i just have to vent here... what the "f" is the deal with DAW developers not understanding "undo"... and how much "it" should be able to undo.. I've worked heavily with Reason, FL Studio and Ableton over the years ... i know them very well. Lately I've been working on PT and Logic... Out of all of 'em, Reason and Ableton are the only ones where the "undo" function literally un-does every single f'n thing you touch, move, slide, toggle and probably even smirk at.

Any person that works for any company developing software is quite set-apart from the average person, in terms of intellect.... so why on earth would NOT being able to undo eveything NOT be an obvious "solar-flare through the night sky" as far as a response to the question: "How should we improve our digital audio workstation software for this next version?"


P.S. Catalyst... do you have netflix or hbo?

 

I've primarily used FL Studio. Everything I've been able to undo has always been in the DAW itself, but not in 3rd party plugins or anything. In Ableton, is it possible to undo a function that you perform in a separate plugin?

If so, I've been unaware of this.

 

The Best way is to save your project every 10 or 15 minute
like project 1-1 + text file of what the project contain like (effects & Vstinstruments) you did use in the project
and that goes every 10 or 15 minute with Project 1-2 & project 1-3 & etc , until you finish your work
so by that if u want to go back to a previous session you find yourself with proper steps

PS : I Don't Trust the undo function that's why i use the method that i mention above

 

It depends on the plugin, some undos some not.
I think it depends on how the plug-in report parameters to the host.
Usually if you assign plug-in parameters for automation to Ableton they're undoable.
No need to actually automate them, it's enough to add them to the list in the plug-in panel in Ableton.

Are you talking about Logic dim_triad? Am I right?
Cause at first approach it make you go nuts, faders movements non undoable and many other things.
You can set up in preferences the undo history and behavior btw

 

yeah... you know what, I forgot that in Ableton, there are some 3rd parties that don't undo...

Copylefter... I know you can change the number of undo's in Logic, but I didn't think I could change "what" can actually get undone.. at least to a point that allows fader movements and such to be undone.

 

I understand most devs don't want to interact with undo in 3rd party (aka. any vst) as they'll show very different behavior :
- just work
- not reacting
- hang-up on the DAW and crash.

Few rules of thumbs :

- if you can't accept your daw crashing or unexpectable behaviors (ie. unreliables undo) or overload : stick to the DAW stock plugins as much as you can. For ableton : Operator, eq8, Corpus, Glue, Saturator, are beasts (even compared to Waves or NI stuffs and such)

- vsts are still great, even with really good commercial ones it can fuck up : how annoying to crash your daw and recovering to a default preset? -> I know it's much more comfy to just Ctr+Z , but use the VST undo function whenever you can, save presets the plugins (or as a separate preset in your daw lib : reaper and ableton do that)

- getting back to 1st point : watch in a spectrum analyzer how your favorite vintage gears emulation work : usually , you can emulate pretty closely ANY of these with a clever effect rack : eq8 + saturator/erosion/overdrive/... will get you pretty far and will make you really proud... it'll take some time to get it right and nice, but when it's done, you'll have a super 8 knobs eq that'll eat 0.1% cpu instead of 3

I think the "project 1-1" is a terrible way of working. (you usually just end up with a maze of "project.bak broject2 project.bak.3 project.bak.tmp.FAIL project.bak.1.2 project.4 project.zoiheihd", and you can't work with that)
If you work on a Mac, the Time-Machine is what you need. It's all love and greatness.
I don't know if there is a reliable "per hour snapshot system" on Windows, I asked a few people, it doesn't seem so.

Some undos, with an uncorrelated history, with a per group/track/device histories, would be insanely awesome, i imagine it'll happen in the future, but for now, you just have to deal with what we have

 

I long ago gave up trusting computers with anything important [including timers]. When Norton Ghost came out I tried it as a cheap & easy backup method. It failed. I lost well over 2 years of work & songwriting. I cried. Got drunk for several weeks. Swore at Norton.

You have caused me to think of something though. I don't save as often as I should. I think I can do something about that.

In International Amateur Radio rules, radio operators must identify themselves every 10 minutes. When I was a bit younger I built a little box to help me with that. It had an NE555 timer circuit, 9v power, on-off switch, little red button switch to reset it [after it went off at it's 10 min interval], & a low value pot to set volume level, all in a band-aid box. I don't know what a band-aid is called in other countries. Maybe small bandage?

I am going to look for it & put it on my DAW desk. If I can't find it I'm certain I can reproduce it easily or at least find the schematic in my analog file cabinet. If anyone here thinks they might have use of such a thing, just PM me & I will make up an instruction packet.

 

Cubase always had a undo function it only Undo's the one thing you are working But what i don't like at least in Cubase 5.5 is if you do something like go in to a vocal Wav form and say i cleaning up all the breaths and background noise and take a breath out and move on and take some ether thing out down the line and then i change my mind and want to Keep the breath i took out if i go to Undo to will undo all the things that i did after until i get to that breath so i have to really make that decision if i really want to remove that breath ( wish they gave the option to go back how many steps 1 2 3 or 4

 

undo function of orion undo's spire preset changes which i thought was impressive and rare, in fact i thnk its the only synth i can think of this happens

 

flstudio-settings-undo history tick undo knob tweaks set max undo at 999, I don't see the problem

 

the undo functions in fl studio are really REALLY annoying. hats off to people like voxengo who have very good undo withing the plugins. othwerwise, i am just in the habit of Ctrl + S almost constantly and i will usually try and go through initial setups of any new installations so i can be aware of the way undos are handled , where directories are etc. it is odd that i never have this kind of problem in graphics software for example. i wish the image line developers could sort out the fl setup; i love it for the most part but when you lose work as stated in other posts here.. well, you can end up banging your head against the wall and mewling like a child.