Hello, everyone,
I am writing for the first time on this forum, although I have been a Cubase user for many years.
I have for several time been using a Cubase-based remote recording system to record live classical music concerts.
In order not to have any problems when recording concerts, I enabled in the preferences the option “Audio Pre-Record Seconds” by setting it to 60 seconds, so as to have extra safety in case something happened before I pressed Rec.
During one of these concerts the power strip broke and the audio interface went off, the pop-up “Audio Hardware Removed” appeared and after selecting the interface still off another pop-up appeared where it said “The audio driver could not be loaded.” To exit this window I clicked “Cancel” and then once I had saved the session, I exited Cubase and restarted the program. Once I loaded the project again I expected to have the tracks recorded up to that point, but to my amazement Cubase had erased all the audio recorded up to that point.
I wanted to report this Bug, because it is very dangerous, it can potentially create disasters during live recordings, I am amazed that Steinberg has never detected this serious problem, a program used by professionals cannot be so unstable and without any degree of protection of recorded data…
The only way to avoid this bug is to set the Audio Pre-Record to 0 seconds.
Have you checked your pool?
I once had a BSOD caused by a faulty sata cable and when I came back cubase had everything recorded, but not on track, everything was in pool.
That said keep in mind that I had the project saved just before the crash, so I would expect that you will have the files unless you didn’t save at all.
Either ways you can check your pool
Hi almaelectronix,
thank you very much for your reply, no, unfortunately there are no files in the pool, I tested the bug both on my laptop system and on the two systems in the two studios in my facility. We use both Windows 10 and Windows 11, with different hardware, but just run the procedure that I can summarize below:
1- set “Audio Pre-Record Seconds” with a value greater than 0
2- arm a track in recording
3- start the recording
4- turn off the audio interface
5- when the “Audio Hardware Removed” pop-up appears, choose OK, but do not turn on the audio interface yet.
6- a second pop-up will open “The audio driver could not be loaded.”
7- select CANCEL
8- Save the session
9- Close Cubase and restart it
10- The files disappeared from the audio files folder
So, a couple of questions:
First, did you see the audio files in the audio files folder at some point before closing Cubase?
Secondly, before you saved and closed Cubase did whatever was prerecorded appear on the timeline and play back?
Exactly, the files are located in the audio folder before the project is closed and reopened. Additionally, the track enabled for recording is still shown in red, as if it were still recording audio. The only way to unlock the system is to select a new audio interface (if one is available). At that point, the system displays a pop-up message indicating that there has been a drop out, the recording stops, and you can save the session. Cubase does not delete the previously recorded audio files.
I kindly ask you to also try reproducing this issue on your system, simply follow the guide a couple of posts earlier, in order to understand if it’s localized to Windows only or if it’s a programming issue that also affects MacOS systems.
Would there be a possibility to either bounce the events to create new audio files - before close/reopen, or to simply go into the audio files folder and copy them and paste them somewhere else (or duplicate them)?
I know it doesn’t solve the problem, just thinking about ways to get out of trouble if this happens…
I don’t really feel comfortable going through those specific steps on my setup. Sorry about that. If it wasn’t for the power-off / disconnect of the interface I’d gladly check it out.
Unfortunately, I tried it; Windows does not allow me to copy the files to another location while Cubase is still recording. Moreover, in the specific case of the concert I was recording, I needed to copy approximately 30GB of audio as quickly as possible so that I could then resume recording the remainder of the concert.
Isn’t Audio Pre-Record only hold in memory? It has to be continious refreshed to have the latest audio.
The strange thing is that the files exist in the ‘Audio Files’ folder during recording, as soon as the session is saved and reopened, the files are deleted from Cubase.
Basically from what I understand the program when it no longer has a connection to an audio interface continues to record even though it no longer detects an audio interface and unless it can re-establish a connection with Asio drivers, once the program is closed it clears the cache completely.
Unfortunately, a professional audio software should be foolproof during delicate operations such as live recordings, for the same reason the program stops recording if I try to insert a plugin or add a track during recording.
It’s not acceptable, Cubase itself should refuse to perform a potentially destructive task.