Until they have Mixer Undos… Until the 12th… of nehhhhhverrrrr.
What I often do is put a dummy automation point at the beginning of a track and ANY automation I think I’m likely to use and set it to [R] as a safety. And as I mix I am periodically putting in more dummy automation points simply to save the level at various points in the song. This is the poor-man’s Mixer Undo.
Now… what if this could be done automatically when you add tracks? The tempo track currently does exactly this. When you create a tempo track, you get a dummy automation point at time zero.
I submit -that- is what should happen with every new track. It should automatically have an automation point at time zero and give you the option of enabling R/W upon creation. Because when you hit the [R] button you’re really just doing what the tempo track does—telling Cubase to pay attention to that starting automation point.
One other detail… just add a new Key Command called Write Current Automation State For All Tracks… which simply writes a new automation point at the cursor for the current value at every track/lane with an [R] status.
The beauty is that this is code they already have in place (ie. automation is already undoable) SO NO NEW CODE NEEDED!
This isn’t perfect, but it would solve the vast majority of the OOOPS scenarios I run into by simply giving me a one-button way to do something I already do (enable R/W automation and create dummy automation points as a poor-man’s Mixer Undo.)
Plus: unlike a -separate- ‘Mixer Undo’ system, it would require no new learning curve or gadgetry… ie. it just uses the same UX we already know and love.