Description
I have encountered a reproducible and unusual problem with frozen instrument tracks in Cubase Pro 15.
The project contains 15 instrument tracks using instruments from EastWest Opus.
The MIDI material for these tracks was originally created from a Chord Track. I started with an original audio file, dragged it onto a Chord Track, and then dragged the resulting chords onto the respective instrument tracks to create MIDI notes.
Afterwards, I substantially changed the harmonic structure of the song by extending the MIDI notes. For example, instead of changing chords at the original positions, I extended a MIDI note so that it lasted for three bars and only changed at the end of the third bar.
The MIDI notes themselves are therefore at the correct, newly intended positions.
The problem
When the instrument tracks are not frozen, playback is correct: the instruments follow the edited MIDI notes and the new chord changes occur exactly where the MIDI notes change.
However, after freezing an instrument track, the rendered/frozen audio does not follow the edited MIDI note positions.
Instead, the frozen track plays the chord changes at the original positions of the Chord Track, even though:
- the MIDI notes have subsequently been edited and extended;
- the Chord Track has been deleted;
- the unfrozen instrument track plays correctly.
In other words, it appears that the Freeze process somehow still takes the original Chord Track information into account, although that information should no longer be relevant.
Important observation
I found a very effective workaround which may help to identify the cause.
For a problematic instrument track:
- Create a completely new Instrument Track.
- Load an Opus instrument on the new track.
- Copy the MIDI data from the problematic original track to the new track.
- Delete the copied MIDI data from the new track again.
- Freeze the original instrument track.
After doing this, the original instrument track freezes correctly and the frozen playback follows the actual, edited MIDI note positions.
I tested this with several of the affected tracks.
An even more interesting observation is that I only needed one single new Instrument Track. I could copy the MIDI data from each problematic original track to that one new track, delete it again, and then move on to the next original track. After doing this, all of the previously problematic original tracks froze correctly.
The new track itself does not have to be used for playback.
Additional test
I also tried moving the chords in the original Chord Track so that they matched the new MIDI chord-change positions. This did not solve the problem.
I also deleted the Chord Track completely. This did not solve the problem either.
Expected behavior
After editing the MIDI notes, Freeze should render the actual current MIDI/instrument output and therefore produce exactly the same timing and harmonic changes as normal unfrozen playback.
Actual behavior
Unfrozen playback is correct.
Frozen playback recalls the original chord-change positions that existed when the MIDI material was initially generated from the Chord Track.
Possible cause
My suspicion is that some internal Chord Track / MIDI follow state or cached MIDI-processing information remains associated with the original instrument tracks and is incorrectly taken into account during Freeze.
Creating a new Instrument Track and copying MIDI data to it appears to force Cubase to reinitialize or refresh this state, after which Freeze works correctly.
System
- Cubase Pro 15
- EastWest Opus
- Multiple Opus instrument tracks (15 affected tracks)
- MIDI material originally generated from Cubase Chord Track
- Chord Track subsequently deleted
- MIDI notes manually extended/edited afterwards
I would be very interested to know whether this is a known Cubase 15 issue and whether there is a permanent fix or recommended procedure to properly detach MIDI material from the original Chord Track processing before freezing.
Best Wishes
Hardy