[Paul Maunder]

I've just finished mixing a one hour documentary using PTLE7. Whilst Pro tools 7 seems generally pretty good on my system (Dual 1ghz G4, 1.75GM RAM), I've encountered a problem with volume automation. When playing back a mix, certain regions will occasionally play back extremely loud as though Pro Tools is ignoring the volume automation and playing it back at full level. This usually happens when two adjacent regions have different volume settings, which have been set using the trimmer. I noticed this problem when checking back a mix before final mixdown. It only happens on regions which have a sudden change in volume from the previous region. Strangely though, the problem is intermittent. If a session has been playing through for a while and such a volume change is encountered, pro tools will randomly ignore the volume automation for that region and play it back extremely loud. Stopping playback and starting it again from just before that region usually causes it to play back correctly. I've found that if I have a more smooth volume transition from one region to the next, the problem doesn't occur. Has anyone else encountered this?

As I'm sure you can imagine, this is a big problem when mixing lengthy mixes down as there's no guarantee that the mix will be bounced down accurately, which has meant I've had to bounce the program down in sections and review the bounced files carefully before sending them out.