entering the different graphical
points drives me crazy.
i find when i want precision at some point in an audio track or midi track i get the best results viz what i hear in my head by splitting out that track section to its own track.
eg lets say bars 41 to 48 in a 120 bar song need special settings....
i split that 8 bars out to a seperate track. ive done a zillion vocal tracks this way irrespective of the daw i'm useing at the time eg rb or reaps or whatever daw.

frankly i think its the nature of the automation beast.
often there is no option if one wants precision to get into down and dirty editing in the track itself.
i used to go nuts in big studios in the 2 inch tape 24 track era trying mixer automation. if i did get it right it was often a fluke...lol.

just my 2 pennies or cents opinion.
i assume you need to deal with crescendos and decrescendos ?

happiness.

om

my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..)
https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs
(90 songs created useing bb/rb)
(lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)