So I played around with this issue a bit today. It appears that MediaBay can only process so much information in one instance of running Cubase. Exactly what the limit is, I dont know. But I started by selecting a few folders with wave files to be scanned by MediaBay, maybe a total of 10,000 files. this appears to be way beyond Cubase’s capability as the program became totally non-responsive. Reboot, then deleted mediabay3.db from the preferences folder. Restart Cubase. MediaBay works at first as expected. I slowly added one folder at a time, but noted when above 10,000 files again, total non-responsiveness. So on the next reboot, deletion of MediaBay3.db, I only added a single folder with about 500 files. Added a ‘+Favorites’ and the program continued working. shut down the program normally. Saved under a different name the new MediaBay3.db and Cubase9.5_64 folder. Started Cubase, MediaBay working and added a couple of smaller folders, about 500 files. repeated the cycle of normal Cubase shutdown and copying and renaming the newer MediaBay3 and Cubase preferences folder.
I added under a 1000 files at a time to the MediaBay scanned files, and added a few ‘+Favorites.’ Each time the full MediaBay and right side MediaBay worked as expected. Repeated the normal shutdown and copying of the newer files/folder preferences.
It took awhile, but eventually I am able to have MediaBay scan all the wave, rx2, and midi files on my system, and I was able to add multiple ‘Favorites’ without the program becoming non-responsive. I dont have an exact number, but the total number of wave files, midi files, etc are probably over 20,000.
Right now MediaBay is working as expected and the ‘Favorites’ category in the right zone is working correctly.
My lesson is Cubase can’t handle scanning 10,000 files at one running of Cubase. Scanning small amounts and then doing a Normal shutdown and restart, and then add more takes a long time, but it does work and I haven’t had a total non-responsiveness episode all evening working with multiple previews of different wave files and midi files. The key was scanning just a small amount, shutting down the program, and then restarting it, and repeating.
Actually would have saved a bunch of time and frustration is Steinberg help offered this first on their one response to my ticket.