Dear Steinberg, I’ve asked before, and it’s asking a lot, but would it be possible to get an official response on this?
It’s becoming a central theme to almost all my Cubase woes.
My projects get large, get copied and used again and again as starter templates for the next project.
The question: Is “project corruption” technically possible in Cubase?
Is it possible that I have corrupt project files?
While it seem obvious that any file on a computer can be corrupt, I’m not asking about that. I’m asking, if a project loads into RAM, has it by definition been “fixed” by Cubase?
That is, maybe certain plugins are missing, prefs have been set to their defaults, or other such “resetting,” but is the project at least guaranteed free of hidden defects, if resaved?
Often, in software, the app itself is the ultimate “fixer” for a project file, in that it will “correct” malformed, or missing data nodes by simply resetting them to defaults, as part of what each little part of the app does when loading a project (or executing the part of a project a user is currently “touching”).
This is technically possible. Each part that cares about its data node, can know if something is missing or malformed and respond in a graceful manner (by using valid default values where it must).
For apps that do this, if the project loads it’s an almost 100% guarantee that any file corruption has, at the very least, been “recovered” from.
Again, there may be issues related to a user’s settings needing to be reconfigured to the their preferences again.
There may even be “problems” exhibited in the project due to the user’s settings being reset to defaults and therefore unexpected “stuff” (from the user’s perspective) happens, but still completely valid stuff from the app’s perspective.
In other words, the file (now in RAM) is now working, now cleaned free of defects, and just needs the user to go in and adjust a parameter, or value to get it back to the way it was before the data loss/corruption.
So, where does Cubase fall on this spectrum?
Is Cubase clever enough to do this, to “fix” missing or malformed project data, in all of their small, granular and important parts? Or, is it possible that Cubase could load and then resave “corruption” over and over again, never fully recovering from a small, lurking bit of malformed data.
The thoroughness of all the parts of an app that are robust enough to do this, could be represented by a percentage.
E.g., “100%” would mean that every single function within the app has the feature that it either:
a) fills in malformed data with valid defaults.
b) breaks (crashes).
Both of these possibilities are good!
Even “b,” crashing fatally, allows the user to know something is wrong and to revert to a previous version.
An example of an app fixing “50%” of corrupt data, would mean larger things (like missing plugins) don’t stop the show and need the user to reconfigure them, but that there are still many areas within the app that might not crash and would “accept” that malformed data and resave it out again. Forever, leaving the user with a “corrupt” project that loads, doesn’t crash and only partially works.
Ultimately, I’d like to know if I’m going to need to recreate all the .10 projects that are having “no sound” issues in .20. The .10 files do load without error messages, so that does mean they’re by definition free from corruption?
If so, then I’ll wait for a fix.
If not, I may need to recreate those projects, and honestly, Cubase may not be the best DAW for someone like me that uses previous projects as a starting point.
This is a hard, maybe impossible, question to ask even a development team under NDA; even harder, for non-developers; harder still in a public forum. So I’m not expecting an answer, but I have to at least try! 
If Cubase does either “a” or “b” (above) – even at an “80%” level, I would consider that a huge milestone and would be something brag-worthy.
Respectfully yours,
Jim (a.k.a. Jalcide)