I know Cubase is an old software in that it has a lot of history. It seems like there are a lot of ways for Cubase to result in a lot of losses, i.e. project files that have missing parts, missing VSTs, backwards compatability issues, it’s hard to package up a project file in a way that saves everything, etc. Is this common among DAWs, or is this a result of legacy software embedded in Cubase?
TL;DR: I feel personally victimized by Cubase for losing old project files and having projects that no longer work. Would other DAWs do the same?
Yeah to the thing with own folders for each project.
Without attacking the OP, some things come just from lacking organization, as I am guilty of this myself.
The “problem” will usually be laziness for me. While I am just a hobbyist, having fun with Cubase, and not making a living off it, yet not putting out enough full songs to climb from bad to not-so-bad production slowly, even doing sketches is bad if you all throw in everytine into one place. Just hitting Create on the hub every time you fire up Cubase is just not the way to go,
If I toy around with orchestration VSTs for instance, I (rarely) might have a spark of creativity and decide to work on something. But try find the right folder quickly now: Was it in one of the folders “Arps Test”, “asdf” or “Unnamed folder 3”? Why didn’t I name it properly the first time; and could have rendered that demo’ed plugin to audio BEFORE the trial period expired as well …
Plus when trying to clean up your old projects it takes forever to find out which file lies where, even with the Pool windows which shows files shared across projects on the computer.
The only thing really helps to force yourself to things right at start. Every time.
One thing that trips me up.
I’ll always start using a generic folder named New Song… Then if I think I have created something worthwhile I’ll use the Backup project to create a new project and pull all files into the new folder. However I’ll get to a stage where I wish to rename the song and have found if I do not use another Backup project to do this and simply rename the project Cubase is lost when reopening said song.
The key is to use some generic naming scheme that allows each Project to have a unique name at the time of creation. I use the date for this (mm-dd-yy.cpr) but any scheme will work. Then when/if a sketch evolves into something with a name I use Backup Project… to create a new folder structure with the new name. And if I’m paying attention I’ll edit the Project Notepad to include the name of what it became.