How to control where Cubase 10 has been saving my audio files and safely move them where I want?

I have Cubase 10 Pro and I notice it has been saving all my audio WAV files for my projects to my standards Windows 10 “My Documents” folder in a “Cubase Projects” subfolder on my C drive.

I do not want my WAV files saved there. I would like to set a new default directory for future WAV files to be saved to. I would also like to move all the existing ones to another folder on a different drive without messing up my projects.

Is there any safe way to move these audio files so my projects can still find them? How would you go about doing this? What happens if you move the wave files, then open a project, and Cubase can’t find the WAV files?

In my prior DAW if my projects couldn’t find a WAV it would prompt me to try to manually find it and as long as the file name was unique this was of course no issue.

I see in the manual it suggests right clicking on a track and clicking “Set Record Folder” but surely I don’t have to do this every time I make a new audio track forever? There must be a way to set the default folder, isn’t there? And I need to know how to migrate the existing files.

Thanks for any help. It’s tough switching DAWs. I do like Cubase but it’s gonna take some time for me to figure it all out.

Hi,

The logic is simple:

- Cubase Projects [folder]
|_ Project 1 [folder]
||_ Audio [folder; here are all your WAV files of Project 1 stored]
||_ Images [folder, here are the audio waveform stored]
||_ YourProject1.cpr [the project file]
|_ Project 2 [folder]
||_ Audio [folder; here are all your WAV files of Project 2 stored]
||_ Images [folder, here are the audio waveform stored]
||_ YourProject2.cpr [the project file]

The problem starts, if you don’t create a new folder for every single project. Then you store all projects directly to the Cubase Projects folder and all WAV files are merged in the Cubase Projects/Audio folder.

In the Steinberg Hub, when you create a new project, you have two options here:

  • Use default location Your Cubase Projects folder Project folder: Project Folder. If this option is enabled, Cubase automatically increments the Project folder name, so you get the Untitled-x folder name, then Untitled-x+1 folder name, or you can set the folder name by yourself for every single project (what is recommended), of course. This option was enabled by default for many years in Cubase. Since Cubase 11 the other option becomes the default one, same as it is (and it always was) in Nuendo.
  • Prompt for project location. This option asks you, where do you want to create the project file. To do it properly, you should always create the new folder here, and put the new project to this new folder. If you don’t do so, you get in to the state, where you are right now – all projects are in one folder and its Audio subfolder is shared among all projects.

Myself, I prefer the “Use default location” option enabled, because this one forces me to create the new folder for every single project. The name of the folder might be nonsense (like Untitled-835 or PreviousProjectFolderName+1), but there is always a new folder and I don’t mix the WAV files up. To keep everything clean, I have to think about the project folder name in both cases, so I prefer to do so in the Steinberg Hub window already, over opening another window and clicking to the “Create New folder”, etc.

So, once you are in this state, where you mixed up your WAV files to one Audio folder, you have to open every single project and do File > Back up Project… Cubase forces you to create a new folder and it will store all data to this new folder. But, it will do it the proper way. So it will copy all relevant WAV files to this folder/Audio subfolder. And it’s important it will copy all and only the relevant WAV files there. Then your projects are cleaned up.

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Martin, that is the clearest explanation of this topic I’ve ever seen.

I’m using Nuendo but I think this topic still applies. I often start projects from templates so I open the template and re-save to a new project folder. Everything seems good until I record wav files because those files are then stored in the OLD audio folder from the original template and NOT info the new project folder.

Can someone tell me what the proper procedure is for creating a new project as a re-save from an older project where I want my audio files saved in a new folder?

This doesn’t sound like you actually are using Templates, Your description sounds like you are opening an existing Cubase .cpr Project File (or whatever the Nuendo equivalent is) and using that as the basis to create your new Project from.

Real Templates are saved in Appdata and are listed in the Project Assistant’s New Project Dialog. You can create new Templates from existing Projects using File>Save As Template

If you want to take an existing Project and make a new Project from it use (the confusingly named)
File>Backup Project… which will properly setup the Audio sub-folder.

Ah, thank you. The File–> Back Up Project was what I was looking for!