This is concerning. I have a project that I haven’t opened since before I upgraded to Cubase 13. It has Synthmaster on a track, which I apparently froze. I opened the project and it seemed odd. The pitch seemed weird. I unfroze the track and noticed through trial and error that something was wrong with Synthmaster where the mapping of notes was somehow quantized or shifted to a different scale. I abandoned ship and reverted the project.
After doing so, I am now seeing an error about the cache file for the frozen channel not being found. There’s something going on with Synthmaster it seems, but the cache file for the frozen channel seems like a bug. It seems that by unfreezing the channel while I had the project opened completely wiped out the cache file, when it shouldn’t have (as older copies or project backups might refer to it). I’m now stuck trying to figure out how to make Synthmaster not re-map my notes (it’s freaking strange). But even worse, the frozen track seems lost forever. Thankfully, I have backups which I’m going to try and restore from, but…
I think there’s a legit bug with frozen tracks and Cubase 13. Unfreezing them shouldn’t delete the cache file if it’s referenced from other project files.
Quick update. After restoring from a backup from a few days ago, and while the track is still frozen, things sound correct. I only now noticed (and payed attention to) the dialog that appeared asking to keep or delete the freeze files. This is the crucial moment, where the context of every decision made is always in “the currently opened project”. I’m thinking that if this deletion applies to all other copies (including the “reverted” copy of the project file), that there needs to be a better warning.
I’m still not sure what’s going on with Synthmaster, as after going back through my steps, the unfrozen track is now in a different key or offset. (So bizarre)
But, anything I do in a project, no matter how destructive (maybe with the exception of the media manager thing) should NOT prevent me from reverting to the prior version of the project.
Subtle, but can be life/death of a project when there’s a misbehaving plugin.
I narrowed the underlying problem down to a problem in Synthmaster. I sent them a support request.
The concern is that by unfreezing a track, and regardless of the prompt, I would expect that opening an older or backup (or reverting) would preserve the frozen track. I’d suggest at least adding to the warning dialog that deleting the frozen files will affect other projects and can’t be undone. Maybe?
I consider myself pretty organized. In this case, I simply wanted to revert back to the saved version of the project after noticing that when I unfroze the track, things were bonkers! Pretty common use-case. Nothing to do with organization.
Could you please repeat in step by step manner your steps? When did you revert? When did you get the missing freeze-file message (before the revert or after)? Thank you.
Un-freeze the track, and hit OK (I kinda glossed over the message, at this point I left “Delete Freeze Files” checked, not thinking much of it)
Make a few edits, but don’t save. (it’s at this point where I noticed something was wrong with the track)
Select “Revert” from the File menu. When it’s done loading, I get the message: “The cache file for frozen instrument “Synth Arpegg” could not be found. The instrument will be unfrozen.”
So, all in all I’ve figured out how to fix the “scale” in Synthmaster to fix the issue (their support is great), but from a user experience standpoint, I might consider freeze files should only be deleted if they are no longer referenced by a saved file or backup project. In this case, I would expect revert to “just work”.
From a design perspective, the management of the “freeze files” seems like an implementation detail that the user shouldn’t have to worry about. I think of them like other temporary audio data that is created throughout the process, but that’s just my perspective.
At least now I know not to ever delete a freeze file in the future.
(Makes me think of maybe incorporating them into the media pool window, such that they can be cleaned up later if they aren’t referenced?)
I’m guessing not much can be done, but it’s a slight issue from a UX standpoint.
