I have an instrument track (IT) and an audio track (AT). The IT is the AT’s input. If I disable the IT and re-enable it, the AT’s input stays blank (none). I’d expect it to be set back to the IT. Is this a bug or am I missing something?
That’s probably right. When you disable a track it’s almost like deleting it so the AT will lose its input. Enabling again will not put it back as the AT does not know what its input was anymore.
Then it could be a very good new feature, because now I need a group for each single IT I want to record in a AT, if I want to AT to “remember” what was its last input, which is quite lame.
Muting rather than Disabling the Instrument Track should produce the behavior you want.
Also you may want to take a look at Render In Place which is designed (among other things) to create an Audio Track from an Instrument Track.
The idea I have is to go to the “mixing mode” after recording, which can be done at once for all tracks. Disabling tracks frees the RAM and CPU. Mute doesn’t.
Render in place is good but the purpose is for particular events to be turned into audio, not all tracks. Freezing takes too long time and feels not right to me for this.
I wonder if different workspaces could make it possible what I’m trying to achieve.
Are you having a problem running out (or getting close to) of those resources? If not, you’re just creating busy work for yourself.
You can use Render In Place on selected Events/Parts and not just entire Tracks.
Pretty unlikely. Workspaces are just arrangements of open Windows on your desktop. For example - your Project Window on Monitor 1 and the Mixconsole sharing space with an Editor Window on Monitor 2. They don’t do anything on their own beyond making different elements of the Cubase GUI visible.
Unfortunately, I have. My iMac Pro 2017 with only 32 GB of RAM is getting old. Although I have a PC for instrument library rendering, the iMac hits its limits in projects with a couple of hundred tracks.
You are right; I tried that, and it’s just visual stuff.
Thanks for your help anyway.
Very big projects? 
Dunno if they are very big for everyone, but for my iMac, they definitely are. 
What is the purpose of this? Instrument tracks are audio output, so what do you want to achieve by this?
Maybe you could describe your setup and project more in detail, and thereby get more help.
ATs are the stems for mixing. I simply record from instrument tracks—which are usually MIDI tracks. This allows me to use different channel strips for mixing and composing.
Instrument Tracks & MIDI Tracks are two similar but distinct Track Types which behave differently, so it’s not clear what you might mean by this.
It sounds to me like you’ve created an idiosyncratic & cumbersome workflow that is impeding your ability get work done rather than enhancing it. Of course these are all just tools that we can use in any manner we want. But if you insist on using a screwdriver to hammer in nails you’re also going to need to deal with the inefficiencies that decision causes.
From your description of what you are trying to accomplish (rather than how you are trying) it still sounds to me like Render In Place is the best & simplest tool to get the job done.
For tracks created using “Render in Place,” the channel strip matches that of the instrument track; while this is sometimes acceptable, it is often not ideal for mixing. That is why I use a fake template project (for importing wanted tracks) containing all instrument and audio tracks, allowing me to define specific default channel strips for each track type. For projects with more than 100 tracks, manual setup would be a time-consuming nightmare. Every single new project.