That’s a good solution and one I should do myself soon. Cheaper than an ssd which probably won’t solve any problems outlined here. Time and brainwork definitely outdo throwing money at problems.
One of the drawbacks with Cubase and other DAWs is that you can’t exactly throw a system together and be instantly creative. Can take a long time working out exactly what it will do versus what you think it should do.
Rather than buy an ssd I’d fork out $60 on Reaper and use that while I find out exactly how Cubase can work for ME.
I cannot believe I checked in today and found this thread. It is exactly what is bugging the s**t out of me.
I haven’t yet had a chance to go through JHP’s suggestions … which I will. But one thing perplexes me.
How can you take a ‘screen shot’ of waiting for 30 seconds or more until the window populates? (Rhetorical question)
I have accepted this delay using Media Bay as I have a lot of content material.
But I notice two things.
-
In the basic file structure for Media Bay (database, I supppose) it shows VSTSounds as the last item in the tree in the Media Bay browser window. This suggests that the program has to scan through all of your other content before it gets to VSTSounds.
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Even when Media Bay is closed, if you are browsing Halion SE for presets, for an example, it still takes the 30 seconds or more for the preset window to populate. What is funny is that about 10 presets will show up immediately on a search … usually the GM ones first and then a few more in alphabetical order. Then you wait and wait until the rest of the presets arrive. It almost seems as though the entire database is being searched not for presets for Halion specifically, but in alphabetical file order. Then, blam! … about a hundred or so of the rest of the presets all appear at once.
So, I’m wondering if the fact that the tree structure with VSTSounds at the end of the tree accounts for this slowness when searching for presets in the VSTi GUI.
And why do just thos 10 presets show up so fast?
Como
Does anyone set any mediabay preferences?
Maybe we’re too slow to use mediabay properly? 
Instead of ‘casting your pearls before swine,’ perhaps you’ d care to edify the unwashed hordes?
Got a specific suggestion or a manual reference for ‘preferring’ the C6 instruments’ presets in a search?
Surely with your vast erudition it would take no longer to toss a ‘bon mot’ to the crowd than to bewail the pervasive benightedness of forum members?
Anyway … Media Bay preferences are on pg 326 of the OP Manual. The only setting that would appear to change preset search behavior is ‘scan only when media bay is open or changing the total number of search results.’ However, changing these settings has no affect on the slow population of presets in the preset windows of C6 instruments.
Como
OK, sorry again Steinberg!
I’ve just found that if you turn off the “Deep results” button at the top of the browser, you can go into individual folders.
Sorry about that, just me jumping the gun because I was so wound up!
More tests to come.
regards,
Codsworth 
1 Like
Just one more question please, why does it take so long to scroll down the define locations panel even when all the folders are blue?
It seems to have to scan all the new folders that appear at the bottom of the page just to get them on the page.
But I thought I went through all this when I had to scan all the folders in the first place!
It seems that if main folders are open & you want to scroll down, it has to check all the subfolders etc that are showing. I don’t know if this is supposed to happen or not 
Any ideas anyone? please.
Regards,
Codsworth
My vast erudition is obviously no match for anyone else’s on this forum and cleverer posters than me have already informed the thread how to resolve the problem.
I could be more erudite if I had more to go on than “Boo-hoo! S’broken!”
hey, i just tried doing this fix, firstly the file: mediaOffline3.db isnt in my directory, and secondly it is scanning a whole lot faster but it stops the scan (red folder turns orange). I have done this many times now and the scan doesnt stop at the same folder every time. it randomly stops where ever.
i will try this time, where it stops to manual click on the folders as to resume single folder scans( 1 at a time then click the next) i have been putting this off as my sample drive is 600gb+ and prolly hundreds of folders. but i will try it tonight as i have some time and report back.
anyone else have this issue still? surely steinberg should have fixed this up by now??
So i tried it again, and it seemed to scan my sample drive(all folders) correclty (all light blue). But i still have the same problem. not only mediabay takes a few seconds to display current selected sample folder files, but also presets take a few seconds (apx 5-10 seconds to display all the presets) same when cubase first loads, my personalised templates take apx 5 seconds to display in the option to open new project window.
And the main problem is still occuring that loops and samples randomly play correctly when auditioning with the track im working on. it might loop once or twice correctly, then the bar will pass through the waveform in the mediabay like it is playing correctly, only the loop will not sound at all. if i press stop and play again, it till play the loop then stop after 1 time.
is steinberg working on fixing this? or has anyone successfully worked out how to fix it yet?
please help!
After a problem has been identified and is reproducible on many systems a problem is registered and acknowledged. Report a bug with a repro (How to is in the Bugbase) or make a screen capture to clarify. 
Gr,
JHP
Hi there Steinberg,
This is just to let you know the final outcome of this situation.
After looking deeper into this I found that coincidentally the hard drive that my sound library was stored on was faulty!
I have now received from Western digital a replacement(very quickly might I add) & installed it today.
The speed of everything has picked up dramatically obviously including media bay. So again I apologise for blaming the software but I hope you understand that this happened at virtually the same time I got Halion 4 & started using the media bay properly.
Anyway, thanks again for your help anybody who tried to help. 
Regards,
Codsworth
Hi Codsworth,
Thanks for reporting this back to this community.
Gr,
JHP
Cheers Codsworth. Thanks. You’re not alone in assuming software faults but you are rare in that not many persevere to investigate all possible causes which does need to be done.
A faulty component can tootle along (tech-speak ) for years but can usually be overloaded by a software update that tests that weakness. This is mainly why there are so many “blooms” of complaints with a new software version which, understandably, fools the operator into thinking that it couldn’t be anything but the software. On that basis I don’t think you need to apologise and I do hope that things run smoothly fro now on.
my media bay is still doing this problem.
what i have found out is that it definately has something to do with the size of your media bay/number of files/folders.
Does anyone else out there have a large sample library? mine is over 500gb. Now when i removed those files form users/app data/roaming…etc as instructed, all presets and templates load up straight away, no 5-10second pauses untill they load up.
i manually went into my media bay and one by one ticked to scan each individual sample folder in my drive. I noticed the more i started to scan, the slower my templates appeared in the “open” dialogue box, the slower all the presets appeared when loading in a vst, and the long media bay took to show the files in a particular sample folder when clicking from one to the next. After about 150gb of files/folders (samples) scanned, it became really slow and media bay wasnt playing back samples and loops correctly when my project is playing.
Has steinberg tested sytems with large sample folders?
I will be editting a video soon and uploading it soon. I really need this problem fixed. this ongoing drama is killing my workflow.
please help.
I am in a similar situation and experienced the same problem after I scanned in all my media.
I think the worst of it is, that when you look at the directory tree in the media bay browser you see the VSTPresets is the last item on tree.
I think that means that each time you search, Cubase goes through all those directories before it reaches VSTPreset Folder (or whatever the proper name … just look and you’ll see what I mean).
I guess it is reasonable to expect that the search time is related to the size of the scanned content, i.e., database size.
I just wish it could first scan VSTPresets in the directory tree, as that is what is always immediately needed. Each time I open Halion Sonic SE, for an example, and go to search for presets … I’ll immediately see about 10 in the window … then watch the little counter in the upper right hand rotate around for 35 to 40 secs until the window gets populated.
It makes presets virtually useless … but I do appreciate being able to audition my content in the media bay. Since I’ve had to choose, I’ve chosen the media bay.
Como
mine dont take that long maybe around 5 seconds to appear. how large is your sample drive?
Also i used to have a partitioned drive that was split into 2 drives- G:SAMPLES/ H:MUSIC. I thought that might have something to do with it, so i installed seperate drives, and still the same thing…
I have 2 terabyte and 1 500GB drive, all triple partitioned with the data in the first partition of each for fastest access.
I do not think it is actually the disk space per se, but more the actual number of files that takes a great deal of time to read from the database. I have literally thousands and thousand of ‘one shot’ samples files and small midi clips I’ve saved over the years. I also have a large loop library and several large romplers. But I really think it is all the small files that slows things down.
I think the size of the Media Bay database is a better measure. Mine is about the size of a DVD … 3.57GBs.
You can find it under (on windows depending on the version) in something like C:\Documents and Settings\ User Name\ AppData\ Roaming (if you installed for ‘all users’)\ Steinberg\ Cubase 6.
Como
just checked, and mine is only 579,832kb.
Yeah id say your right. Has someone done a bugbase for this. Ive never done one before? Does steinberg know that we are in pain over here?? surely they will fix this soon?
Hello jptrou,
What is the amount of search results that you have set for the MediaBay ? You can change this in the Cubae preferences. On default it is set to 10.000.
Cheers,
Chris
hey chris, i just changed it to 100.000, and im doing another mediabat index scan. I will report what happens when it is complete.