Something I have never understood about preferences

[ZeroZero]

Long timer here.
For decades the way Cubase saves preferences has perplexed me.

When one makes preference changes, even when one save the with your own unique tag - MyPrefs or something, it’s hard to know when MyPrefs is in action again, or even when it ‘should’ be in action.

For instance, when you go to the Preferences dialog and save MyPrefs, after some minor alteration, once you have saved within the pref’s box, you can see it. The Words MyPrefs, staring at you. All good you think? Well, if you close the Prefences box down and open it again, you will find the name has gone.

Does this mean MyPrefs is now in Action? I have always presumed so.

Similarly, if you close the project and reopen, you will NEVER see the words MyPref’s again unless you resave, and then only briefly.

They are still there mind you, in a list you will never see. You can know it’s there though, because if try to save them again, MyPrefs, the pop up comes with:

“There is already a preset named MyPrefs do you want to overwrite?”

This list is a graveyard for unwanted preferences, it contains My Prefs, Myprffs, Myyfreps and so forth, every typo you have made. You can only delete them as long as your memory tells you they are there, and how you mispelt.
If say we have two preference files, one I shall name as “Fred’sPrefs” another as “Joe’sPrefs”. If Fred sets up and then quits, then Joe comes along with a new project, will he now be setup as Fred, but not know it? I think so. Maybe prefs of different varities have a different purpose?

So, stepping back a bit, suppose you are opening an older project Oldy. What preferences does this project contain? It won’t tell you. If you go to prefences there will be a black box where the name should be.

Is the black box some kind of default prefs? Is it MyPrefs?

Now inbuild into C15 is a default project. I am talking specifically about the project that opens when you hit Create Empty in the Hub. Does this use default preferences or does it use your MyPrefs? My experiments suggest that it uses MyPrefs.

Sometimes this is not too clear, especially when your Cubase brain has been dealing with other matters, and it was two week prior. Do old projects use old preferences?

All this could be cleared up if Cubase displayed the name of the preference file it uses.

Z

[Johnny_Moneto]

I’ll just give a short and general reply.
The system, they programmed, is simply dreadful.
It was poor when it was first implemented and didn’t improve over the years and decades. There is no secret stroke of genius to be found here. It is just plain bad.

[Barry_Ford]

It would be nice to have the current profile prominently visible as well. Maybe in the hub?

[ASM]

What’s really annoying is when you change settings and, upon saving, find an empty field where you have to enter the preset name, which of course you don’t remember . But beware of selecting a preset from the list then, all your changes made will be lost!

So I’ve gotten into the habit of loading the preset BEFORE making any changes, then modifying and saving it, because then the preset name is present in the input field.
Still, it’s a cumbersome workflow.

[vinylizor]

And another example is in the Key Commands window.

Open the window and select a key command set.

Close the window and re-open it - the selected key command set dialogue box is empty. Which key command set are you now editing? Often not the one you previously selected….

[ASM]

@vinylizor

Which key command set are you now editing?

From a logical perspective, an EMPTY FIELD (or sometimes -) always means that it represents the currently active set of settings, regardless of how they came about. This could be, for example, by loading a preset or by manually adjusting settings. The currently active set of settings may be stored in one of the presets, but can also be a purely temporary set of settings, not stored anywhere.

[Reco29]

As a rule of thumb: changes will only be permanently baked into a preset once you have closed Cubase.

Thus, saving changes in key commands (made during the current session) in a profile will not be reflected in the new profile. You’d have to close and reopen Cubase first.

I don’t know if this rule of thumb holds true for every kind of preset change in Cubase. However, if you stick to that rule you are on the safe side.

[noise]

As someone who went through moving his preferences from a High Sierra OSX machine to a new Sequoia M2 Mini, the most frustrating thing is that the preferences are spread over many different files in many different locations.

It’s probably because parts of the program are so old and portions of the code are really, really old.

Hopefully, someday, all one’s preferences will be located in one directory.

[Reco29]

@noise

Hopefully, someday, all one’s preferences will be located in one directory.

Yes, that would be great! There are some grey areas…

However, this is only part of the bigger picture (installation). Some 3rd party plugins and libraries will still be scattered all over the place. It’s not just Steinberg

[OisteinR2]

This has been a problem for at least 20 years! We can still hope…..

[noise]

For me, I was just trying to move the Cubase native preferences - what a mess!

[Reco29]

In my case, Profiles are a very potent feature to migrate a huge bulk of my most important preferences.
Nonetheless, there are others I have to take care of by copying them manually. Therefore, I have an extra document which lists all sort of locations and associated files. If I had a comprehensive understanding of it all I would try to come up with a how-to tutorial. But there are grey areas where it’s still try and error for me. Usually, I get it all sorted out at the end of the day. But yeah, it’s still challenging if you are looking for a clean system that includes your former preferences without copying over a lot of unnecessary stuff.

[Easto]

“Preferences”, all I can tell you is that they’ve confused me for so long I gave up trying to understand them. About 3 of the posts in this thread echo my exact same problem(s) with it. Since I’m not doing anything on a professional level I’ve just thrown the dice and moved on. Heck, I probably couldn’t even remember what half of my preferences were in the first place. But I realize many of you live and die by them and how important they can be on your level.

[beatpete]

Not to mention how “preferences” seem to initialize occasionally for no apparent reason. This is why I set a backup plan to back them up everyday…

[ASM]

As @Reco29 already mentioned, the Cubase Profile Manager can export user profiles which are quite comprehensive meanwhile, and the restore function works flawlessly. It’s worth noting, however, that the profile doesn’t include some files, such as project templates and MIDI remote folder content. Projects and user-created folders are excluded, too. But you can certainly restore the majority of your settings this way.

[ikos]

@noise

the preferences are spread over many different files in many different locations

I found these locations with preferences and presets:

~/Library/Preferences/Cubase <Version Number>
~/Library/Application Support/Steinberg
~/Documents/Steinberg/Cubase
~/Library/Audio/Steinberg
~/Library/Audio/Presets/Steinberg
~/Library/Audio/Presets/Steinberg Media Technologies

Anything else?

[Thor.HOG]

There’s another way, FYI… This post may help.

How to Save Profiles, Key Commands, Preferences, Inputs/Outputs, CR Presets, Plugin Collections

Indeed. And before I add to @Reco29 ‘s fantastic post here, I just wanted to say how great it is that we have folks like Reco29 who takes all this time to compile this information!! There’s some rough patches in the forum (myself included) but what a great place to share ideas. The reason I’m posting here is two-fold: One, I wanted to again share my MacOS-based auto-backup routine (posted after this) because it’s just wonderful to have all your config files in one place with backups through…

Here’s an updated script to (in my case) include Cubase 15 in an automator-based preferences backup utility: You’ll need to change “YOURUSERNAME” to your username, and “YOURFOLDER” to a folder name in Documents you create to store your “rolling” backups.

Just open “Automator” and created a new automation job to Run Shell Script:

Where I’m showing the selected text, you’ll edit and paste in the below:

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

USER="/Users/YOURUSERNAME"

SOURCE1="${USER}/Library/Preferences/Cubase 15"

# Preset roots (under ~/Library so we can store relative paths cleanly)
PRESET_ROOT="${USER}/Library"
PRESET_DIRS=(
  "Audio/Presets"
  "Application Support/Steinberg/Track Presets"
)

DEST="${USER}/Documents/YOURFOLDER/Preferences"
mkdir -p "$DEST"

TIMESTAMP=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S")
HOSTNAME=$(scutil --get LocalHostName)

Zip1="${HOSTNAME}_C15_${TIMESTAMP}.zip"
Zip2="${HOSTNAME}_Presets_${TIMESTAMP}.zip"

zip_dir_if_exists () {
  local src_dir="$1"
  local out_zip="$2"
  if [ -d "$src_dir" ]; then
    ( cd "$src_dir" && zip -r -q "$DEST/$out_zip" ./* )
  fi
}

# Cubase prefs
zip_dir_if_exists "$SOURCE1" "$Zip1"

# Presets (zip relative to ~/Library so paths inside the zip are clean)
existing_presets=()
for rel in "${PRESET_DIRS[@]}"; do
  if [ -d "${PRESET_ROOT}/${rel}" ]; then
    existing_presets+=("$rel")
  fi
done

if [ "${#existing_presets[@]}" -gt 0 ]; then
  (
    cd "$PRESET_ROOT"
    zip -r -q "$DEST/$Zip2" "${existing_presets[@]}"
  )
fi

Then you can just save this entire job as an app and just run it. I have mine set in my Logon Items so every time I logon it creates a backup for me. I have a couple of months’ worth just in case I change something and want it back. It works wonderfully.