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Do any of the popular DAWs allow you to insert a "pause" into a project.

So for example, I click "play" at the beginning of a file, and the DAW plays back the audio until it comes to a "pause" marker and then pauses itself, until I press play again.

Corey
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  • I'm pretty sure Pro Tools doesn't have any such feature. –  Dec 08 '10 at 01:43
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    Why would you need a pause feature? You could just space things apart in your project, thereby creating a pause that can be as long as you want? –  Dec 08 '10 at 06:42
  • @Krummelz he mentioned wants restarting to be triggered after an arbitrary length of time –  Dec 08 '10 at 14:06

3 Answers3

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I believe it would be possible with Ableton Live. You could split up both parts of the track, pre-pause and post-pause, and put in about a .5 second (however small you can make it) silence which you would place the loop markers around. You would start the track with the loop activated, and the playback would get caught in the silence (paused) until you pressed the loop button, deactivating it.

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Pretty much every DAW I know of does not have this functionality. Although that wouldn't mean that it would be impossible.

If - for instance - you need this functionality for use during a live show, you could get around this problem using MIDI. If you add a MIDI track to your project, that plays MIDI events that are somehow rerouted back to your DAW as a control surface, you could simply add the appropriate command on that track that tells your DAW to stop. Just make sure the track is enabled, and the routing is correct, and you should be good to go.

Depending on what software you are using, you might even be able to do this with no additional hardware, but I am not sure about that at all, as MIDI is not my daily business.

Pelle
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  • +1 Perfectly simple to do using the Piz midi plugin pack (http://www.thepiz.org/pizmidi/), and MIDI Yoke (http://www.midiox.com/index.htm?http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm) –  Dec 08 '10 at 14:40
  • That's an awesome idea! Never thought of that. Hopefully I can actually make it work. –  Dec 08 '10 at 19:55
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FL Studio has this functionality, which it calls “Time Markers”:

  • In the Playlist window, click on the playlist menu button (the small triangle at the top left), and choose Time Markers > Add One. Alternatively, press the shortcut keys Alt+T.
  • Give your Time Marker a name.
  • The new Time Marker appears near the top of the window, just below the time bar and above all the tracks.
  • Drag the Time Marker to wherever you want a pause. The Time Marker snaps to beats/bars/lines/cells according to the project snap settings and the zoom level. Hold down alt to disable snapping.
  • Right click on the Time Marker and choose Pause.

During playback, when the song hits the Time Marker, it will automatically pause. Press the play button to resume.

You can also use Time Markers to create loops, skip sections, to loop/end the song at an arbitrary point or just to attach notes to certain points-in-time.

See also: http://flstudio.image-line.com/help/html/playlist.htm

Daniel Cassidy
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  • I’ve never heard of that product before. There website looks a bit sketchy. Is it a good product? –  Sep 25 '11 at 15:49