I’ve been a Cubase user since the heady days of the Atari but for the first time I’m seriously considering switching to Reaper.
Pretty much every time I start Cubase 12 Pro, it freezes, prompting either a restart or a reboot. When it finally does settle down, MIDI input is often missing, prompting yet another restart.
I’ve tried both the WinRT MIDI drivers and the native DirectMusic/WDM drivers with no improvement. I’ve tried disabling plugins, renaming the VSConnect dll, switching ASIO drivers and all manner of fixes, but it’s still occurring on a regular basis and I’m close to abandoning a platform that I’ve loved using and teaching for over 30 years.
I don’t want to upgrade to the latest version as I can see on these forums and elsewhere that they’re also riddled with issues. The perpetual need to have to login to Steinberg and update everything in the background (elicenser, download assistant, library manager etc.) is also becoming a real workflow killer.
The issue always occurs on start-up - the shell window loads up (with the file options), but then it just freezes and I have to manually kill the task (which often fails due to denied permissions).
Being a couple of versions out of date, is it realistic to expect any kind of resolution, or should I start looking elsewhere for a replacement DAW?
Potential solution: increasing Windows MMCSS threads via the MMCSS Tool (SetMaxMMCSSThreads.exe) linked on the Steinberg Support page (while maybe also using WinRT MIDI)
Thanks for your reply. I’ve tried switching to WinRT MIDI with no success (if anything, the hanging/freezing was worse). I’m happy to try the MMCSS tool, but to be honest, I’m not hopeful.
Like other users, my issues started to appear after downloading Cubase 12 updates (along with all the other forced updates).
Incidentally, is there any way to parse/process the dump files so I can troubleshoot myself, or are they only readable by Steinberg?
The underlying issue common to a lot of those freezes is that that Windows MIDI API runs out of USB MIDI ports, since it isn’t smart enough to replace the old connection with a new one - but it makes new connections. So when over the years you plug in MIDI hardware to different USB ports, it remembers each different connection without releasing it. Eventually it runs out of slots and all kinds of weirdness happens with software that uses the API when that has happened.
The MMCSS fix increases the number of available slots (you choose how many). So it’s not particularly magical, but it beats having to hunt registry entries.
The biggest trick is to find and click the !analyze -v link after opening a specific dump file.
I think I may have found the culprit with this particular issue. I’ve recently purchased an iRig 37 keyboard controller and after going through a process of elimination, it appears that this is the cause of Cubase hanging at start-up.
Luckily, I can just whip out the controller’s USB plug during start-up/shut down to avoid the issue, but if anyone has found a more elegant solution to this, I’m all ears.
I did find another thread that shows you how to delete redundant MIDI entries from Device Manager that accumulate over time. I’m not sure if this is related though.
