Hi friends!
I confess that I have never been into similar situation but I would like to ask you.

The band records, edit, mix and master with you. You provide them your DAw back CD-Rs where most of the recording sessions are properly labled, edited and compacted.

Is it possible to tweak the pluginsduring automation?

I would like to draw in volumes and mutes with the mouse. I can do this but it quantizes to the nearest beat and the music I'm working on is free form. I need to draw the automation without snapping to the nearest beat. I can't find how to do this in the manual.

So, what's out there in (large frame, analog) console mute/fader automation land? What options exist, VCA & motorized faders, and how do some of the options sound? What kind of prices could I expect for retrofitting a 40 input console? Fletcher, I remember you mentioning a VCA auto system that you were impressed with the sound of. Then there's Neve, Uptown, etc...

The first time I heard those pops and weird bad quality automated panning I thought it was because I was also automating volume as well as applying three insert effects: two VST and one DX to a 96KHz 24 bit audio file... "Too much for my PC", said I. But as I opened the VST performance window it showed a reasonable headroom, not even reaching the half of it (CPU and DISK).