When an Instrument track has been removed from a project, its status in The External Instruments tab often remains ‘In Use’, with an X in the “Used” column
If you create a new Intrument track and try to select this External Instument, nothing happens, the selection is ignored and the Inspector setting stays “No VST Instrument”.
Closing and restarting Cubase seems to free up this stale status. I’ve not found another way.
In fact you can simply close the project and re-open to free this up. You don’t have to completely restart Cubase.
I’ve found this same problem can also be caused by dragging a track preset from the Media Bay between 2 existing tracks in order to create a new Instrument track.
Even though there is no existing track using the same External Instrument, it gets created with “No VST Instrument” and you cannot select the External Instrument from the drop-down list. In the External Instruments tab of Audio Connections, it is shown as In Use but you cannot determine where.
Strangely though, if you double-click the preset in the Media Bay instead of dragging, this problem does not occur and the track is correctly created with the External Instrument connected.
Another problem I encountered a couple of times when double-clicking a preset from the Media is that no track gets created but the External Intrument is now in use. Its as if there is a hidden track created but closing and re-opening the project clears this issue.
Confirmed here. Used to just disable an external synth in 12.
Confirmed here too and that restarting the application shows the input being freed.
External instruments just seems a bit bugged. I couldn’t change MIDI channels on external Instruments from my imported Cubase 12 project so I had to delete them all and set them up again. Then when setting them up it couldn’t see the MIDI Devices in the MIDI Devices list but allowed you to create the MIDI Device from within External Instruments but then had to go into MIDI devices to set the port. (I posted about this over the weekend)
Then if I set up an instrument wrong or wanted to make changes I had to delete both the instrument and device and do it all again.
I hope they fix this bug, because not being able to disable an external instrument forces you to use realtime mode when rendering the project.
I hope they fix this bug, because not being able to disable an external instrument forces you to use realtime mode when rendering the project.
I’m not quite sure how external instruments can be disabled. Could you explain how you previously did this? Do you mean that when you Freeze the track, you check the box to Unload the Instrument and that should change the ‘In Use’ status?
I’ve just checked C12 and that is the same, as far as I can see, you can only remove them from the External Intruments tab. If a track is using them, both C12 and C13 will refuse to let you remove.
The bug I’m reporting on this issue is that the External Instrument is seen as still in use, even when a track isn’t using it and thus can’t be removed or re-used by another track (until the project is closed and re-opened).
I’ve not had it this bad. I’ve been creating quite a few custom device scripts and I have been able to remove from MIDI device manager and re-add many times without disturbing the external instrument connection or track that uses it. The program selector list in the Inspector simply picks up the changes each time. The only issue (as reported on another topic) is that you can’t change channels in the Inspectors, without selecting ‘Any’ in between, otherwise the patch list gets locked.
Hi,
This is just a GUI update (redraw) issue. If you mouse hover over the “Used” column in the Audio Connections > Extern Instruments, the “x” disappears.
Same if you add the Extern Instrument to the project, the “x” doesn’t appear. You have to force the window to redraw.
Reported to Steinberg. Thank you.
Hi @Martin.Jirsak
With respect, no its not just a redraw UI issue. I don’t see the X disappear, I did try that. What I’m experiencing is that the instrument really is still in use state and cannot be re-used on other track until its freed up by closing and re-opening the project.
Hi,
How do you remove the External Instrument, please?
I deleted the Instrument Track.
Yes, that’s what I did.