In my opinion, the problem is that most users don’t push their systems and in those cases DAWs work great “most of the time”, so developers don’t considere heavy use. My system crashes almost everyday a couple of times at least. It’s workable, of course, but annoying.
I work in Nuendo and Cubase and my sessions are complex, big, hundreds of tracks, atmos mixed, full of plug-ins (mostly Steinberg, Waves, Melda, Native Instruments) and it crashes randomly, sometimes due Cubase bugs (i.e. duplicating regions), sometimes loading new projects, sometimes exporting.
The solution is easy but not rewarding: Cubase could load the plug-ins (or at least the buggy ones) in external processes, as Bitwig does, but it takes a lot more of processing, Reaper also provide a way to load projects with no plug-in activated, to allow loading crashing sessions.
Another conversation would be why Cubase is glitching when I’m not using even 50% of my resources
My personal workaround is to export “every track”. It’s a nonsense, but it works when you have tight schedules (my normal life), and it assures that you can rebuilt a project in a hurry.
Also if your eLicenser is old, you might want to consider getting a new one. I’m pretty sure when they are near their end of life, this can cause problems.
I’m curious to how many of you built your own computer? Motherboards can come with all sorts of drivers for power management, heat/fan management, etc, etc. If your computer is just shutting down, it is likely a CPU heat issue.
Another issue is voltages, and having a good enough Power Supply. A lot of people do not get a good enough desktop powersupply. This can cause issues.
One bad stick of memory can cause issues, etc, etc.
1 Restart your computer
2 Unplug your elicenser
3. plug it back in
4. go into elicenser software
5. do maintenance then close
6. Restart computer again
7. after restart, open Cubase
If that doesn’t improve things…
With Cubase closed
go to the app data folder and command ‘Cut’ all the contents (all the XML files and sub folders) into backup folder on your desktop. then start Cubase.
andyp13 I hope you have sent the crash dumps as this will tell the full story of your issues. I will be very surprised if it isn’t a plugin. Hope they find out the issue. It is always a deeply frustrating issue. We have all been there at some point.
They have to be loaded into Cubase to cause a problem. If you have a crash the cause of that crash will be recorded in the Crash Dump and will save you the hassle of having to go through every plugin, which can be impossible if the crashes are intermittent.
When things work, it’s easy to forget how incredibly complex and varied the participating components are. We have myriads of different workflows and myriads of different plugins and combinations. On a wide variety of different operating system versions, using who-knows-how- many different hardware devices and their software drivers.
And how relatively little money we have to spend while getting the equivalent of a 1980s multi-million dollar studio. And sample libraries that were expertly recorded by people who know exactly what year of what model of mic to use for a cello played by a member of a big name philharmonic.
Oh - and that old time million dollar studio also had failing parts. From tubes to worn out capacitors and dusty crackling sliders and pots. Not to mention the regular cleaning and calibration of tape machines. And replacement of rubber belts. And then you had to get your music pressed onto vinyl by a specialized factory. etc. etc. etc.
And very few of us could have walked into a large 1980s studio and configure and troubleshoot everything without significant training and few of us would have gotten anywhere near the the BBC second violin section to record a B flat in a dozen different articulations.
When I still played live in the 80s, my keyboard rig (6 keyboards and a drum machine) with all of it’s power cables, midi cables, cv cables and audio cables was a big effort - and took as long as the rest of the band put together to set up- and tear down. I had to totally rush to be ready for my soundcheck when all the other band members were finished with theirs. And when something didn’t work, the troubleshooting was accordingly tricky.
So while I’m also frustrated from time to time by having to troubleshoot - I’m mostly amazed about the musical playground we get to play in.
And at the comparatively low prices we pay for hardware and software, it would be way too much of a mountain to climb for most people without spending another fortune on training or consulting.
So instead we help each other - and hopefully there’s enough of a continuing spirit of “paying forward” - so that our amazing little musical eco-system continues to thrive and we get to make our music our way.
Sometimes this may happens because of wrong audio setting with your system. Especially after a windows update.
Check your windows audio system settings and be sure to set it to work with your internal audio when you’re not using cubase.
Then with cubase set your USB audio and see. If this works.
In some cases with no crash log. if it is on Cubase or project load it is 99% an outdated plugin.
If it’s a crash when using Cubase then it 's probably a hardware config issue or a bad over clock… check the CPU temps to safe. I had a CPU fan fail a while back no alarms went! lol. only way I noticed was because of crashing.
