How stable is Cubase 7 for you?
- Rock solid with no bugs
- Rock solid with a few minor bugs
- Rock solid but with a lot of bugs
- Somewhat stable with no bugs
- Somewhat stable with a few minor bugs
- Somewhat stable but with a lot of bugs
- Unstable with no bugs
- Unstable with a few minor bugs
- Unstable but with a lot of bugs
- Unusable
0 voters
Ever since I bought Cubase 7 (and before then), I have spent many an hour researching the reliability of the program in relation to other similar pieces of software and assessing the accounts of users of the program who post on multiple sound forums and blogs on the internet. My goal in this post is not to bash Cubase 7, which I believe is currently the most feature-filled daw on the market. My goal is to raise awareness to some of the issues that I have experienced with the program, in hopes that the Steinberg development team, a division of the respectable audio equipment brand Yamaha, will pay attention to these issues.
When I first opened my Cubase 7 box a little more than a year ago, I was super excited to get started. However, as soon as I got started using it, I noticed the workflow was different than the other daws I was used to. I thought to myself, “I’m used to a different workflow, it’s probably just me thinking it is harder to use.” And it was. As time went on, I got more and more proficient with the program, and learned to use it well. But two things kept haunting me: inconsistency and bugs. I have tried to provide a somewhat comprehensive list of bugs below, including some of the inconsistencies for good measure as well:
*1. For starters, when I installed the program initially and tried to load a video into the program just for simple playback, every time I tried to play the video the program crashed. This was thankfully fixed in the updates, but the issue shouldn’t have been present at the release of this program.
2. One time when I loaded the program, video playback wouldn’t occurr. The program didn’t crash, but I did have to restart my computer.
3. One time, I booted from a different operating system on a flash drive, and the program forgot all my settings.
4. Up until the last fix, when moving notes up and down in the key editor with the synth Retrologue loaded, the notes would not preview properly.
5. Sometimes when snap is set to on, snap will not work and I have to deactivate it and reactivate it.
6. Cubase forgets my vst audio connections frequently, especially when switching drivers, but other times it doesn’t
7. Once when I loaded Cubase and set up the proper connections, Cubase wouldn’t play any sound. I think that happened a few times.
8. Cubase hangs on closing, taking 3-20 seconds to close and sometimes not closing at all and I have to force quit. And this is after I closed the project I was working on.
9. Cubase will not recognize midi keyboard when Cubase is already loaded. This might be a driver issue though. It does recognize my sound interface.
10. Whenever I set my cubase playhead in the center of a measure and click record with metronome and precount on, the playhead jumps to the beginning of the measure and starts recording from there. This didn’t happen until a few months ago.
11. When the dongle is unplugged during operation, Cubase suddenly crashes with a “Halion Sonic SE cannot connect to dongle” error, and the “retry” button doesn’t usually work. It doesn’t give the user a chance to plugin the dongle if they bump it. The only redeeming feature is the reliable backup system.
12. When clicking on an event in the project and then clicking on an empty space in the arranger window, the time it takes for the event to “un-highlight” is inconsistent.
Edit 9/28/14 - I figured this one out: When I click on an event in the project window and then click on the space either below the list of tracks or outside of the locator range, the track is un-highlighted immediately. When I click on an event and then click on the space within the list of tracks (along the timeline of any track) as well as within the locator range, the track takes a second to un-highlight. Also, when the playhead is moving during playback, and when I click and hold on a region below the list of tracks or outside of the locator range, the playhead immediately stops moving and freezes in its position until I release the mouse button. However, when I click and hold on a region along the timeline of any track that is also within the locator range, the playhead takes a second to stop moving (almost identically the same amount of time it takes a track to un-highlight in the conditions stated above).
13. The Cubase deeser plugin introduces a slight bit of latency, even when deactivated, when monitoring a track.
13. When hovering a mouse pointer on top of the Cubase “sends” and “inserts” buttons, a little popup saying “sends” or “inserts” is not displayed like with the other buttons surrounding those 2 buttons.
14. When the project window and mixer are minimized, and then the project windows is maximized, and then the mixer is called up from the maximized project window, a single fader fits the whole width of the mixer. This feat cannot even be achieved when using the fader width buttons to make the faders as wide as they can go.
Edit: I believe this bug was fixed with the introductions of 7.5.
15. With a maximized screen, the crossfade editor, rewire dialog etc. unmaximize all the windows in the project, making the ability to maximize any windows pointless when using those editors and dialogs. This makes the program difficult to use on a small laptop screen.
16. Once, when the grid was set to “use quantize,” the grid didn’t properly use the quantize.
17. The device setup window takes a longer time to close than any other settings window, for no apparent reason.
18. This may not be a Cubase bug, but Cubase disables Windows aero theme when using the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver provided with Cubase.
19. Cubase SOMETIMES disables Windows Aero theme when using other drivers, and the changes are still in effect after the program closes.
20. Cubase will sometimes not start after a crash, until I restart my computer. But most times it decides to start.
21. When putting my computer to sleep and then resuming it a while later, Cubase often crashes, at which time I must resort to the backup file.
22. When installing the trial of Cubase 7.5, Cubase overwrites the old Halion Sonic SE and adds the new Groove Agent One in addition to the old one. When uninstalling Cubase 7.5, Cubase does not revert to the old Halion Sonic SE or remove the new Groove Agent One, in effect providing you with a mixture of two pieces of software. Hopefully after 1 month passes, my Cubase 7.5 trial won’t expire, crippling the new Halion Sonic SE.
23. When using Halion Sonic SE with some of the instrument samples loaded (mainly bass guitars), the fundamental tones of the some of the lower notes are out of tune. Try the fretless bass or similar bass guitars to reproduce this effect.
24. When coming around from behind or in front of the sends or inserts on the inspector with the mouse pointer horizontally, Cubase keeps the insert or send highlighted if I move into the insert and back out of the insert the same way I came in. If I do this with every insert or send, I have a whole listed of highlighted inserts.
Edit: This bug was fixed in 7.5, with the implementation of the new inspector design.
*
These are most of the serious bugs that I have encountered in Cubase, and from my readings on many forums and audio websites, I am not alone in all of my problems. I would like to take this time to challenge the Cubase development team to address these issues, and not ignore them, to take the time to fix these problems, instead of being concerned about the latest release of Cubase. I know it is possible for the development team to not pay much attention to this post, and I understand that they have a busy schedule and may not even have time to read it, but I would love to see (at least for a while) Steinberg implement a policy modeling after the one that Ableton implemented a while ago concerning their daw Ableton Live. Instead of focusing on enhancing the features of Cubase 7 (which is still a good thing), I would like to see Steinberg focusing more on fixing the problems and bugs in the software, and at the end of it all perhaps even offering a free patch that solves these issues.
Here is the statement from Ableton to which I was referring:
*“Some of you have experienced and reported problems with Live 8 several months ago that we have still failed to fix. This is both painful and necessary for us to discuss. We owe you sincere apologies, as well as an explanation and outlook for the future.
Ableton values quality over innovation. Our engineers will stop whatever they are doing to fix a bug when they become aware of it. They must, however, rely on a process that prepares the incoming information and funnels it to them appropriately. Establishing and maintaining this process is the responsibility of management — particularly us, Bernd and Gerhard — and this is where things have gone wrong while we let our attention divert to ambitious new projects.
Our apologies also extend to both the Ableton developers and tech support colleagues because they want to be proud of software and service that users love.
We have now decided to:
suspend all development towards new features while the whole team joins forces to address the current issues. This effort is open ended and will result in a free Live 8 update;
make process changes to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.
We hope this plan finds your understanding and agreement. We’d like to wish you a very happy holiday season and a wonderful 2010!
Gerhard Behles, CEO
Bernd Roggendorf, CTO”
*
One more thing before I conclude this post
…
Have any of you, the users of Cubase, experienced any of these issues that I am talking about? Or have you had a bugless experience with the program. It would be a great thing if we could have a civilized discussion about these issues below so that we can help work together to make Cubase a better daw.
Thank you for taking the time to vote in the poll and leave your comments 
