My First Poof(tm) In Almost Fifteen Years

Long-time users may recall “the black time”. The ugly period few remember in the regions of SX3 and SX4 where Cubase would simply ‘disappear’. It would be up on your monitor, you’d go away for a few minutes, come back, type a single keystroke or click a mouse and POOF! The app would simply disappear (along with yer unsaved project).

I dubbed these POOFS!

Coincidence or not, that was a time of chaos where the company was sold (and resold) and the higher-ups stopped talking to users. Ever.

I just had my first one since around 2004-5.

Anyone else?

I’ve been using Cubase since LE4 (it came free with an audio intrerface whose name I cant remember) and I’m now Cubase Pro 10.15 and all versions in between, updating as they were released!
I’ve gone through various lap tops (Sony Vaio to HP pavillion) and am now on HP all in one desktop. As you will appreciate a lot of different processors and specifications.
The reason for updating computers was to prevent latency and system slow down, NOT to prevent crashing as that has never been an issue for me!
I have had various audio interfaces, from my first American one whose name escapes me, through to Steinberg C11 & several small UR’s. I’m now using Focusrite 18i8 2nd gen.
The audio interface updates, and off course the drivers, were for quality improvements and NOT to prevent system crashes!
I am using in the box Steinberg stock plug ins, along with about 25 Wave “bargain” $26 plug ins and a few freebies like Soundtoys Tremulator and Red compressor and eq.
I record direct mono or stereo audio for vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, and instrument tracks with my M Audio keyboards. I only ever use Cubase package vst instruments (Halion Sonic, Retrologue, Pad shop pro, Groove agent se, Halion Sonic Se)
Even with all that variation in DAW versions, computer efficiency and plug ins, I can honestly say that I have never had a POOF failure!

Thats why I love Steinberg!!!

Jim B

Been using Cubase for a long while now and I’ve only had the strange “POOFS” since C10.
In the middle of work Cubase will just vanish without warning.
It happens mostly after you click on something (anything) in the main window.
Theres no dialog box or crash information or anything. Cubase just disappears.

Its gotten a lot better since the 10.0.10 upgrade and since the 10.0.15 upgrade, it hasnt happened anymore.

Hope it stays that way.

Yes, Poofs here as well.

Doesnt matter if I trash all prefs, anything Steinberg, re install etc.

C10 is the buggiest release in a LONG TIME IMO

10.0.15 is full of poofs here

« Open vacancies at Steinberg: We are looking to reinforce our team as soon as possible. »

Hmmm… It took me -years- to get over my anger over these Poofs™. This is my job and the lack of reliability was frightening.

But I had to admit that by C5 they had it fully sorted. And I’ve not had a single reliability issue since then. (Well, except for the issue of it refusing to exit cleanly on close. But that never lost me any work.)

So this blind sided me.

The problem with Poofs™ is that there was no way to even =report= them. No error log. No way to replicate. So all one could do was just take notes and ask others to see if others were having the same issues and then compare notes until we started to see commonalities.

So… if others are having them, I just wanna know so we can compare notes.

I had a poof last week. On inspection of the crash log(there was one), and talking to my audio device developer, it looks like it was a bug in Apple driver code. Nothing Steinberg can fix.

Cubase is/has been fairly stable for me, about as stable as the other DAW’s that I use.

Mind you, I use lots of third party plug ins and things like UAD, automap. etc.

one more poof!!

Cubase 10 brought back the “poof on exit” behaviour on my Mac, must be years since I last saw it. Luckily it doesn’t corrupt files (not yet…) but I’m starting to feel unsecure again. Coming from Cubase 9 with no changes in setup or plug ins so far.

I never had a poof, working with cubase since the Atari.
But last week i had poofs everytime i opened the project i am currently working on.
I had done audio alignment on three tracks off short guitarroffs, to mad e them perfectly matched.
Since then C10 poofed on opening that project.
The i made new audiofiles of those tracks and the project opened trouble free again.
No crash files were made…

No “Poofs-TM” per se. I have had an unacceptable number of crashes and “A Serious Problem has Occurred” dialog that tells you to save the project under a new name.

In general, Cubase Pro 10.0.current is less stable than Pro 9.5.current. Could some of the instability be due to my DAW itself? i don’t think so, the machine is in good shape. I’m tempted to get a better computer to fresh install everthing…but, $$$ :frowning: may have to do it.

Had several poofs which I put down to my lack of RAM. However like everyone else it just wipes out, normally when I open a VST on a track. I call it a wipe out as in it doesn’t leave a trace of anything but POOF describes it perfectly. Add this to my HiDPI gui issues its just another reason I am back using Reaper again.

Poof’ing here again in C11 - march 2021. Haven’t had it in several years, but now again. :-1: In some strange way, it seems to has to do with recognizing the sound card. Not sure, though…

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