Unhelpful error message

[TangoGrowler]

My god, HOW, after ALL these years doing this, can you be SO unhelpful!?! I mean WHICH plugin? WHERE is the plugin-by-plugin startup log? Steinberg, your product is great from a creativity standpoint, but this is pretty fundamental stuff

[Martin.Jirsak]

Hi,

As far as I can tell, this doesn’t look like a Cubase message, as there is no Cubase logo.

Could you give us more context? When does this message appear to you?

[TangoGrowler]

The context is that I’m running latest Cubase 15. I start Cubase, load a project that was working fine just last night, it gets as far as trying to load Mix Console, then this error appears before Cubase dies.

If there was a step by step startup log (that has definitely been requested before on these forums), it would be an easy job to disable or reinstall whichever plugin has become corrupted. Now, I face a lengthy process-of-elimination investigation to try to find the culprit

[steve]

@TangoGrowler

Now, I face a lengthy process-of-elimination investigation to try to find the culprit

It’s not a Steinberg plugin, as @Martin.Jirsak mentioned, and you can disable 3rd party plugins from the safe start dialog, that saves some time

Also it needn’t be lengthy if you use the half split troubleshooting method

[fese]

If it is a plugin crashing, you will usually see it in the safe mode dialog that appears when you start Cubase the next time after the crash, in the first line, something like “crashed in c:\Program File\Common Files\VST\pluginname.vst3.”

[TangoGrowler]

It doesn’t matter that it’s not a steinberg plugin; it’s hosted in Cubase. Cubase KNOWS which plugin it’s trying to load next. Just TELL us. Give us a break, Steinberg, please

[TangoGrowler]

Well, I think “usually” is pushing it, but thanks. And no - there’s actually nothing at all metioned

[Johnny_Moneto]

Cubase creates a VSTscanner log. Maybe this log can show you the last scanned plugin.

[steve]

@TangoGrowler

Cubase KNOWS which plugin it’s trying to load next. Just TELL us

That’s a rather simplistic view. Cubase is just a computer program, if Cubase queried the plugin and the plugin had a fatal error before it crashed it didn’t notify the host app.

[Johnny_Moneto]

I don’t see a crash. A plugin seems to be missing a component and therefore cannot load properly.

[MrSoundman]

@TangoGrowler

HOW, after ALL these years doing this, can you be SO unhelpful!?!

To whom are you referring? This is a user-to-user forum, not official support. If you want people to help, I suggest you don’t come on here with all guns blasting.

@TangoGrowler

I mean WHICH plugin?

Most likely the most recent one you installed.

You haven’t supplied even the most basic information, that might help us, to help you. We are almost all unpaid volunteers here, who simply share a love of Cubase. At least tell us whether you are on Windows or Mac, which version of Cubase you’re using etc.

Finally, we’ve all blown our top here from time to time, so we’re very forgiving
Just give us something to work with.

[TangoGrowler]

Is it though? Cubase goes through the project file on launch, picks out the plugins it needs to load and then tries to load them one at a time - this is apparent from the bits of feedback we DO get from the app. Of course it can’t be responsible for a badly behaving plugin, but it can a) try to catch errors cleanly and inform the user (this may not always be possible, sure), b) [and there is ZERO excuse for not doing this] creating a log entry saying “About to load plugin XYZ…” and then ideally once it has loaded, to log that as well.

[TangoGrowler]

I have calmed down a bit now, having found an entry in EventViewer and identified the source of the problem. Of course I wasn’t having a go at any forum members, but these are Steinberg forums, and are used for feature request votes etc - so, sorry if I came across as grouchy.

I wasn’t asking for help, actually, just trying to get a point across that there are some simple-to-implement things that the devs could do that would REALLY help us long-suffering users. And I’ve been using Cubase since Atari 1040 ST days. And I say “simple to implement”, with some degree of confidence, because I’m also a software developer.

[MrSoundman]

Welcome to the Cubase group therapy session.

[TangoGrowler]

Thanks. I searched for this but couldn’t see it anywhere obvious (to me) - do you know where it’s usually located? (and thanks)

[Johnny_Moneto]

Have a look here:

Slow Cubase 13 startup time

If it’s taking a really long time (>5 minutes) then that usually suggests that one of the plugins is hanging on startup. There are quite a lot of plugins that hang because they are waiting for an iLok or a network connection. Some of the ones that users have had problems with include Waves (via Waveshell), Melodyne, Samplicity, EW Spaces/Opus, Kompact Kontrol, Neural DSP If you are using C14 then there is a file called vstscannermaster.log file that will show you how long each plugin takes to …

[fese]

Well, if you are a software developer, you also probably know that Cubase cannot do anything if a DLL causes an access violation or produces an error window because it cannot load some other files .

I agree with you that an (optional) project load log could be a nice thing, but imho the current safe mode dialog is already an improvement, and in my experience it is actually quite reliable if there is an exception in a vst3 dll. Haven’t needed the “divide and conquer” elimination process of removing plugin files in years…

The vstscanner log that @Johnny_Moneto mentioned is only used when Cubase starts and scans the plugins, not on project load, as far as I know.

You can enable Usage logging for Cubase, it is more of a debug log though and I don’t know how helpful it is for determining what plugin crashed. It is probably more targeted to help support.

Usage Logging

[TangoGrowler]

thanks