Currently touch mode is pretty useless in Reaper unless you are only making the tiniest of alterations. For example:
I propose to make add a new touch/latch mode (or edit the old touch mode) which will make automation using a control surface much easier.
Currently in reaper, once fader touch has finished (or for none-touch devices, once the fader has stopped moving), reaper adds an extra point to switch back to the previous automation line. However, this is rarely useful behaviour as shown below:
Think back to analogue land for a moment. When you moved a fader, you expected it to stay where you left it, not spring back up to 0db as if someone had tied elastic to it. The same goes for the digital world too. This is already doable using latch mode, but the problem with latch mode is that it will then overwrite any automation that was already entered if you let the song play on.
It would make much more sense for the last automation value received by reaper to be held (like in latch mode) until the next significant portion of previously entered automation is reached (see example above).
Currently it is near enough impossible to use a control surface to make several real world tweaks to a mix without accidentally overwriting at least one envelope. With the new smart touch/latch mode, it would be really easy.
There are several problems for the devs to work out though. For example some might actually like the behaviour as it is (see this thread:
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=75850). To solve that, i suggest there should be several touch "endings" that can be selected by the user (either from the right-click menu or in settings). Examples could be:
Hold last entered value until next significant change <- my idea
Add extra point from old envelope after last entered value <- the current system
Do not add extra points, allow old envelopes and new to merge <- suggested in this thread:
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=75850
The other point for the developers to work out would be how to define "significant change", and whether to make it user definable or not. This could be based on number of envelope points, distant between points, difference between points etc. But we'll let the devs worry about that one ;)
Please vote for this feature. It would make automation life so much easier!
discussion here:
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=85754