I know this has been discussed only a few times before but there hasn’t really been any solution. To put it simply – MediaBay is extremely slow to load my libraries. Often times – it won’t even load them at all. I am exhausted of re-scanning my library folders. I am on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, using Cubase 6.5.3 64-bit. My specifications are as follows:
HP Pavilion Elite e9290f
Intel i7 920 (8 Cores)
20GB DDR3 RAM
4TB Internal SATA III HDD dedicated only to sample libraries
11TB across 4 external drives and 2 internal ones
Solutions that I have tried:
Trashed MediaBay preferences?Yes Defragmented the drive that the samples are located in?Yes Set max search results to 1,000 or 10,000?Yes Moved all samples to another drive?Yes Tried toggling ‘Deep Search’ results on and off?Yes Added all scanned sample library folders to Cubase’s ‘Defined Browse Location’ menu?Yes Removed multiformat versions of the sample library that I do not use (i.e., AIFF, KONTAKT, REX, etc.)?Yes Changed policy of hard drive(s) so that it is optimized for ‘Better Performance?’Yes Toggled between ‘Enabled Write Caching’ and ‘Turn off Write-Cache Buffer Flushing’ on drive(s)?Yes Re-organized and re-scanned 2TB worth of sample libraries?Yes Re-installed Cubase 6.5?Yes Tried using MediaBay on a Mac Pro and discovered same problem?Yes Tried using MediaBay on a MacBook Pro laptop and also discovered same issue?Yes Searched internet to find solutions to this problem?Yes Contacted Steinberg Technical Support for solution to problem?Yes, No Answer [yet]
So whats going on? Why does it take ages for Cubase’s MediaBay to load between different sample libaries that have been organized to precision? What else can I try that I haven’t tried before? It took me 5 days to move 2.4TB worth of sample libaries from one hard disk drive to another; nothing helped. I also have a 2011 Mac Pro connected through DVI to the same monitor my HP is connected to. I dumped just 400GB worth of sample libraries to its hard drive and I have the same issue; too slow! At home away from the studio I have found that I have the same issue occuring on my MacBook Pro laptop; too slow! This is extremely inconvenient to me as I have sessions booked till next March and if I cannot fix this it will be a huge problem for me! Why is it that Image-Line’s FL Studio and Ableton Live and/or Battery 3 can load different sample folder on an instant? When will I be able to create music using my sample libraries in an efficient fashion, Steinberg?
This is why MediaBay has been rendered “useless” to me. I’m hoping someone, preferably Steinberg – can change that. Since I am planning on upgrading to Cubase 7 come December, I am fearing the upgrade may feature the same issues.
I have exactly the same problem and I have no solution. Even in this C7 promo video (7 Features of Cubase 7: Control Room Mixer (Part 7) - YouTube) when the guy is opening the preset list for amprack at 3:55, there is a certain lag. It’s still a lot faster than on my MacPro, but this is not what I would call snappy either. This is one of the reasons I don’t use GAO because each time I want to change the kit it takes so much longer than in Battery or Live’s browser. MB’s approach is great but the execution doesn’t work for me.
just a quick thought are you putting your hard drives to seep when not in use ,i’m on a mac and never let them sleep. check your settings, my media bay works quick enough for me .
As far as I know – my power management is set to “never sleep.” If there is an additional way of the hard drives sleeping that I do not know about, I’d like to take care of it; I do however, believe that ive got that covered. I even tried dragging and dropping from Battery 3 onto Cubase but of course, anybody workin with Cubase long enough knows that’s out of the option. There are work arounds for using Java scripts to “drop” samples into Battery 3 from Cubase with the help of a little buffer, yet you can’t do the opposite: drop samples from Battery 3 onto Cubase’s arrange window. I am out of luck here and I would like to say that I appreciate your responses, the both of you; I’m just surprise at the level of support available here. I don’t understand how Steinberg expects its customers to work
under the conditions MediaBay imposes. For the record, I don’t think anyone on this forum can tell me I haven’t tried hard enough. As you can see by the list – I’ve even done things the average user probably wouldn’t consider.
Did you contact support? I did. In the end I filmed MB’s constant slow rescanning and wanted to supply the videos via dropbox. Suppport told me they didn’t receive any invitation to the dropbox folder and in the meantime Live came along and I lost interest in Cubase for a while. But I try to like it and I might send them these videos somehow. Not sure what that would help though. As I said, although MB is considerably faster in the promo video, I still think it’s rather slow to use.
Yes, I have contacted Tech Support regarding the issue. I intend to film MediaBay’s slow responsiveness and upload it to YouTube so that Steinberg won’t lose patience over DropBox. I really want to disable them from giving me any excuse as to not being able to receive my support emails and/or proper photo/video documentation. Yes, Live is easier to work with when using samples; it is still, nonetheless, 32-bit only and while version 9 is slated to be fully 64-bit compatible – there are other reasons I’d rather stick with Cubase (i.e., better internal summing; 32-bit floating precision, arrangement layout; VST3; mixer, etc.). I really don’t know what to do at this point. I’m running out of options. I just don’t understand how the simplest of programs manage to “borrow” and implement the folder architecture used by Windows into their GUI and a program like Cubase cannot. This makes no sense! I really cannot wrap my head around as to why on Earth they chose to build local disks into MediaBay the way they did. It achieves nothing. Amazingly, every VST/i is able to recall presets perfectly except for Cubase. It’s astonishing to me. I’m sick and tired of this slow behavior.
Dam I don’t know what to tell you… it looks like you tried everything. Search results in Mediabay have always been (since version 4) instantaneous for me. The second I hit ‘enter’ all the results show up. Every once in a while (maybe once a month?) Cubase does decide to do a massive rescan… I just restart Cubase and then search speed is back to normal. I don’t know why its so lighting quick on my computer and not yours… that really sucks. You’re missing out on one of the best features Cubase has to offer. Hopefully someone out there can find the solution for you…
Restarting Cubase doesn’t help me to be honest; I just hope they’ve done some update with MediaBay in Cubase 7. I don’t have HALion 4.5; I’m considering getting it though in hopes of reaching my archives a lot faster. Do you have HALion? If so, hows the response time when browsing different folders? To be clear: going through a sample library folder once the samples are shown is a breeze; no problem. Navigating between different folders, however, is a problem.
Ahhhhh okay that makes more sense now! You were talking about navigating between folders the whole time? My bad, I guess I totally misunderstood your earlier comments. Here’s the thing, I *never navigate any of the folders. I actually keep that section of Mediabay closed. I have tagged and categorized literally ALL my vstpresets, samples, loops, track presets, midi files, pattern banks, etc… so when ever I need to find any of that data I just type in a relevant custom tag/keyword(s) in the search bar or use the categories of the attribute inspector.
*The only time I ever do go into the folders section of Mediabay (AKA the “Define Locations” panel) is when I have a new sample library that needs to be scanned in, which is a one time set-it-and-forget-it thing for me… and come to think of it, navigating through those folders can be very slow at times on the rare occasions when I do use that section of Mediabay.
Not to vie for title of Mr Obvious, but 2GB RAM is a bit meager. That would definitely present performance problems with a fully loaded 64-bit (takes more memory) Cubase and plug-ins. If your memory is running low, things like scanning / indexing a file directory would be very slow.
Ok, but if you never change folders, doesn’t that mean that you always have any file (of any type) you could ever use in Cubase in your search results? Because using the Defined Locations menu leads to the same problem. So you must be WAY beyond 20.000 files in your preferences, where you choose the number of files to be shown. And all of them are shown to you in no time when you open MB? And how’s that possible, when each and every time one opens only the preset list from within a plug-in, it takes several seconds for all presets/drumkits/whatever to appear?
Not sure I understand what you’re getting at here, but yes I don’t change my folders around. No need to really. Yes any file (of any type) is pretty much just a keyword away in the search bar… and again, the search results are instantaneous for me.
What problem? The problem of navigating folders in the “Defined Location” section sometimes being slow? Like I said, the only time I use the “Defined Locations” menu is when I have a new sample library that needs to be scanned in, which is a one time set-it-and-forget-it thing for me. Otherwise, its not relevant to my Mediabay workflow.
Yes I definitely have WAY more than 20,000 files (all organized and tagged) in Mediabay
Hm, not for me. Just tested: Within a previously scanned folder with 1841 samples MB takes 2-3 seconds from hitting return to displaying the files which have ‘tom’ in their name. Same with the word ‘Kick’.
Yes, I just wanted to be really sure that you never ever change folders or Defined Locations. So you’re always on a root folder then and when you haven’t entered any search criteria it displays a million files?
But what value did you enter in preferences as the maximum number of search results to be displayed then?
Interesting use of screen space in your picture.
Yes, I mean the presets of Cubase’s own instruments and FX. Now that’s interesting because then you have an even faster MB than they have in this promo video I mentioned above. Even there the preset list takes a second to complete.
It’s an internal 2 TB hard disk (700 GB free) by WD with 7200 rpm.
Even if MB was faster, there’s the next problem: no drag & drop to 3rd parties and… don’t want to go OT.
Astonishing and weird. I have no idea what to make out of this. I guess people like FShkreli and me are doomed to either live with it, ignore MB or switch DAWs.
Thats weird. I don’t know why you’re hard drive performance is seemingly different than mine…
check out this thread for my one (extra) click workaround
As I understand it, your problem and FShkreli’s problems are a little different though. FShkreli is experiencing real sluggish performance when navigating through the folders (the Define Locations panel), and you are more concerned about a 2-3 second lag in your search results?
Hm, what makes you think that it’s the hard drive? It’s a dedicated drive for samples, there is no OS on it and it performs great for anything else. If I had to guess it’s not the hard drive at all.
As I said in this thread, the XML translator is Win only. This topic is so hot, let’s not go into detail here.
Not quite, I (maybe FShkreli too?) have sluggish performance with every search action in MB. Not matter if I switch to a different folder in the left ‘tree’ window or switch to a different ‘Defined Location’ (why the hell are these not displayed in alphabetical order? ) or enter a search word in the Logical search function or select attributes with the Attribute function – MB always takes several seconds (2-8) to show the results, be it in the big MB window or in the preset list opened from within a plug-in. And I have scanned everything. It seems as if MB is always scanning a folder again with every search action. No comparison to Kontakt’s database. This one takes five seconds at startup, but then it’s really there and search is lightning-fast.
I want to thank you guys for keeping this topic alive. In general, no matter which method I use for getting to my sample libraries within MediaBay, I experience very sluggish performance. Sometimes, after clicking on a [scanned] folder in the folder tree at the left, it can take up to 30 seconds to display the samples. Other times, I have to re-scan the folder. Its frustrating to me because, as you can see, I regularly defrag my hard drives and my computer is pretty fast. The VST Presets also take about 10 seconds to load. I’ve updated Cubase, uninstalled, installed once again and I still have poor performance in MediaBay. The ‘Defined Locations’ menu I use for my favorite libraries.
Also, I don’t use the “seach” feature within MediaBay – I have over 1.5 million samples; obviously, I have no idea what most of them are even titled.
I have no idea what it could be… thats really weird.
Fair enough…
Actually FShkreli never specifically mentioned the search feature in Mediabay in his previous posts in this thread.
Well I don’t know what tell you… I don’t know why your search results take 2 or more seconds while my search results are instantaneous.
Ugh. Personally, I can’t stand navigating through the folders in Kontakt… so tedious! Its so much easier for me to find the samples or loop in Mediabay and just drag n drop them/it into Kontakt.
Dam that really sucks. Like I said, you’re missing out on IMO one of the greatest features Cubase has to offer. Hopefully someone at Steinberg or maybe someone else reading this thread can help get things straightened out.
1.5 million samples?! haha and I thought I had a lot!
Thats the beauty of Mediabay though, organization of that data by categorizing and tagging with your own unique custom searchable tags. Granted, its a LOT of work initially, but when its done it makes your life (and workflow) sooo much easier I can’t even imagine going back to having to find samples the old way from a folder tree…
Oh, no no, I’m using Kontakt’s database, not its browser so much. And I only have Kontakt Instruments in it, no single samples. That’s something I would like to use MB for. But then there is no d&d for me… oh, I’m going in circles. But thanks for the efforts to find solutions.
) or enter a search word in the Logical search function or select attributes with the Attribute function – MB always takes several seconds (2-8) to show the results, be it in the big MB window or in the preset list opened from within a plug-in. And I have scanned everything. It seems as if MB is always scanning a folder again with every search action. No comparison to Kontakt’s database. This one takes five seconds at startup, but then it’s really there and search is lightning-fast.