UPDATE: I’ve updated the title of this post after finding some new information. It is only the Mid (as opposed to Sides) portion of the sound that goes missing in this scenario. See Cubase 12.0.60 loses Mid sound on audio track after sitting idle - #14 by rickpaul for the updates on that.
Here is a really weird one that I’ve just seen in the last two days with Cubase 12.0.60 on Windows 10:
First, consider the following routing, paying attention to the action from the meters:
To summarize, a mono lead vocal track, with a stereo output, is routed to a Lead Vocal Submix stereo group track (currently with all plugins disabled), which is then routed to the Stereo Out.
As you can see, the meters are showing signal on all three tracks at various levels, and I have the tracks soloed so as to only hear what is coming from this track and its downstream buses. (But the solo doesn’t matter in terms of whether this track is heard or not). There is no actual sound coming from the Stereo Out, though, despite the seeming signal. (Note that, if this track is not soloed, then the rest of the tracks in the project are heard just fine, and they also route through the Stereo Out.)
What’s more, if I enable one of the Waves Studio Rack plugins in the LdVoc Submix group track, I will hear only the wet portion of the signal, not the dry, original signal. This is particularly weird in that it shows StudioRack is getting the input of the track in order to process it, yet it isn’t passing the dry part of the signal.
Here is a key, though: Things were working properly before I took a break of maybe an hour or two. No changes were made in the interim, but when I came back (after a dinner and practicing break), this situation arose. And it has now done so two nights in a row!
I tried last night to find workarounds, such as changing the routing temporarily then changing it back, even creating a new track and moving the audio events from the Lead Vocal track to that new track, but no go. I even tried opening older versions of the project that had been known to be working, as well as closing the project, and even closing Cubase, in between, but still no go.
After giving up last night, I shut my system down for the night, and everything was back to normal today. That is, until my dinner break, after which the same situation recurred.
This feels to me like something is getting corrupted, and somehow doesn’t get back to normal despite trying various things.
Has anyone seen this? Any clues? It is pretty annoying as often take a dinner break then resume work after dinner, and my system takes a very long time to reboot, so I don’t like to do that other than at the end of an evening.
In the past, I’ve seen problems where sound from an entire project stops while meters are still showing output, but I’ve always been able to cure that by turning my audio interface off, then turning it back on. But this is a single track, not the whole project – the rest of the tracks play just fine.