I have noticed that twice a year, without user request, Cubase reinitializes all plugins at startup. I’ve found it odd and often wondered if it could be due to some kind of file corruption or application error; it just seems “glitchy” for this to occur.
When it happened again this week, I did a bit of research and I think I found the answer: Some users claim that the reinitialization occurs after every daylight savings time change.
Looking back, that does appear to correlate with the timing of my plugin rescans. While that’s pretty funny, I also don’t want to waste ~30 minutes every six months needlessly rescanning plugins. I can see how Cubase might use system time in decisions to review plugin status, but I don’t think it makes sense that Cubase by default rescans all plugins just because the system time changes.
So, if system time changes indeed trigger full Cubase plugin reinitialization, I think this should be considered a bug. Thoughts?
Not a bug, it’s the way windows handles DST. Cubase sees the plugins as new because of the attribute flags change. Disable windows automatic DST, and change the clock manually, prevents this from happening.
Thanks, peakae, for bringing additional clarity to this. This thread is honored by your post!
Yes, I’ve seen that workaround. However, I’d like to note that:
Automatic DST adjustment is one of those basic, core features that most everyone has turned on by default. (It’s not an outlier.) And it makes things more convenient. I already have way too many manual processes to keep up with without having to add DST to the pages-long list.
The condition case isn’t random or hard to reproduce. Twice every year (like clockwork, literally), the time changes occur. Since Steinberg knows this, they could put in simple conditional logic which says, “See if the time changes by exactly one hour on these dates, and if it does, don’t trigger a complete rescan of all plugins.”
I understand that attribute flags would be different at that time, but you would think Cubase could simply note the change due to DST and move on, as a special 2x per year case. And really, I don’t see why the developers can’t figure out a way to split “trigger a plugin rescan” functionality from system time functionality anyway.
My vote is always toward software that eases use and allows increased automation of tasks where a manual process provides no user benefit.