I think it’s [CAN-10904] Issue, which has been acknowledged officially since Cubase 8 or so.
The issue is that faders which have an automated VCA controlling them often return to zero when you re-load your session. It doesn’t always happen, maybe about 75% of the time, and I have no idea what causes it. Faders linked to VCAs need to behave exactly as you had them set when you re-load a session.
This has been around/acknowledged as a bug years, and is crucial to fix. I don’t mean this in a rant-y voice, I just mean to underline how huge an issue it is, and that it makes automated VCAs not usable unless you “print” the VCA automation every single time you close Cubase which is of course not what one would want because it defeats the flexibility and ease of adjusting the VCA’d tracks every time you open up a session anew.
Can we please get a confirmation that this will be fixed soon?
Oh cool, I didn’t know about this workaround (until there’s a fix)! Do you mean add an automation node at the very beginning of the project for each automated VCA track?
While I often see this referred to as a bug, I recall back to a long discussion on the Nuendo forum about this behaviour a while back.
Fredo (Nuendo moderator) replied:
“It is not a workaround. You need initial parameters before you can safely rely on automation. The fact that other DAW’s enable initial parameters by default doesn’t make that the Steinberg system is broken.”
If anyone’s interested, the entire thread is here…
I’m sure that’s true, but then again neither are you.
People keep referring to this as a bug, but has Steinberg ever confirmed that it is or do they consider this to be the way it’s intended to function and some people just don’t like it?
I don’t disagree. But the only statement with any certainty that I’ve seen was from Fredo who, at that time at least, had a relationship with Steinberg, saying that it wasn’t a bug, it was a feature.
I ask because how it’s classified can have an impact on how long it will take to get changed, or whether it will at all.
In the end this doesn’t matter whether it’s a bug or a feature.
What matters is that a project will sound different after closing and restarting Cubase.
That means that Cubase does not have total recall.
It probably won’t get changed. Like I said in another thread (this one maybe?) it is a bit embarrassing to have the automation system function this way by default but they have decided this is good enough or technically accurate. I also mentioned that there are other things in the automation system that I think really should change but I have zero hope for that as well. It’s quite irritating since automation is such a core functionality of a DAW.
Decisions like this makes me want to pack Cubase to a box and throw it to a river.
I wonder how large was that user base that decided that this is a good idea. It destroyed at least one of my older big post-pro sessions that I recently opened. How this can be considered as a “feature” is beyond my mind. Next, they will say that Cubase crashing is also a feature and users decided that they like it this way.
I consider VCA as non-existing in Cubase. I feel safer using groups for VCA purpose because it’s reliable and I can trust that after opening a session, it will be exactly as I left it. I would prefer to use VCA because it’s a cleaner way but not like this. I would prefer to be able to hide VCA from the menu because every time I’m using groups for that purpose and I see VCA on the list I feel disappointed that there’s a feature I cannot trust.
Now the most important question: how do I know that there’s no more bizarre ways of working with Cubase that as an user I’ll discover only when I’ll need to open an older project just to discover that it’s messed up.
Thanks @Johnny_Moneto . It’s so strange they haven’t fixed this thing yet. There’s absolutely no valid argument for a session opening in a different state than the one saved. Maybe it’s a hard fix, but still…