Automation... if we go back into the not too distant past, this would mean you would not have to switch the gears in a car.
A few times (as a musician) I was called into the control room... "Hey can you do us a favor?" Being a helpful fellow, I went to the control room and was prompted to do this, at this specific time, with these (insert number) of faders. With all honesty, I had no idea what was happening but there were a lot of hands moving about - insert lousy sexual joke here - So there is my pre-automation days. We automated manually.
And with all honesty this is why, for my little project studio, I went from a decent sounding analogue mixer to the d8b. I found myself spending a lot of time writing stuff down on where I left off on songs I was working on. I wanted to work on more than one thing at a time and some times many things. Well, this became very time consuming and to be honest, I always was "in the ball park" so there needed to be tweaking and that is more time... time time time... it keeps marching on.
You know as well as I know when you call up a project and everything is like you left it --- WOW!!! All the faders snap into place. Hello!!!
What a wonderful world we live in now that it is much easier to navigate things. Sorry for the long one, but it’s true. Don’t forget to buy my High C Double G decipher code book for $30.00 US so you can read this post! ha ha… okay maybe not funny
Just a rant,
Michael