Cubase Pro 12 This application was terminated with an error on each shutdown?

Windows 10
Cubase Pro 12

So the issues have started so not happy at all.
Cubase opens just fine and seems to operate as it should including at shutdown
but when I reopen Cubase Pro `12 it goes straight to safe boot giving the error
“This application was terminated with an error while excuting the following file
C:\Steinberg\Cubase 12\Cubase12.exe”

Any suggestions?

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Try to run it as administrator.
It seems to be some kind of “hang on on close” maybe related to preferences or some plug in.

I’ve had this for a while now, with C11 and also 12. Culprit is some Waveshell*.dll, meaning some Waves plugins (which I rarely use anyway, but have in some projects).
Have a look at the Windows Event log after you close Cubase, in “Application logs” (dunno if it’s called like that in english Windows) and search for the error entry. Sometimes it says in which module (aka dll) cubase crashed.

We’ve got some crash logs showing some possible causes for this which we’ll try and address as soon as possible.

4 Likes

Thank fese.

I hope it is not Wave plugn related as I have thier full suite and it is used in all of my projects.

Hi Ben

That would be great, I know bugs happen but I want to get stuck in learning all the new features.

Will it be an update or will you post back here with some suggestions?

Hi jconstantine

I run it as admin by default.

Well then the next step will be to check preferences and plug ins.
I’m having the same issue but haven’t had time to investigate and fix the problem.
I’ll report back.

Hi jconstantine

The thing is I neither have the time to mess about as I have clients who want thier work completed on time, and I should not have to, that is what Steinbergs developers should have sorted out before releasing Cubase Pro 12.

Waves plugins are unversally used in most recording and mastering studios world wide so the developers should have tested Cubase Pro 12 with them before release, thats part of the job of developing.

My partner is a software tester for a well know company and its the job of the team that she is a part of to try and break the software and then fix the program so that it can not be broken in that way again. There should be Alpha and Beta versions long before the final version is released.

In the context of a Cubase driven studio, Cubase is the critical software that should not be causing issues. And in the contect of my issue, if it is a waves plugin and that plugin performed flawlessly in Cubase Pro 9, 10 & 11, but now has an issue under Cubase Pro 12 then it is obvious that the issue is Cubase.

I just hope that Steinberg release a urgent fix for this instead of waiting for an update. :grinning:

4 Likes

Seems to be the preferences in my case.
After fix them Cubase closed correctly and later will check if any other issue remains.

I am also having this issue. Cubase actually does seem to close cleanly (I even checked last night to make sure there wasn’t still an instance running in Task Manager – I’m on Windows 10, fully updated, but I got the same message on startup today). I hadn’t paid attention to the details on previous startups, but I did capture the screen today:

In this case it is specifically saying it terminated with an error while executing a fille named Freeze, but I have no clue what that is, nor whether that was also what was referenced in the other cases.

The associated event log entry has an Event ID of 1000, and the following details:

(Sorry, I deleted the event log info because I just realized that, while that was the most recent Cubase error in Event Log, the time stamp was actually earlier than could be possible for this latest occurrence of the issue. There was no event log entry referencing Cubase, nor any that reference “freeze”, from when I closed Cubase last night, or perhaps early this morning.)

I am usually hitting the button that says to send the log files to Steinberg, though I may have forgotten this time due to documenting the screen, but it returns to working control so quickly that I’m skeptical it could actually have uploaded anything.

One more note with respect to the potential Waves association mentioned above: I do use Waves plugins, and I have had their Ocean Way Nashville Nx plugin in my Control Room inserts, but disabled, when closing Cubase Pro 12 due to doing a fair amount of mixing on headphones late at night. One thing I’d noted in Cubase 11 and earlier was that, if I attempted to close Cubase right after closing my project, and one of the Waves Nx plugins was active (I also have CLA Nx and Abbey Road Studio 3), the odds of Cubase hanging on closing, and needing to be killed from Task Manager, were reasonably high. I’d since gotten into the practice of waiting a while to close Cubase after having closed my project, specifically waiting until the red color is available on the windows Close button for Cubase before trying to close it, and that seems to have made that issue either go away or at least appear extremely infrequently. And, on any occasion when it did hang, Cubase was always shown in Task Manager as not responding. I’ve continued the waiting practice with Cubase 12, and I specifically checked after last night’s session ended to make sure Cubase had disappeared from Task Manager after closing it, so it at least is not showing as being hung in with Cubase 12 – i.e. it is a different symptom than I’d been having in Cubase 11 when Cubase visibly did hang.

2 Likes

So the program works exactly how it’s meant to, and you’re able to do all the things you need and want to do with it… but you get a message saying that it didn’t close correctly and this is something you find greatly upsetting? I will admit, I will be happy when I don’t get that message, but did your partner forget to mention that there are always bugs that slip through the cracks at release? Or is she fortunate enough to work for the one development studio in the entire world that launches a flawless product? Well if that’s the case, then kudos to her, because that is quite the achievement.

What changes did you make to your preferences?

Back up first (key commands,midi ports,etc) then delete the Cubase 12 folder at at User/Appdata/Roaming/Steinberg .
Launch Cubase and then close it.
Verify it closes without a problem.
Then copied back the files needed (key commands etc) or simply configure manually Cubase again (key commands,plug in paths etc).

1 Like

Your reply is both inappropiate and offensive.

If you have nothing helpful to say then kindly say nothing.

This is a professional audio forum and not a infants school playground, try to act appropiately.

6 Likes

In case it might help anyone else seeing this problem, here’s an update on it on my system. It’s still too early to proclaim, “mission accomplished,” or that I’ve found the definitive catalyst for this issue, but some new findings from yesterday and this morning strongly suggest it does relate to Waves Nx plugins (I’ve been specifically using the Ocean Way Nashville one with Cubase 12 thus far).

I use the Waves Nx plugins (not only Ocean Way Nashville, but also Abbey Road Studio 3, and CLA Nx at various times) as a Control Room insert when mixing in the evening due to needing to use headphones instead of my monitors. Because I’d been working on mixes almost exclusively in C12, I was just leaving the plugin in the Control Room slot, just disabling it when it wasn’t needed (and usually also at the end of my sessions). In Cubase 11, having used the Nx plugins in a session seemingly increased the odds of a hang on exit, where C11 would need to be killed from Task Manager. However, in recent months, that problem was rare, perhaps partly due to Waves 13 allowing to avoid the extra head tracking window that was always there, whether you needed it or not, in earlier Waves versions, and partly because I was paying close attention to closing my project first, then waiting a while (specifically until I could hover over the Windows close button and see it turn red) to close Cubase itself.

With C12, with maybe one or two exceptions, I have not seen Cubase hang on exit and need to be killed with Task Manager in this scenario. However, I’d get the crash message on startup. Until yesterday, I hadn’t looked at the crash dump files, but I decided to do that yesterday and noticed I had 18 of them for less than a week’s use of C12, versus only 15 for Cubase 9.5, 10, 10.5, and 11 combined! I also looked at the time stamps on those files and noticed they were not from when I closed Cubase but from the start of Cubase sessions.

Since I haven’t been mixing the last few days, this gave me the idea to remove Ocean Way Nashville from my Control Room, close my project, exit Cubase, and restart C12 to see what happened. I still got the crash message starting the next time, but now I was starting this new session without the Nx plugin in Control Room. At the end of my day’s session, I tried restarting Cubase after exiting. This time no crash message. Also Cubase started this morning with no crash message.

As I mentioned above, it’s too early proclaim this information to be definitive, but it is sure seeming like closing a C12 session in which this Nx plugin (and probably any of the Nx plugins) was in, whether it was used or not during the session, may be the catalyst for these crash messages on startup. Thus, if you are having this problem regularly, it would be worth noting if you are using one of the Nx plugins in your session, and trying to see if you do a session entirely without it, if C12 starts up normally the next time.

If this it, I sure hope Steinberg and Waves can figure out why this happens and get it resolved as the C12 behavior is decidedly worse than the behavior in earlier Cubase releases.

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Hi @rickpaul

Thats a really interesting and detailed post, and hopefully you may be on to something.

I do not use them much but I do have the waves Nx plugs installed on this system.
I will reopen the project that Cubase Pro 12 crashed and check which Waves ones I have inserted.

I typically use the PuigTec EQP1A, the CLA-3A and SSL G Channel as my go to’s, Some times R Bass on the bottom of a kick, R Compressor and Vitamin find thier way in to a project.

I am glad that you agree C12 behaviour is worse than earlier releases as I can see its not just me thats experiencing this.

It’s a shame as I want to get stuck in and learn all of the new features but as it stands I can’t take a chance of putting a project on it, much less that belongs to a client.

Just to clarify on the “worse behavior”, it is only in this one area (i.e. the crash message on startup), which is, at least for me, a minor annoyance (I have to remember to wait after starting Cubase to check if the message will come up and clear it before walking away to let it do its scanning and such, so I lose some time when I come back if I forgot to check first and it did put the message up, which it was doing almost all the time during my period of use). Cubase 12 has, in general, seemed at least as reliable as Cubase 11, and seemingly with better performance in terms of not getting audio dropouts as frequently. I have only been using Cubase Pro 12 since I got it (last Thursday), and it has been working well aside from this one issue.

With respect to the Waves plugins, I have not noticed any issues with hangs on closing in earlier Cubase releases with their plugins in general, only the Nx plugins (and I have noticed that with all three of the ones I use – Abbey Road Studio 3, Ocean Way Nashville, and CLA Nx, though it had gotten rarer recently, probably due to my practices of paying very close attention to timing of closing the project then closing Cubase 11). I use lots of Waves plugins (theirs and PSP Audioware’s are my most commonly used plugins). The specific thing that was worse here was the crash message on startup even when there was no observed hang when closing Cubase 12.

Also, FWIW, I when I use the Nx plugins, it is always in Control Room inserts, so it’s conceivable that could be another variable. (The Control Room inserts are consistent across projects, so would not be project-specific, but rather depending on what state Cubase was in when it last cleanly exited. Of course, it could also be that the same considerations would apply to using the Nx plugins elsewhere, such as on stereo outs, that might be project-specific.)

One more update on my scenario: I had another Cubase 12 warning on the way to opening the program this morning, again with a DMP filew with freezedump in the name. I did NOT have any Waves Nx plugins in Cubase in the two sessions prior to this, so it looks like this can happen without those plugins involved.

That said, I did use a few other Waves plugins in yesterday night’s session, though none were active in the project by the time I closed the project then Cubase. (I know I at least used the PRS SuperModels plugins, in the mono/stereo configuration, as well as CLA Guitars, Maserati Guitars, and perhaps one other.) Plugins that were still in the project at the time of closing the project included AmpliTube 5, Overloud TH3, and Guitar Rig 6, though only TH3 and Guitar Rig were active). Virtual instruments in the project included Superior Drummer 3, MODO Bass, Kontakt 6, UVI Workstation, RealStrat, and 4 (frozen) instances of UJAM VG-AMBER.

While this obviously takes the Waves Nx plugins out of the picture, the brief use of Waves plugins at points during the session now makes me wonder if using Waves plugins at all during a session (even if they are not in at the point of saving then closing the project) could be involved. (I had not used any Waves plugins in the two sessions where Cubase did not present the crash/hang message at the start of subsequent sessions.)

Hi @rickpaul

Thank you for your really very interesting posts and they provide food for thought.

I have been so busy this week with Client projects that I have given up on Pro 12 and reverted back to Pro 11. In a professional studio setting I just can not take the risk of Pro 12 throwing a crash - it would me me look unprofessional.

I hope to have a free day on Sunday and I intend to do my own testing with Waves and Pro 12.

This does provide a worrying situation if it is Waves that Pro 12 has an issue with as I can not see that Waves will recode all of its plugins for the sake of one DAW. I would have thought it was Steinbergs task to make sure that their DAW was compatable with what are some of the most popular and widely used plugins in the recording industry.