Why trashing preferences?

Why does trashing preferences cure so many Cubase issues? Are there that many conflicting settings that make this possible?

Is this not a bug that should be fixed in and of itself? [Prefence settings can cause a crash]

Preference settings should never be able cause a crash in Cubase. Ever. Period. End of discussion.

I’ve never had a problem with them. Just sayin’

Now end of discussion. Unless you’d like to discuss.

Hmmm… how do you trash preferences ?

Hmmmm… Good point . How do you trash preferences ?

Outta the way ya noobs!! :laughing:

Read this Fizbin, I was arguing the same thing. You’ll find some nice links.

Yes, I’ve never understood why “trash your preferences” seems such a common remedy recommended in these fora. If it were just a quick button push that would be one thing, but implied with trashing your preferences is that you then have to test each one out, one at a time, to see which one is the rogue preference (talking about the preference file we have to remember to manually copy/store every time we make a new preference).

I only know Cubase - do other DAWs have a similar problem?

See the “search” top right on the page…!?
Basically you delete the app data folder and let Cubase create it new.

Because there are so many people in here, that don´t have a clue about most preferences and setttings in Cubase. And simply find it much more comfortable to delete all of their settings (or do complete reinstalls) instead of taking a few minutes searching the one setting they screwed. I don´t say this is the always the case, but many posts I´ve seen people propose a general “trashing prefs”, when there was a dedicated setting to fix the problem.

…but there should be no way to screw up the settings.

Settings that are out of bounds or that conflict should be known by the developers and not allowed.

It’s not like the preferences have changed much in the last ten years. I’d understand on Cubase SX1 maybe, but how many years since then? (I know Cubase predates SX1)

I know Logic and Digital Performer too. There is nothing, like trashing preferences. At the other hand, this feature saves lots of troubles sometimes.

I have been trashing preferences just once in (around) 5 years. But as local technical support, I know, it helps quite often, in “non-standard situation”.

Best,

This has alrtedy been discussed many times, but the fact is that there is a Cubase weakness, here.

Not so long ago, I had a problem with Alchemy which suddenly delivered a loud sustained noise coming from nowhere and saturated my main outputs. I posted a thread about it in the Camel Audio forum and one fellow of the develoment crew quickly suggested to remove 2 files in the Cubase preferences folder. Result : problem solved !

The Cubase preferences weakness is, sadly, a well known one… :neutral_face:

What’s seldom mentioned when squirting out the “trash preferences!” mantra is that you should back them up first!!!
Especially if you have presets and key commands saved or else they will get lost :astonished:
Get to know what’s in there in the preference folder for your version of Cubase and just pick the troublemakers.
There is also at least one feature request topic somewhere about a better Preferences Tool so you can do all this dirty laundry from inside Cubase instead of having musicians digging around deep down in the C:\ partition of their computers … :unamused:

Thanks, but I’m not really interested in trashing preferences. Maybe sometime in the future.

Save yourselves hours of boredom by googling “trash preferences”.
Gone in 60 seconds. :mrgreen:

And, funnily enough, if you add “Logic” or “Digital Performer” you will find references to it as well.

Another “Cubase bug” gone. I’ll send a grief-monkey to search out another one. :mrgreen:

Coincidentally, I had to trash preferences the first time in my 10+ year history with Cubase, just yesterday.

The Cubase 6.5.1 x64 UI was not refreshing sometimes, and when it stopped, I couldn’t get it back without restarting Cubase. During playback the scroller would just stop. Cubase was still functional, but I couldn’t see any buttons or most menu items to actually do anything. Played back just fine, was in ReWire with Reason 6, though I don’t know if that had anything to do with it.

I was completely miffed for about an hour, then decided to try trashing preferences. Had never, ever done it, but it seemed to work.

Now I have to ask again…“why?”

I stopped asking why when it just fixes the problems that can crop up.

Maybe there should be an option in the menus for “Trash Preferences on Exit”

“Trashing Preferences” is trivially easy.

But seldom mentioned in these fora is that rebuilding them after letting Cubase create the default preferences is often very tedious and time consuming.

For those that haven’t had to do it yet, it involves reintroducing the saved Preferences one at a time and seeing if that’s the one that made Cubase crash. A definite “uggh” experience!

LOL