Thanks, a good suggestion and one that suddenly occured to me while reading the Cubase manual but it wasn’t enabled. I see Cubase 12 is now out so I am going to upgrade and see if that makes any difference. If it is still a problem I will contact Nektar. It is good to know their support is good. Thanks for your help and suggestions. If I eventually find the fix I will update this thread.
Cubase 12 has not fixed the problem and I have also discovered that the problem exists even without the Nektar LX88 disconnected. The latest test shows the following - Add instrument track 1, add instrument track 2. Record something on each track.
Using Nektar controls - write enable track 1 - press play - move control. The first half second of the control movement is recorded on the automation lane and then the focus jumps to the second track
Using mouse on instrument - move control on VSTi - the control movement is recorded until the mouse button is released and then the focus jumps to the second track.
Nektar LX88 disconnected - using the mouse same result as above.
I have installed Cubase 12 on laptop - the problem has not occurred yet.
This leads me to believe that some setting in Cubase on my music pc is causing this problem. I will log a support request with Steinberg but interested to know if anyone has any suggestions.
I have learned something new today. I loaded Cubase 12 on my laptop which worked ok at first but after a short while had problems starting Cubase. It would hang when it got to loading video player. Looking at other reports of this on the net suggested deleting the Cubase 12_64 folder, which seems to hold the preferences settings. This worked a couple of times but then failed. I re-installed it but that did not fix the problem. I eventually found that it didn’t like being installed on an external drive and after re-installing it on the C: drive it has worked ok.
Now to the point - this got me wondering if deleting the Cubase 12_64 folder on my music pc would solve the automation problem. I am pleased to report that, so far, this has worked. Had I not had the laptop problem I would never have known about that folder.