I have been using Cubase since the Atari days, and at least the last two decades or so I have purchased and installed each and every version and update.
Cubase 10 was a disaster. For the first time ever (maybe I’d been lucky before), Cubase started to crash on me. Within 5 minutes from the first start of Cubase 10, the program simply vanished from screen. The DAW was unstable in a way that I had never experienced before.
Cubase 10.5 returned some of the stability, it felt as this was the version that Cubase 10 should have been.
Cubase 11 comes along and I can’t say I’m thrilled. Some nice features but lots of bugs still present and new bugs added. I should have stayed on 10.5, but I’m on 11.0.20 now. I read about all new bugs in 11.0.30 and have decided to skip that version. I’m also very hesitant to upgrading to version 11.5 when it is released.
So…from having had Cubase as my trustworthy partner since the Atari days, I now find myself…
Installing and testing Studio One.
Skipping minor updates.
Seriously thinking about skipping the next major update.
…and I don’t like it.
Please, Steinberg - Focus on stability. Focus on quality. Focus on bug fixes. Focus on making Cubase a trustworthy partner again. Wait with new features until the product is rock solid. Please ensure the quality of your excellent product and make new releases something to look forward to, not something to dread and avoid.
Why not just install 10.5 again? you can have both installed side by side.
Cubase is going through some pretty extensive changes right now - becoming fully Windows 10 based, changing all the graphics to be vectorized and HiDPI compatible, etc, etc… There is going to be bugs.
I’ve found 11.0.30 to be very stable in the short time I’ve used it. The only recent problems I had were with earlier builds of 10.5 where the screen would glitch around the borders on the mixer, and certain plugins. Not yet to experience routine crashing on any Cubase install though, luckily.
Are you at the point where you can totally rule out system issues and that these are truly inherent Cubase bugs which are causing you trouble? i.e. is there something you can do repeatedly to cause a crash which we can try and confirm? As that’s the only way issues can be fixed, if they’re first identified.
I do agree that stability and quality should be a focus, along with ‘finishing off’ certain areas. There’s many good ideas which were never fully realized, and that’s as frustrating as bugs for me. With each update it feels as though a graphical change of some sort is used to sell the latest version, and that’s perhaps time better spent on stability and tieing up loose ends?
That said, I feel that the general redesign with C11 is really nice, and makes a lot of the controls and dialog windows much more user-friendly. So a little hypocritical, perhaps. Ok… So I’m part of the problem,
I have to agree, Cubase 11 has been stable for me too. It was a no go initially until they got it working on M1 Macs, but once they did, it has been rock solid.
I am on MacBook Air, 16gb ram - Big Sur - Apollo twin and external Quad UAD for output.
I have 10.5 installed in parallel, as I understand a number of other users have as well. That in itself is an indication that something is wrong I believe. I can run 11 reasonably well, my post is more an expression for the feeling I don’t like: if I install the next version it will get worse.
If I were a software developer (which in fact I am) and made extensive changes to my product, I would have an extensive beta test and not release the final product (especially not as a paid update) until the bugs (introduced by the extensive changes) are found and fixed.
Of course there will be bugs - especially in a product as complex as Cubase. But to release paid updates with the stability problems and bugs that have been present in Cubase 10 and later points to something wrong in the development and test process imho.
I’m just saddened by the fact that I don’t trust Cubase any more.
Ahh - ahhh - ahhhh (Angel choir singing )
I feel the same way - been using cubase over 2 decades now and I generally like it. I even think there were very good improvements as well in 10 as in 11.
But I also agree a 100% with gurugurra that the many small bugs/glitches/trouble causing issues are not acceptable and annoying. I can use 11 and it runs OK - it almost nerver crashes completely. But still, I have to restart it, things won’t work properly, some good ideas not thought through - it is just not reliable and made for fast, solid working with a constant workflow as such a expensive product should be in my opinion!
My wish for 11.5 or 12 would be simple: I don’t need any new features. Just make cubase great again… Sorry, had to do this, don’t wanna get political
No seriously just make it stable and rock solid - that would make me happy!
I switched from Reaper to Cubase Pro and so far it is a mostly disappoining experience.
Behind every corner lurks some amateurish quirk or bug.
Each interaction with the GUI interrupts the playback, crucial functionality is missing and so on.
Reaper crashed on me 2 times for the last 10 years.
I know this program inside out, pretty much every corner top and bottom. There is a quirk here and there… not ‘every corner’. Read the manual and watch some tutorials maybe.
Yeah, maybe I’m overreacting but no other DAW interrupts the playback like this - there’s a 10s audio interruption when you insert Ozone 9 on a 9th generation i7. Ten seconds of silence!
This is because Ozone 9 is very high latency and Cubase needs to recalculate the time difference to sync everything back up. I believe other DAWs don’t align until you press stop. Either way, giving your ears a 10 second break isn’t a bad thing.
Reaper aligns on every bar which Cubase does not and it becomes a nightmare when you happen to trigger a VST arp with a single long MIDI note and a random interaction with the DAW interrupts the playback as usual.
I feel your pain. I’ve been working on a project all June on Pro 10.5.30, which has been pretty stable overall. I decided to upgrade yesterday to Pro 11.0.30, which contains some nice features I could use.
Running the exact same project, I already went through a couple of crashes this morning due to graphical issues… I opened a ticket and while waiting for a solution, I’m back to 10.5.30. Really disappointed!
I too have reverted to 10.5.20 because of the Komplete Kontrol issue and Broadcast .wav issue. I haven’t use 11 in months. I’m hoping to be able to use it before 11.5 comes out!
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing. Plugins have processing latency, some more than others. DAWs have to do something to counter the differences called Plugin Delay Compensation. DAWs handle this differently, some betters than other. Some have been known to have problems with phase and bad sync.
If you add a plugin with 1 second latency during playback, it’s going to be out of sync. The DAW has two ways of handling that - momentarily interrupt playback to resync everything with the new plugin, or, let the tracks go out of sync until the user presses stop.
Cubase keeps everything in sync but with the momentary interruption. Cubase has said to have good plugin delay compensation, so most have lived with the momentary interruption.
Maybe there is some other way some DAWs have figured that out I’m not away of.
You can try disabling ASIO guard or choosing ‘Low’, and also reducing your buffer… This might speed things up
Or the third method most other DAWs use, is to engage the plugin, but you won’t hear the results of that in the plugin chain until that latent period/buffer has been fulfilled. This allows for uninterrupted playback.
Remember that less latent tracks are offset backwards, to allow for the more latent tracks. So in other DAWs when a new plugin is added to the chain they are simply allowed to extend further. This whole playback interruption, I imagine, is more related with Cubase’s audio engine and how ASIO Performance is managed.
Sadly, in Cubase’s case, if you have any kind of external MIDI sync happening, this pause/break in playback can throw everything out to the point where you have to restart playback. Particularly external drum machines/sequencers/arps.
Personally, i’m quite used to it so not a problem for me, but i can appreciate how it would lead to a negative initial impression of using Cubase.
right that’s what I was maybe thinking of but couldn’t remember exactly the protocol.
In that regard, I prefer Cubases method because a.) the user would have to stop playback anyways and b.) manually stopping playback for me personally, would be annoying because i often have Return to Start on Stop enabled.
A solution would be perhaps to allow users to set a pre-emptive delay in preferences. ie, a user could look up their most latency inducing plugin, and set the pre-emptive delay to that. This would solve the MIDI-sync interruption issue maybe?
One thing I would like to see, is a preference to block any user action from interrupting recording. ie, a pop-up box if recording is active that says 'This will interrupt recording - Continue? Yes/No"
Also, people are dismissing how Cubase ‘generally’ doesn’t crash or lock up when overloaded. I upgraded to K13 during their sale, and it came with Guitar Rig 6 - Turns out it’s an absolute CPU killer! (Sounds great tho lol).
As a result, I opened up Reaper to compare how it performed, to make sure it was the plugin and not Cubase… And as expected, Reaper was a bit better than Cubase (Although, It hasn’t the overhead of variaudio, chord track, channel strip on each channel by default etc.).
However, when comparing i was duplicating tracks to see at which point both DAW’s would fall down, it was interesting to note that Cubase just stopped playing the audio when overloaded, whereas Reaper completely locked my machine up and I couldn’t stop or quit out of the app when it overloaded.
So, it’s quite comforting to know that Cubase/ASIO guard appears to be doing a great job and maintaining a stable system. If that comes at the cost of pausing audio, for the ASIO engine to manage resources, and sync the project - then, well, it could be argued a positive method too.
This has been my experience too GG - 10.5 was great. Support blamed my crashes on several programs that were not up to date and suggested I removed some, which I did. Nothing has changed - it rarely shuts down properly so if I want to open up a new project I need to Quit, else simply a Close followed by an Open file command will crash the program at some time during the session - unless I’m lucky.
I’m sticking with 11.0.10 (Windows 10) because I’m still in an album project and I do love the new audio export facility which is such a time saver.
Agree though - stability before new features please Steinberg
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