This is an issue I have had for many years and different Cubase versions, but I’ve only now realized what the cause is. My media bay has never played loops in sync. My standard template uses UAD hardware plugins. The latency that they introduce are not compensated for in the Media Bay, and so all loops play synced to the tempo, but completely off grid to the beat. The only solution I have found is to disable all hardware UAD plugins, but this is not something I want to do as they are a big part of my workflow.
I would love for this to be fixed in a future update.
TBH, this is not possible, since the hardware plugins follow all software. They add delay at the end of the signal chain, just like speakers with DSP.
It is out of the control of the software.
You can switch the inserts to the recording position, so they are at the beginning of the chain?
I don’t think this is correct. Every time a hardware UAD plugin is added to a channel, Cubase introduces a latency or around 20-25ms because the audio is sent to the hardware and then back to Cubase. It’s not at the end of the chain as you say. Because I am able to, for instance, add plugins to a channel and then route that channel to another Cubase group and process it again. If you’re talking about console plugins, sure. But I don’t use those. Cubase understands what the latency is because it needs to keep everything in sync. So why can’t the media bay stay in sync?
Then I misunderstood what you were trying to say. If you insert any plugin in a Cubase insert slot, it is compensated. If not, your setup is wrong.
UAD is working with latency compensation.
Well indeed in the arrangement everything is delay compensated. But the media bay is not. So it will run completely off-grid. Tempo synced but in the case of 8 UAD plugins in the arrangement for instance, 200ms out of sync.
If you’re experiencing 20-25ms latency by inserting a UAD-2 (hardware) effect, then I think you’ve got a different issue. It’s closer to 2ms, which is automatically compensated for as @st10ss described. Are you sure you’re not inserting an UADx plugin instead? That will obviously introduce a different amount of latency based on your system performance, but it will still be compensated for unless you constrain delay compensation in the project.
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by “the media bay runs completely off-grid.” Maybe describe exactly what you’re doing and where this manifests itself? Maybe it’s too early, but I don’t understand the use-case here.