Slow automation, rooms and the sleep timer

A good ambience changes slowly. In the Studio you can give every layer an automation curve, put the whole scene into a Room, and let a Sleep timer end playback gently.

Automation curves

Open Automation (off) on a layer card.

1. Choose a Preset:
2. Slow swell (every 2 minutes) — the level breathes between 55% and 115%,
3. Rise over 5 minutes and Calm down over 5 minutes,
4. Gentle waves (every 40 seconds),
5. Constant (no automation) removes the curve.
6. The small chart shows the curve; the dashed line is 100%.
7. The table lists the points: Time (minutes), Level (%) and Curve to the next point — Straight, Smooth or Step (hold). Edit any value, remove a point with its bin button, or press Add point for a new point one minute after the last one.

100% is the layer’s own Volume. After the last point the level stays where it ended. A layer can have up to 32 points.

Automation, fade-in and start time combine into one gain envelope. The live player and the WAV export use the same envelope points, so what you hear while playing is what you export.

Example: a rainstorm that builds up. Give a Rain layer Rise over 5 minutes, add a Wind layer with Slow swell (every 2 minutes), and start a thunder recording with Start after (seconds) set to 180.

Rooms

Room in the scene settings adds reverberation to the whole mix: Small room, Living room, Studio, Concert hall, Cathedral, Cave or Open forest. Room amount scales how much of the reverberant sound you hear (0–150%). The rooms are the same presets as the standalone room-reverb tool; their reverberation times are typical for such spaces, not measurements of a particular building.

Master volume

Master volume lowers or raises the whole scene. A soft limiter in the export keeps peaks below clipping.

Sleep timer

Choose a Sleep timer of 15 minutes to 3 hours. Playback runs normally, then fades out during the Sleep fade-out (minutes) and stops. The top bar shows the time played and “sleep in … min”. The sleep timer applies to exports too: an export longer than the timer ends in silence.

Shortcuts that help while listening

• Space plays or stops (when no button has focus),
• M / S mute or solo the focused layer,
• Ctrl+Z undoes the last change, Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes it.

Single-key shortcuts can be switched off under File → Keyboard shortcuts.