Intermittent metronome dropouts - very often click sounds like pipipipipipipi-pipi-pi–pi-pipipi—pipi–pipipipipi-pi-pi-pipipi—pipipipi-pi-pi. Terrible for musicians recording with click!
MIDI failure while mixdown - when mixdowning projects, approx. 10-30% of renders has problem with MIDI stopping working at all somewhere during mixdown. First part of mixdown is ok, second part is without midi. When MIDI stops then everything controlled by MIDI stops finally. No errors shown, just the output wav file is wrong. No VST instruments, no MIDI gates etc.
Freeze multiple tracks at once - why is it impossible yet? Why to wait for each freeze? Time is money.
How many tracks do you have? Has your computer power enough? What about your Buffer Size settings?
What is the destination of these MIDI data? HW instrument/SW instrument? Which one? Are you sure, this is Cubase problem, not the instrument? What about automation? Is there any?
Cubase can’t do this. I think, it has quite good reason. If you freeze all tracks together (to one file), you have to re-freeze it again, when you need to un-freeze any track.
Typically 12+, but it seems it’s not associated with number of tracks or with CPU load, it simply happens and very often.
Cubase problem with 99% probability. It happens with any instrument, with any midi noise gate, with any midi controlled VST. Midi simply randomly goes down entirely.
I wish Cubase can freeze 10 tracks in one step so I should not wait ten times 5 minutes to each single track freeze. Possibly here can help any macro?
(ad 1,2 - Note : I have two PCI UAD cards installed, remaining HW and SW is typical PC, nothing special)
Freeze multiple tracks at once - why is it impossible yet? Why to wait for each freeze? Time is money.
Tell us what other programs do this. And if time is worth so much money why you cannot afford that product.
Effectively freezing is a temporary rendering to audio. It does take time. But you knew that all along I guess.
Tip: Don’t try to make yourself appear more important than it appears on the page because, while you may indeed be that important, most of us aren’t that bothered (re: “Time is money”. We all know that, especially the staff at Steinberg,) and you may actually look to others to be not that important.
Apple Logic, for example. You can choose, which tracks should be freezed, and then ust hit the Play, and Logic will freeze all your tracks. Quite nice.
Interesting, but instantly? I would think it’d still take time. Rendering’s all down to CPU. Really freeze has only been around since the change between the old Intel chips and the newer Quad cores of around 5 to 8 years back and was only meant as a temporary stop-gap until users with older systems caught up and then it mostly affected users who had not properly configured what their systems needed to get to some , usually, very high track and FX counts.
Thus when you find you need freeze it usually means that you need to look at your work practices or get a more powerful system. That’s the only realistic use I see for it is provide a temporary work continuum until you can obtain more power to continue working properly without system seizures.
The old techniques of submix and bounce are much more effective as they assign flexibility to the user instead of the user being at the mercy of the DAW. He gets the job done despite limitations.
Freeze is not a feature. It’s just a temorary helping hand which will always be one step behind computing power improvements.
I would probably love for it to work the way some users think it should be but sadly, looking at the very reason for it’s existence, I don’t think it’s worth wasting time on to any great depth for anyone.
ad 3) Conman, if you like to spend one hour with software like few minutes watch progress bar, then press a key and again watch progress bar, and again, it’s your choice. For me it’s better to schedule tasks and make software doing that at once while I can do other things. The role of freezing is not only to reduce CPU load, imagine, sometimes there can be tracks that someone likes to close, to freeze (just because its sound is correct). And freezed tracks also speed up offline render as well. Also, UAD plugins are too slow compared to native plugins running on modern CPUs, so freezing UAD inserts also helps a lot. Cubase has big leak of batching functions like this (batch processing = big time saver mainly on large projects).
reaper has batch freeze (and logic). it’s so wonderful. for large projects that require freezing, it’s a workflow game-changer.
my biggest deal-breaker in Cubase right now is the 6 insert limit. i say “six,” as the last two slots effectively don’t count if you can’t freeze them. when a project gets large (or on a lesser powered laptop), you’re forced to use what you can freeze.
i’ve got some modeled plugin chains, for creative sound design applications, where you have to re-gain stage to -18 dBFS after the outputs so that it hits the next VST’s inputs correctly (the inputs are modeled). this effectively doubles how many inserts you need.
one of my reaper project’s has 13 inserts on a track. haha. i literally can’t use Cubase for this project, as it has to be frozen (so, group channels / live buses are out of the question). and i’m not using multiple tracks or bouncing/rendering, etc. – too much tweaking needed to kill what should be a very simple non-destructive workflow.
it’s ironic that the inventor of VST has the most artificially limited and draconian VST feature set. you’d think Cubase would be the reference standard in VST features (unlimited slots, save-able preset VST chains, etc.)
that, and the VST “intolerance” (constant crashing / pref trashing) has the pair of us estranged, for now.
Don’t have any of these issues…
Nor I need to freeze so many tracks …
I have a 80 track project with 23 RND 5033 and 15 RND 5043, plugin- after plugin, also Master fader has 5 VST mastering including Vintage Open Deck in there… Lots of automations, Computer is working just fine, no crashing, no dropouts, no metronome issues. I save my channels (drums) and recall for the next mix… inserts presets, etc…
Have also run the same project on my laptop with no problems… I have moved the project from Nuendo 5 to Cubase 6 back and forth with no problems…
DO I need infinite inserts… really?
You guys are putting reverbs on every tracks or something…?
AND LOGIC can kiss my Pumas It’s funny because everyone I know with the “Logic” is drooling in my studio with all the feature in Cubase.
Been tracking on the road with my RAIN laptop i7 and both UR28M and UR824. flawless performance.
AM I saying I get no bugs… no… but they never stop me from doing my job… and usually involves a 3rd party bad VST and to the trash can it goes. RND - VINTAGE Yamaha - SSL is all I need.
PEOPLE ALL DAW have bugs. Pro Troll, Logic, CAKE, Reaper, etc…
I recommend a RAIN ION - AMD Phenom II 6X or 8X core 3.0ghz and 16GB ram and tuned up Win7 pro 64bit to all.
logic: it’s a crash factory. and that modal “overload” dialog you have to click away is maddening. sometimes, you can’t click it away fast enough, it’s like playing a video game just to stop the playback. and there’s no way to disable it.
reaper: mutes and solos during playback garble the playback and hang the interface for about 5 seconds. forget using it live. the whole “mouse modifiers” thing is awful. simple track timing offset is via a javascript plugin and is buggy and flawed. it doesn’t remember the window positions of some things on project load.
cubase: 6 insert limit. arbitrary sends limit. the crashing/pref trashing thing is clearly a problem for many of us. it’s the only daw that has saved out corrupted project data on me. i lost 10 versions of a project before i caught it.
sonar x2: its sound engine does not have a pre-buffering-oriented scheduling model, which means it puts the entire live, serial signal path on a single core of the cpu – so, all your live bus effects and inserts better fit or you’ll get dropouts. all other daws handle this better and offload slices to the other cores for even a serial signal chain. its automation lanes are too short (arbitrary height limit). it doesn’t remember the width of any plugin (narrow plugins have to be manually resized every time you load the project).
digital performer: you can’t have shared/aliased/pattern-based copies of midi clips. a feature my 1990s drum machines had. unbelievable. i call motu each year to ask if they’ve added this basic feature yet.
protools: no direct vst support.
all that said, what daws do is amazing and are one of the most complex types of applications on the planet.
we’re like only a few more versions away from near perfection – across the board – really.
You can choose, which tracks should be freezed, and then ust hit the Play, and Logic will freeze all your tracks. Quite nice. 
It’s funny because everyone I know with the “Logic” is drooling in my studio with all the feature in Cubase.
