When finishing a track, I’m working almost entirely in the Arrangement view, but there’s one reason I regularly return to the Session view: to check levels in the mix.
Float your mouse over the top boundary of the Session view’s Mixer section. It will turn into a splitter tool. Click and drag upwards to expand the Mixer so it looks like this:
You may also have to drag the Track Header’s border to widen the track in order to see all the controls.
The advantage of this view is that you can get a bit more information about what’s going on with the track’s levels. Notice the yellow oval at the top – that’s the Peak Level indicator. It’s telling me that this track is peaking at +3.25 dB.
Let’s say I want to bring this track down so it’s peaking around -6dB. Rather than dragging the fader down, I can adjust the track’s level by typing a value into the rectangle directly below Peak Level.
This brings down the level of the track, but doesn’t cause Peak Level to reset. That’s because the peak indicator will continue to display the maximum volume the track has reached until you stop and start Live, or you manually reset it. To manually reset, just click on it.
