@Chriss I have investigated the issue more thoroughly. (that’s with workaround 1.)
I have found that the bug behaves differently depending whether the Control Room is enabled or not.
In both cases, the bug occurs when creating a new empty project or opening a project that has the bug, right after launching Cubase.
By empty I mean with the Create Empty button when no template is selected
(I have tried opening a template and in this case the project opens clean.)
The bug is fixed by removing the default output under the Outputs tab, and creating a new one (this is Chriss’ workaround 1.).
How it behaves afterwards is tied to the Control Room :
CR Disabled :
Previewing the audio (MediaBay, File Explorer, Scrub tool and Play tool) will indeed instantly make the bug return. When this happens you’ll have to do the above fix once again.
CR Enabled :
Previewing the audio does not make the bug return.
Moreover, when we Enable the CR when the bug is occurring (from CR Disabled), the issue goes away as soon as we try to preview audio, same as when we remove and recreate the output.
Actually, after thinking about it, the fact that the Control Room is enabled actually acts like workaround 2. : create a second output bus and use it instead of the first bus. That’s why people who are using the CR do not experience the issue at all, especially if they are starting new projects from custom templates that have been saved bug free.
Additionally, once you have replaced the output and saved the project, it is internally considered as fixed, even if it returns because you have the CR Disabled. This can be verified by making the issue return by previewing audio, saving the project, closing Cubase completely, and opening everything again. The project will open in the fixed state.
However, if you first save the project without fixing the issue initially, this project will remain in the buggy state until you fix it and save it. And what’s important to note is that when we open a project that does not have the bug, close it, then load a buggy project, the buggy project will receive the fix from the clean project, without us having to remove the buggy output, and saving it will effectively fix it. That’s a bit weird but very important to note. I have already talked about that earlier in this topic but gathering all information here is a good thing.