Let me begin by saying that of all the major PC-based DAW programs to choose from in the 2000 to 2010 era, Cubase was and is the most compatible with my way of working on songs. I can write and arrange in Cubase relatively easily, mostly due to the workflow, which is not all that different (follow me here) than Bars and Pipes Professional, which remains my gold standard of how a DAW should perform.
But there have been issues. And while it would be easy for me to point fingers and assign blame, I won’t do that here.
My main concern is about my older songs, and bringing them up to speed in Cubase 6. I’m finding that importing my older projects is vastly more problematic in Cubase 6 than it was in Cubase 4. I’m experiencing numerous crashes and glitches - primarily with unfreezing existing instruments.
It has become so bad that I have resorted to exporting the MIDI from older projects, and recreating the mix instrument by instrument. Along with recreating the insert plug-ins on each instrumental audio track.
Now, this is something I can do. I can recreate an existing mix from scratch by carefully recreating every element of the mix. But it’s very time-consuming.
My question is - is anyone else experiencing these issues, and how are you dealing with it?
I’ve got two methods of avoiding this. The first is to finish my projects and release them! The second is to keep old versions of Cubase running. Yep, despite my first suggestion I still have an album now which is not yet finished and includes SX3 songs, so I’ve got an XP DAW running SX3. It’ll be finished by spring and that DAW will then be put into cold storage. Another thing I sometimes do is to render all instruments and make stems - at least that way you can import the wav files easily in the future if you want to remix.
Your first point is well taken, unfortunately I started out without much in the way of decent gear and the knowledge of how to use it when I became active again in music composition and production about ten years ago - but some of those older songs are pretty solid and well-written, just not as well-mixed as my more recent work.
I started with Cubase 5 VST/32, and eventually upgraded to Cubase SX, SX3, Cubase 4 and now Cubase 6. The reason I kept upgrading (aside from a couple of features that I liked) was to fix bugs, frankly. But I’m realistic enough to know that backward compatibility is never a 100% sure thing even with a product that is advertised as being backward compatible. I expect to have to do some work. This is the first time, however, where there just doesn’t seem to be a means for me to fix the problems with importing older material.
I want a relatively bug-free experience when I have a musical idea that I’m trying to develop and record. Cubase is not giving me that - in fact it never has given me that and it’s really starting to make me angry. I’ve spent way too much money on VST instruments and effects, sample libraries, hardware controllers, etc. to be at this point now.
Yes, sounds like it. Got anyone in mind? If I could for once open a Cubase project without fear of “what went wrong now?”, that would be worth something to me.
Paul, you do realise you could have SX3, C4 and C6 all on the same PC? – Perhaps that could that mean that, for many of your SX3/C4 projects, there’s no need to bring them into C6?
Yes, but here’s the thing that I haven’t said clearly enough - of all the versions of Cubase that I have used, this has been the most bug free SO FAR (and I say that even though I just posted a thread about an issue in Cubase 6 that I’m currently having - at least this one doesn’t totally screw up the project).
So, there has (almost) always been a specific issue that I was having at the time that necessitated using a newer version of Cubase. Going back to Cubase 4 would just mean returning to the bugs I upgraded to Cubase 6 to fix.
EDIT - I should also note that I didn’t buy Cubase 6 just to redo my older songs. I’ll be working on new stuff shortly. I’m just starting with an older project so I don’t have to think so much about creative decisions while I learn the workings of Cubase 6. But it turns out I had to start from scratch on that older project anyway.
The solution still sounds simple enough. Unfreeze in the old version, save, open in the new. As was already pointed out, your C6 license entitles you to run all previous versions, back to SX 1 I believe.
You can also try, if separated by more than one version, opening and saving in subsequent versions up until the latest. e.g. you’ve got an SX 3 project. Open it in 4, save, open it in 5, save, open it in 6 and see what you get. Tweak along the way as necessary perhaps.
I’ve had similar issues, but I’ve never lost a project, or couldn’t eventually get it to open in a later version somehow. It frequently involves maybe replacing obsolete plugins and tweaking settings and remixing a bit, but I’ve never completely lost a song.
yes, i’ve been using cubase since pro 24 on the atari and have every version up to present. I’ve never used freeze so that’s probably why my experience is the same as the poster above. I’ve always bounced things to audio rather than freeze,which I’ve always thought of as a temporary kind of bounce so not reliable.
Good luck. What exactly happens when you try and unfreeze? It seems like it should at least leave the MIDI track alone and well in the project. Then, at worst you’d have to reload your VSTi…perhaps losing some patch settings (yeah, that would suck). You can’t always duplicate that sound you had.
Can you copy the MIDI part from one frozen track to an unfrozen one? Is this a frozen Kontakt track perhaps? Which version?
