Massive automation in Ableton Live overridden by ghosts

wayfinder · August 8

ableton live folks: have you ever encountered a situation where automation of massive parameters in the arrangement is "overridden" by (nonexisting) automation in the session view upon document load? this does not happen with other synths. when i load the track, these automations will be greyed out and inactive in the arrangement view. if i click the "re-enable automation" button (center top, the arrow pointing left), they will be activated. the same happens if i start or stop playback in session view (which is completely empty!)

i asked in the ableton forums, and they said it is an older bug in massive…

it's not max 4 live (don't have that). it happens on the absolute minimal setup (1 track: massive, nothing else but a single clip in the arrangement view with a single massive parameter automated). it happens right on load, before any user interaction or anything playing. it happens even with all hardware controllers disconnected, so there's no faulty hardware sending unwanted signals. there is no midi data incoming from anywhere else (i monitored it). it happens with both the vst2 and vst3 version of massive.

one perhaps interesting detail: there has to be a parameter change in the automation for it to happen. if the automation is just a bunch of points on the same value, it does not happen.

i am out of ideas, anyone know what to try next? or is it a known bug?

Jeremy_NI · August 8

@wayfinder Can you share screenshots or a small Ableton project? See if we can repro the issue.

wayfinder · August 8

sure, here's the project file:

minimal testcase automation override.zip

before saving:

after loading:

edit: note how there's both a dotted red line and a grey curve. i think massive may be reporting the control at its default value in a way that live interprets as being automated? just a guess though :)

another interesting thing that is happening is that after i load the file, a parameter that i wouldn't know how to even access in massive appears in live's list of parameters: "MODULATOR8_SNCPOS on". i definitely did not add that myself.