So after months of super solid work on my 13" fully spec’ed out M1 Macbook 11.0.10 (Big Sur 11.2.3 (20D91)) with a plethora of third party plugins, from Acustica Audio to Waves and Plugin Alliance…not a single crash, switching between big 200+ Track Projects day in and out, all plugins up to date …i thought i could just update cubase to 11.0.20 without any problems and i was wrong.
I have to admit, having a super reliable Cubase Maschine almost felt boring in a sense. I bragged to my colleagues about Cubase being super stable after almost a year of 10.5.x literally making me lose my mind. Losing money on big projects, because i wasn’t able to deliver. So i went the safe option, never updated after 11.0.10 and i was super happy.
And now i got reminded of how it feels like when projects don’t load anymore. Cubase crashes with vastly different Crash Report Logs. I tried to load 5 Songs I’m currently working on for an EP and all 5 Songs that loaded PERFECTLY on 11.0.10, multiple times do not load anymore and System Activity on MacOS shows Cubase (doesn’t respond) with almost 60gb’s of usage, after trying to open any project.
I could post about how frustrated i am that I’m having problems and seek for help to get 11.0.20 to run fine just like i did 11.0.10 and by doing that i put myself in the position of being bombarded with messages like “did you update your plugins?”, “are you sure you are not using any cracks?”, “have you tried updating your OS”, “do you use a Firewall”, “have you tried restarting your mac?”…and i don’t mind people trying to help, BUT:
there is only one professional solution for a situation like that: restoring my 11.0.10 with yesterday’s Time Machine Backup and get back to work.
I’m not sure if i need any Bugfixes or features in the *.20 update, but i surely don’t need to find the answer for the occurring question why the same exact projects just don’t load with a newer version anymore.
Feel free to share your experiences. I feel quite confident with my current installation of 11.0.10 and that was taken away with just a click and i hate that!
yes i am. 15 busses with plenty of fx, 20 fx tracks total, 50-60 instrument tracks, and around 100 audio tracks. at least 200 plugins in total. cubase 11.0.10 has been rock solid, even on rosetta 2
Wow. Sounds like those M1 chips are incredible. How is it able to support so many plugins with just 16 gigs of ram. I was waiting for the M2 MacBook Pro 16 to get more ram but sounds like that machine will be overkill for audio production.
this might sound like a conspiracy theory, but there is something about the memory allocation on the new SOC’s that makes 16gb feel like 32gb. I was working with 32gb before and I do use a lot of Kontakt stuff and I do not feel a big difference. Not sure what it is, but that’s my overall feeling.
I had the same experience. Cubase 11.0.10 worked great. As soon as I updated to 11.0.20 I started having issues. At one point it wouldn’t find the license if it was on a hub. As for Time Machine, it takes too long for a restore. I use SuperDuper on the Mac. It will back up your entire drive and restore from backup in just a few minutes.
i use superduper for system clones, but why wouldn’t you just restore ONLY cubase? that took 1 min. just copy the cubase file over from your time machine
If it is just a version change I would just do the copy from Time Machine or your system backup. Even just copy out your preference folder, uninstall and reinstall too. Some how I miss-understood that you were doing a system restore.
Somehow, being a Mac user, and reading your post, I get the feeling that Cubase has mostly issues with their Mac version. Because some people state that their Cubase is solid and works fine and they are happy, while I just can’t understand that from my experience. From my experience, Cubase crashes more than it should where my 12 other DAWs don’t. And there are lots of annoyances with broken features, UI glitches and when you read the patch notes, some stuff makes it into release that is downright unacceptable. Like the sampler track referring to the wrong file. But I start to assume that the Windows crowd might be more happy with their experience? Any folks from over there sharing their point of view?
considering the fact, that 90% of my support tickets were left unanswered, i’d rather let other users do the beta testing in the meantime i will continue using 11.0.10, which honestly runs just great
I don’t get crash dumps in most cases. The DAW would either just disappear and then… nothing. Or it would become completely unresponsive, so I have to force quit the application. In both cases, I do not see a crash reporter, nor do I find .crash files in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports. Example from just a moment ago. I have already disabled the VST3 suspend option a while ago, but I decided to test if Cubase 11.0.20 would be more stable for me, if I also disabled GPU accelleration. Well, the only thing I did was to load the latest version of NI Reaktor 6 with Monark and put a Steinberg Multitap Delay on it, browsing Delay presets while playing the computer keyboard.
And then, after a while of this, I clicked the preset selection arrow and the DAW just froze to death. Waited a couple of minutes, then forced the application to quit. No crash dump to be found. Here’s a screenshot showing that the program doesn’t react anymore (in German, unfortunately the screenshot tool did not capture the rainbow ball of death). You can still see the frozen, highlighted preset selection button on the Delay.
My overall experience with Cubase 11 is riddled with freezes, crashes, UI annoyances you guys never fixed through several versions. I don’t even stress test this thing or do anything hard or exotic with it. I usually just open Cubase these days to see if the mess works better now, and testing it consists of loading 1-3 instruments and less than 5 effects before I run into the first issue. With version 11, there is not a single freshly created session that’s without issues. And that is why I am so upset here in the forums, and why I want you guys to seriously change your priorities towards making the DAW rock solid stable and working as intended in all areas. Since I can only speak for the experience on Mac, especially with attention to the Mac build. Because that is definitely not in an acceptable condition.
And before you blame my system: As you may see on the screenshot, I own MANY other DAWs to compare performance and stability with. And I can assure you that they all run without these issues.
Virtually none of my stability issues with Cubase 11, all versions, generate crash reports.
OSX.15.6. Donno why.
I went back to the point zero version. It’s the easier to work with, fewer problems, still a seriously unhappy experience. It’s as unstable as it has been on any system including systems that were probably just barely within rec. specs. The breakage of features, I felt like I needed to express it again. Little things but one after another they add up. Really stupid and absolutely pointless changes like, used to be command-click in the volume bar in Inspector would create a starting value of 100 for a MIDI track. Sure, get rid of that because it’s normal and useful. I think the people that code like this maybe can step away from the pipe a minute.
Every single day I work I start and the first move I make causes a crash. These are not predictable and seem pretty empty of meaning to me.
At this point, and this is new to the second half of 2020 and forward, VE Pro and Cubase appear to hate each other’s guts. The changes during this period were all of them Cubase versions, I’m using otherwise two plugins, one of them is Frequency.
Yeah, this is unacceptable. Import audio render to project, don’t think this is asking a whole lot, one single instrument, no reverb/no send, CRASH. Five or six today. I’m for the very first time open to trying something else, this is daily misery and anger, I didn’t spend all this money to be sick and never get well.
Aside from Cubase, I have tried and bought: Reason, REAPER, Studio One, Ableton Live 10, Samplitude Pro X5, Logic Pro, Renoise, Ardour / Mixbus, Waveform, Roland Zenbeats.
From my experience, the best choices are:
Ableton Live, super stable and best supported DAW - IF you can live with the flat UI and its weird workflow, as well as its limitations.
Studio One, very comparable to Cubase. More modern, quick workflow. However: included instruments are crap, only the Professional version is useful and personally, the UI is too cluttered for my eyes and brain.
Logic Pro, overall my favourite alternative. Clean UI, runs great on Mac (obviously), included instruments and FX are insanely good. I enjoy the MIDI editing workflow / sequencer in Logic. But I need to mention that I had one or two crashes with it in the past. By far not as much as with Cubase though.
Renoise, if you mostly create electronic music and work the most with samples. Robust, feature rich, modern tracker. The tracker workflow can be incredibly fast and inspiring. You can also load instrument plugins and automatically sample them. Bonus: runs on Windows, Mac and Linux natively.
Well, thanks. Of those, maybe Studio One (if it connects with a VST 3 VE Pro). Logic with VE Pro has too many headaches. I’m a linear composer.
Here’s the thing, I reduced my template in VEP considerably for this accursed project, it’s not using CPU to where there should be anything close to an issue. It’s not using that much of my 64GB RAM, performance remains a problem and I have to let everything catch up at every juncture (like I have a slow machine) or crash, then there’s the wtf crashes. It did import that render but crashed anyway. I think the point zero version is not more stable than the (not-) maintenance point versions.
So I’m avoiding some new bugs introduced is all.
I get freezes and crashes without dumps in many different situations. And I must honestly say, I am not going to do what will surely end up being weeks of unpaid work of beta testing. I bought a rather premium priced professional product and I expect it to function, at least to a satisfying degree. And I expect the company making it to ensure they have proper testing and development resources.
I already have reported issues with Cubase in the past, and none of them have been fixed or even answered properly. One of them which I could precisely describe as malfunctioning was even discussed away as a “feature request” by a moderator and put into a years old forum thread to be never seen again.
My freezes and Cubase shutdowns don’t leave crashdumps in most cases, so I don’t have much to contribute anyway. I would have to meticulously test for specific situations, see if and how they are repeatable and then do the work of reporting them properly, all while I can’t even say I am sure they’ll even be noticed or fixed. And if you expect me to do that, stop right there.
I have NOT opted in to be a tester at any point. I am an end customer and user. If Steinberg does not invest properly into their feedback loop and testing, that is not my concern. The only concern I have is to get a useable product as advertised.
in the meantime i will continue using 11.0.10, which honestly runs just great