I had to upgrade my version of Tonalic Essential to the latest version (I had an earlier version as a Celemony user) to get the Right-Side panel to recognize that Cubase 15.0.30 actually supported the ARA version of Tonalic (I’d previously just used it as a VST3 instrument). However, I cannot get any preview sound – I only get tonalics to sound if I drag them to an audio track. Please note this is on Windows 11.
I found the Cubase-getting started video for Tonalic, which suggests there is no special setup needed for the preview:
It suggests it just comes from the main output (I assume he means Stereo Out). I can see the Tonalic previews suggesting Tonalic is following my chord changes, and showing the cycling through patterns I’m trying to preview, but no sound.
For troubleshooting purposes, I also checked if I could preview audio loops in MediaBay, and there was no problem there.
It may be relevant that I use Control Room, but I don’t see anything obvious in Audio Connections setups to suggest there is something that needs to be added for Tonalic.
Bottom line is I’m not sure if there is some special setup need I’m missing or there is some bug in the current implementation, be it on the Tonalic side or the Cubase side.
I’m curious: Are you on Windows or Mac? I’m Windows 11, but I noticed the detailed Cubase video they posted was Mac. Makes me wonder if maybe the issue is specific to Windows.
I did reboot my system during dinner, so I may try again later tonight to see if that made a difference. Need to do some practicing first…
Same here. I’ve raised about 6 bugs with Tonalics this morning from my first couple of hours experimenting with it. I don’t feel it’s production-ready just yet.
Hi everyone,
I noticed some users are still struggling with the Tonalic ARA preview being completely silent in the Right Zone after the Cubase 15.0.30 update.
I experienced the exact same problem, but thanks to a helpful user in another thread, I learned a workaround that instantly fixes this issue. The cause seems to be a compatibility bug between the Tonalic ARA engine and Cubase’s 64-bit float processing.
Here is how to fix it:
Go to Studio > Studio Setup…
Select Audio System on the left panel.
Under Advanced Options, look for Processing Precision.
Change it from “64 bit float” to “32 bit float”.
Click Apply / OK.
Close and restart Cubase for the changes to take effect.
Once you switch to 32-bit float and restart the application, the Tonalic preview sound should start working perfectly right away.
While 64-bit float is ideal for high-fidelity mixing, using 32-bit float as a temporary workaround will allow you to use the ARA preview without any practical audio degradation while composing.
Big thanks to the user who originally shared this solution with me. Also, I want to mention that I have been communicating with Tonalic support regarding this issue. I shared this specific workaround with their team and strongly requested that they release an update to fully support the 64-bit float setting as soon as possible. I hope this helps anyone who is currently stuck!
Thanks. I can confirm this worked for me on Windows 11 in my current 96 kHz project. While this is technically a workaround, I’m going to mark your answer as a solution so that anyone seeing this issue can quickly see the workaround. Hopefully they’ll solve the issue with 64-bit float processing soon.
Make sure you’re running a version of Cubase (Pro or Artist) that supports ARA extensions, and that you’ve upgraded to 15.0.30 (the update that came out earlier this week). Also, make sure you’ve installed the latest version of Tonalic (1.0.2 b9), which can be downloaded through your Tonalic user account once logged in. (If you haven’t previously obtained Tonalic Essential from Celemony, you’ll need to use the voucher in your Steinberg account to get a license.)
Once all that is installed, you should see a Tonalic tab in the right zone of Cubase’s project window, and you can log into it from there (if not already logged in), browse and preview patterns (at least if using Cubase’s 32-bit floating point engine on the latter count since the current version doesn’t let you hear the preview sounds with the 64-bit floating point engine).
There will also be a VST3 instrument version of Tonalic, but that doesn’t have the integration with the chord track, nor the right zone preview, that is now available in Cubase 15.0.30. (I used that version in earlier versions of Cubase, but the new integration is much more convenient since it follows the chord track and saves having to enter the chords directly in the Tonalic instrument.)
You can also check the video I embedded in the first post in this thread to get a better idea how to get started once you’ve got it showing up and working.
