Let me take a step back and explain a few things. As I mentioned on the thread of mine where I experienced corrupted projects and you insisted that I had bad RAM (I let this get the better of me: Someone Is Wrong On The Internet and ran RAM tests for 2 days to prove that wasn’t the case), I have a degree in computer science from an Ivy League university and work at a major consumer hardware/software/services company managing software development for a product that ships to tens of millions of customers worldwide.
I also want to say that I love Cubase and if you follow me you’ll know that I talk it up when appropropriate on other forums (since I’m not at all anonymous like some folks who post here–you can find out everything I’ve said on the web, KVR, Gearslutz, etc. by just googling for my signature and lights or lights fade low and listen to my music at my website or follow me on facebook right from my sig). But here is where we ask for help about our Cubase problems.
So, as I was saying, my personal experience from shipping consumer hardware, software, and services–both closed and open platforms–is that you have bugs. Everyone has bugs. Here’s an example–One product I work on is a closed system of hardware, software, and services. Nothing runs on it but software we certify. It’s very sophisticated and an amazing product. There are millions of them all over the world. People love them. Occasionally some people have problems with them. They encounter bugs. Our bugs. We know because every crash results in an error report that gets automatically uploaded to our service. Some of these crashes we fix. Others we don’t. Why? Because some bugs only affect maybe 1,000 users out of tens of millions. Does that mean they aren’t bugs? No. Does that mean that they configured the system wrong? Impossible: we built it and they can’t change it. So why do just one thousand users experience a particular crash? Because they exercise code paths that others don’t.
Now apply that background to Cubase–which is more of an open platform running on an open configuration. And worse, VST is an open in-proc architecture, meaning that uncertified 3rd party DLLs are loaded in the same process as Cubase. As far as I can tell from using the last 2 versions of Cubase, Steinberg has no automatic crash reporting system of any kind. So not only does Conman have no idea how many people are running Cubase with no problems, neither does Steinberg. When a project or a data file becomes corrupt is it likely that this is a result of a bug either in Cubase or a VST? Yes. (Note that it’s inexcusable for a VST bug, even one that causes a crash, to corrupt a project but it seems to happen regularly). Is it possible that it’s the result of faulty hardware or a bad system configuration, yes… but it’s far, far less likely. Keep in mind that there is error checking built into modern systems and even into the firmware of HDDs and failing hardware would result in everything else on the system crashing too.
So I’m happy to hear about Conman’s software development experience or where he got his degree in compsci or even a list of posts where people actually confirmed that he helped them find bad RAM or a faulty hard disk. But until I see any data, I’m going with my 15 years of experience in the hardware, software, and services industry that says that a corrupt project or prefs file is unlikely the culprit of a bad PC.
Now we’re all here because we think Cubase is the best DAW on the market… or we’d be at the Logic or ProTools forums. Every product has bugs. The reason we’re here is to either get help or help others–in a PRODUCTIVE manner that will result in the problems being resolved.
The reason people get tired of Conman is that he spreads FUD on problems and it’s enough to derail the conversation and the problem doesn’t get fixed or even acknowledged due to all the confusion. That’s NOT helpful. That’s exactly wha happened here. It happened the last time I had a problem. It’s not why are here.