Bug #1: I realized that for some reason the new hub doesn’t have the templates Cubase used to have. In fact, under the Templates section, I could only see the two I had created myself, which sometimes not even those appear. But usually they do, and nothing else. This is on Cubase Pro 15, all updates installed.
But at the same time, I see that Nuendo 15 has all its usual templates. So I open two File Explorer windows, one to C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Nuendo 15\Project Templates\Nuendo and the other to C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 15\Project Templates, and I see that Cubase has templates.
So I manually add the path to them to the hub (C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 15\Project Templates\Cubase Pro), and I load the Symphonic template. This is rather small template with just a few tracks and basic orchestral instruments.
Bug#2: For starters, nothing plays. My MIDI keyboard is connected and, according to the small app MIDIView, sending MIDI signals just fine. I open an instance of HALion Sonic, everything seems to be fine. I open the Studio Setup, same thing:
But the only way to get sound out of any of the HALion Sonic tracks is to click on the GUI piano. The annoying part is that this is a typical problem for me with HALion Sonic and the main reason I barely use it. This happens very often. If I create an instrument track and load any other engine, SINE, Opus, Kontakt, etc, I don’t have this problem. With HALion Sonic, I often do.
Bug #3: after I loaded the template, I didn’t save a project for it. I was just playing around, or trying to, because not only no sound was coming out from me playing on my MIDI keyboard, but also this small project seemed a little too heavy for my PC, which has an i9 14900KF with 192 GB of RAM and NVMe SSDs. It was stalling and even clicking on a track took like 5 seconds to show.
So what happens the first time the project wants to autosave? Well, probably it wants to save to ‘C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 15\Project Templates\Cubase Pro’ where it doesn’t have write permissions. So it shows me this:
Where’s the bug, you might ask? I can give it a pass for the permissions thing since I had not saved the project to my Cubase project folder, but what I can’t give a pass is to this dialog coming back instantly each time I click OK. I already clicked on it close to 100 times and it’s going nowhere.
And that means that now, to close Cubase, I have to open the Task Manager and kill it. Because it won’t release the Cubase GUI at all for me to even click the close button, or to do Alt+F4, or access any menu. Nothing. Killing the task is the only option.
And that to me seems like poor QC, that then cause me to waste my time and add to my frustration. I’m sure that I’m far from the only one that has ever had this problem.
These days companies seem to think that QC is optional, when it is not. Maybe Avid can take that approach from the unfortunate fact that ProTools is the defacto DAW in most of the world, but Cubase is not even #2. In fact, last time I saw an article on market share, it was behind Logic Pro and even Studio One, when it’s much better than those two, so these kind of bugs should be ironed out before any version is put up on the Steinberg Download Assistant.
