When doing a Touch automation pass in Loop mode on a lane with no existing automation, the value does not return to the previous value. So it acts as Latch instead of Touch, and basically fills to the end of the track. I see this currently on Cubase 10.
There are about a million threads on this topic going back years now:
But in none of them have I seen Steinberg respond or give a reason as to why this behavior exists or a timeline to fix it. I’m hoping that somehow someone from Steinberg will just chime in and say either “we aren’t fixing it, pay more for Nuendo if you want professional features” or “we are working on a fix right now”, but I’m not holding my breath.
So the above post isn’t 100% rant, here’s some useful info I didn’t find anywhere else - this is how I have been working around the problem.
If you have no automation on a lane, and you have your loop points set up for a section and want to do a proper touch/loop automation pass for that section and have the parameter snap back to where it was before the pass started, you just need to touch the parameter briefly before actually writing. So instead of just grabbing your compressor threshold and changing the value (for example), give a short single click on the knob first. That single click will write initial data to the track at the value the parameter is currently set to, and now automation will behave as expected.
You just need to get into the habit of automation basically being a double-click instead of a single. Works the same on my Mackie Control, need to just touch the faders briefly to store the current value. Usually end up moving them a bit though while doing this which is obnoxious.