Can Cubase Pro 14 be used without network?

Opening Cubase is sometimes confusing. Yesterday, it opened quickly and file accessibility was also fast. Today, it takes forever to initialize the VST3 Plugins folder.

Out of curiosity, I thought maybe without network and Windows Security, it will open quickly. But no, it’s total chaos.

9:45: I disable Ethernet and disable Windows Security real-time protection, no more network. Open Cubase and the ‘Scanning VST3 Plugins…’ initialization window appears with the little wheel spinning.

9:50: the little wheel is still spinning, the window hasn’t moved. I reactivate Ethernet. No change on the horizon.

9:55: I reactivate Windows Security and real-time protection. The window still hasn’t moved and the little Spin wheel is still spinning.

10:00: The wheel is still spinning…
10:10: I put an end to the torture using the task manager.

The question I ask myself is, can Cubase be used without the presence of a network?

What is this problem of opening, sometimes it tempts him to open quickly and oops all of a sudden it does not tempt him anymore, and he decides to make me wait, sometimes more than a minute before the hub appears.

Other than Steinberg, I have plugins from UAD, Softube, Waves, Arturia, NI, PA and of course iLok Manager.

Is the combination of Windows 11 24H2, Cubase Pro 14 and all these plugin vendors so unhealthy that it is impossible to have a software that works properly?

Currently, Cubase is unable to have a stable startup. One day it’s a Ferrari, the next day it’s less than a ‘Sloth’.

Is there anything to do with this or do we just have to endure? I thought without networks things would work better, but it’s even worse…

In our experience, the problem is that some plugins try to connect to the internet when they are scanned, and if you don’t have a network connection then they hang.

Generally this happens when plugins try to refresh their licence at startup. Cubase has no control over this. Cubase itself should be fine to use without a network connection.

I’d suggest ensuring that you have a network connection and then start up Cubase normally. Once the plugin has been scanned then generally it doesn’t need to be scanned again until it is updated (which isn’t likely to happen while you are offline). However, some plugins mark themselves as requesting to be scanned every time because there is a single DLL that contains multiple plugins and the plugins that are available depends on your current licence. WaveShell is one example of that. I’d suggest checking for updates. [cc: @Ulf]

If you want to diagnose which plugins are causing the problem, Dorico has a custom build of the plugin scanner that reports the scan progress on the splash screen (and to a log file), so you can download the Dorico trial.

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I can confirm, that the iLok manager has caused me Cubase startup grief in the context of the Zero DownTime coverage, which “phones home” every so often (every 90 days or so?)

So now I have a regular reminder to myself, to start the iLok app to do that process manually before the automated “phone home” at Cubase startup occurs.

@PaulWalmsley

Your answer helps to better understand the situation.

I downloaded the demo version of Dorico 5. First I opened Dorico, then closed it and started Cubase and then closed it. Both programs started in a reasonable time, Cubase taking a little longer.

I disconnected the network and restarted my system without networking. I started Dorico and it opened in a short time. Immediately after opening a Waves window appeared telling me that no licenses were active or available and asking me to rescan or skip. I skipped.

I closed Dorico and started Cubase and it hung on display ‘Initializing: Scanning VST3 Plugins…’, after a little over two minutes I called the task manager to stop the opening.

I deduce that Dorico has a more robust and intelligent management of program opening and initialization of the VST3 folder than Cubase.

I removed the WaveShell DLLs from the folder and restarted Cubase and the startup was done in a reasonable time.

However, being offline, I lose the use of the UAD plugins which are displayed, but which are unusable and of course those of Waves.

All my licenses are up to date, iLok Manager too. Waves seems to be the cause of all these erratic startups. Could the presence of four DLLs WaveShell1-VST3 10.0_x64, WaveShell1-VST3 15.0_x64, WaveShell1-VST3 15.3_x64 and WaveShell1-VST3 15.5_x64 in the VST3 folder be a source of problem?

The issue of plug-ins going on the network when loaded (scanned), while not a Cubase issue, is one which is also causing me problems when trying to isolate a computer in the post-Windows 10 world.

The only way to do this is to implement a network firewall which would allow traffic to and from “good” network locations (Steinberg and 3rd-party vendors such as plug-in manufacturers) and block traffic to and from “less good” network locations.

The built-in (software) Windows Firewall will be useless for this as a Windows “update” could render it ineffective. I think the only solution for anyone who wants to keep running Cubase on Windows 10 safely after October 14 2025 is a hardware firewall.

FYI I have already ditched all my Wave plug-ins, and UAD soon too if they are going the same route.

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Interesting as I have zdt on my ilok dongle and what you’re saying…makes no sense!!!

The idea of zdt on the dongle is that it…
by itself…WON’T phone home. The owner MUST manually click the refresh. Which, by the way, I just manually do now & then before each 90 days.

The entire idea is that if someone steals my ilok, it CAN’T phone home. Only “I” can…and of course…if my ilok is stolen, I’m gonna already have reported it stolen…and already have the stolen dongle canceled and a new one on the way or whatever.

Now…all that being said…I’m going to look closer at the ilok dongle gui when I’m back in the studio. Other than if I have individual ilok plugins that require a phone home (I can’t think of any off the top of my head)…there is just no way that the zdt “itself” phones home…by itself.

As an aside, I’m rarely online when booting up Cubendo.

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You are right. - I didn’t give that enough nuance in my post. It was a while ago, when I last experienced that kind of problem, and some of it occurred when for some reason the iLok prompt was obscured by other windows and therefore interfered with regular Cubase startup.

However, I honestly don’t recall what happens when there’s no Internet access when that check runs.

Do you know or remember?

It does connect to the home server, but that’s to force you to authenticate, to prove the iLok wasn’t stolen.

Dorico and Cubase use the same VST Scanner, but I needed to make some changes for Dorico because some of the plugins that hang on scanning were causing more problems in Dorico (the audio engine is a separate process so Dorico hangs on the ‘Waiting for audio engine’ screen). I have added a timeout to allow the scan to recover for hanging plugins.

I’m hoping to get some of these changes into a future version of the scanner used in Cubase.

Are these licences cloud-based? Because I’ve never encountered such issues with either vendor. (Except when installing, of course.)

Great observation. Moving all my licenses to an iLok USB dongle solved all those issues for me (other than VE Pro, which still won’t allow me to move the license from cloud-to-dongle regardless of method).

I still have testing to do, but I believe this method also stopped UA plug-in scans from automatically launching UA Connect every single time any UA plug-in was newly referenced in a scan of any DAW (which did not make me happy).

We are unfortunately now living in a time where vendor monetization has ventured well beyond selling audio tools and now extends into “sharing anonymized usage data with approved partners” which is how their marketing department describes “selling your data to 3rd parties.” And almost none of this has anything to actually do with Cubase (in this case).

So, I assume that it was this timeout that caused the Waves window indicating the absence of active licenses to appear. Without it, it was difficult to know which plugins were causing this problem unless we proceeded by elimination by removing the UAD, Softube, …, Waves DLLs.

It would be nice if this timeout (if it is the solution) was integrated into the next version of Cubase. Thanks Paul for taking the time to answer this post and clarify the situation.

You know, we are always annoyed and frustrated when things do not work as we would like. However, better understanding the situation that causes this annoyance, helps us to accept it especially since we know that people are working on it.

Indeed, the licenses of these native plugins are ‘Cloud Status Session’ with iLok Cloud Automatic Mode.

I think the problem is that when the plugin is scanned, it’s not actually showing any UI, so neither the scanner nor the user can tell what is going on.

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OK, so why does one or more plugins take so long to be scanned. Is it Cubase, a network connection issue, these companies’ servers and an arbitrary intervention of the operating system?

Being a complete neophyte in this field, when things don’t work, we tend to look for a culprit…

‘Scanning’ a plugin is literally just loading the dll and asking it for the VST plugin properties. It is to ensure that it doesn’t crash or hang when loaded into Cubase. It doesn’t do anything else.

If the plugin decides that it needs to contact its server to find out which plugins you are licensed for then we have no control over that. If you have no network connection then it should fail gracefully, but it appears that that doesn’t happen with some plugins.

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All my UAD licenses are on a USB iLok but UA Connect still starts up occasionally. It’s going to get uninstalled soon …

I renamed the executable so that if I need to I don’t have to re-install it.

UA Connect also runs a bunch of background processes, and can start even if auto-start is disabled. A few days ago, it started up in the middle of a Cubase session. It’s got to go.

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100%. UAD has been making really poor decisions in this regard. Fortunately I’m on a Mac and I use “Little Snitch” as an application-level firewall, and I can just block all UA Connect connections (and do) so it silently fails. But it still launches. I was just uninstalling it each time there was an update, but that gets old quickly. You know they do the same thing with SoundID Reference now - if you happen to use SoundID anyway, meaning, outside the Apollo-based AMC, they STILL automatically launch SoundID every single time you launch UA Console. Makes me crazy. I literally had to move the SoundID app to my NAS to prevent it. They get really bad tunnel-vision, and it’s not OK.