Cubase 10 loads old projects completely wrong

I’m amazed that I have to make a post for something like this, honestly. So I was just about to buy Cubase 10 after testing out the demo for several weeks, but I’ve just opened a few of my main projects from Cubase 6.5, and things were sounding a bit weird. What I found is that randomly throughout the project, audio files that I had brought to the front on various tracks (out of other takes/lanes) were now hidden behind muted takes. This is seemingly random and spread throughout the project. And considering my workflow involves a lot of comping, I can’t even transition from Cubase 6 to 10 like I was planning without worrying that somewhere in my vocal or drum tracks (or really any track, as that’s how I work with my scratch arrangements) the wrong take is at the front (or just missing altogether).

Is this a known issue? Do I have some compatibility setting disabled that causes this or something? I just got everything set up to buy Cubase 10, as I like a lot of the new functionality it brings, but if this is gonna happen then I’m sure as hell not wasting my money.

For anyone wondering, Steinberg has given the reason as “due to the updated mixer and interface since Cubase 7”. So for anyone considering updating from anything before Cubase 7, save yourself the money and embarrassment and just switch to a different DAW. Unless of course you’re fine with getting phased out and thrown in the trash bin in 4 update versions again.

Just curious, is this a normal thing in the DAW community? Or is it specifically Steinberg that regularly gives their paying customers the finger?

surely changing daw is a little more annoying than a bit of editing. And 6 dude, you can legally install six at the same time.

Normally I would agree with your first statement, but unfortunately for me it wouldn’t be a “little bit”. A lot of my projects have thousands of different comps, so I’d end up having to open the same project in 6 and then visually check that each tiny bit of audio that’s on top is the one that’s supposed to be on top. It would probably be easier to just start from scratch, but most people wouldn’t pay $600 to start from scratch.

Obviously the only way that i’m going to use 10 is concurrently with 6, which I would have installed regardless of this problem. But in that case, 10’s only value is for new projects. Which again, for $600, is kind of pathetic and no different than if I switched to a new DAW. One that maybe would be less likely to tie my hands with garbage development several versions down the line. It’s almost unfortunate that there are things that Steinberg gets right, because otherwise I wouldn’t have stuck around with them this long in the first place.

Have you tried creating a new blank Project in C10 and then Importing all the Tracks from a C6 Project into it?

As a general ‘good practices’ rule I always render my comps down to a new Audio File when finished comping in part to minimize the risk of finding myself in something like your current situation. If you have C6 running you could still do this.

I don’t recall having any problems with opening C6 Projects in C7, and some of those have migrated all the way up to C10. Maybe if you install C7 (which your C10 license allows), open a C6 Project in C7 save in C7 then open that C7 in C10 and save as C10. That’s essentially how my formerly C6 Projects got to be C10.

The comp tool changed behavior a long time ago, that could be the problem.
I haven’t had issues importing from even older versions, but I always make sure to bounce tracks and archive them properly.

Hey guys, thanks for the suggestions. Bouncing the tracks would work for the comps that I’ve already finished, the problem I was having was a lot of my projects have ongoing comps. I’ll try your suggestion to open in C7 and resave and see if that works. Otherwise, I guess I’ll just be finishing those projects in C6, and if I do eventually decide to update to 10 then I’ll just use it for new projects going forward. I was pretty annoyed to find this happening (just moved to a new computer, and it’s been utter hell fixing hardware and software problems in Windows 10 for like a month), but I think it’s fine now. Definitely gonna see if playing with different versions after 6 will allow me to migrate things, though.