KVR Audio

grizzlymv · Post by **grizzlymv** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 12:42 pm

Hello gentlemen,
I have a question for those of you who use Cubase. I’ve been running on Cubase for quite some time and always had this weird issue where if Cubase is running for a long period of time (24 hours or more), at some point it seems to “lose” connections with VSTs. What I mean is that after a while, the VST just stop receiving input from Cubase and obviously, I get no sound output. This also doesn’t happen in one shot as sometime when I playback I can hear a few tracks while others doesn’t output anything. If I let it go for a while, I’ll just stop hearing anything from any track.

The problem happened with various VST (Play, Kontakt, Spectrasonic stuff, EZDrummer, etc) which lead me to think that VSTs are not the issue. It also happened on both Mac and PC as at some point I moved to Mac (until I got back to PC) just to see if the audio card on PC (Echo Mia) was the cause of the problem. However it felt like it was worst on PC (happened more often). I removed VE Pro from the equation as well as it happen even if I load all VST directly within the DAW vs through VE Pro.

Haven’t found any post with similar issue yet, neither on the Steinberg forum or elsewhere. Current workaround is to shut-down the whole thing when I go to sleep and boot it up the next day. Anybody had similar issue? Any hint on what could be the issue? Will continue my investigation, but any help would be welcome.

Oh, and I'm running on the latest version of Cubase, but this issue was there on previous versions too.

Thanks in advance.

BERFAB · Post by **BERFAB** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 1:34 pm

Funny you should mention it. I usually find Cubase to be rock solid on stability, but I have experienced this problem. I don't know that it's after the extreme "long runs" you describe though.

It seems to pop up at random times to random tracks. Just last night, I started editing a new project I had created the night before, and one of the tracks wouldn't play back the MIDI no matter what I did. My solution was simply to duplicate the track, and the COPY worked fine.

The project itself was no biggie. I had a basic 5 or 6 tracks: the drum track was an audio track, the piano was MIDI courtesy of Sampletank 3, MIDI bass was FL's Morphine, and some MIDI acoustic guitar from Kontakt with NI's Session Acoustic. Also two inactive tracks. Not 100% sure which track was out, though I think it might have been the Morphine ( a very light track from a resource perspective).

Anyway, I never do marathons like you describe, and I always shut down Cubase after a couple of hours at the most. Running the penultimate version of Cubase 8 (not the new update from a couple of days ago) on a very powerful PC in x64 environment.

I'd be curious as to whether this is a known bug too.

Cheers
-B

flugel45 · Post by **flugel45** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 2:05 pm

grizzlymv wrote: Current workaround is to shut-down the whole thing when I go to sleep and boot it up the next day....

Many of us do this as policy, not a workaround.

I'm not on Cubase, but still prefer my system to be "refreshed" at least once a day. Even when I used to keep the pc on 24/7, I still did a reboot daily because if I didn't, it would invariably start to act up after a couple or few days.

Since my reboot time is around 10-12 sec, it's nothing to me, but even if it was longer, I would get a cup of tea of coffee (or take a bathroom break)...

I guess I don't see it as a problem.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 6:13 pm

[DELETED]

grizzlymv · Post by **grizzlymv** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 6:29 pm

Thanks for the replies guys. Looks like I'm one of a kind leaving my setup open for more than a day...

The setup is:
Master:
- PC (HP Z600 12gb of RAM with system on SSD, Echo Mia as SC, Windows 10)
- Cubase 8.5.15
- Vienna Ensemble Pro (latest version)
runs only the DAW. The 2 slaves spread the load for the samples in a large template.

Slave 1
- Mac Pro 2010 (32 gb of RAM) 10.9.?
- Vienna Ensemble Pro (latest version)

Slave 2
- Mac Pro 2010 (32 gb of RAM) on OSX 10.9.?
- Vienna Ensemble Pro (latest version).

Worth mentionning that the issue was also present when I was running on Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as Cubase 8, I had the same issue. Same thing when I tried it on my Slave 1 at some point. I guess I'll open a support case with Cubase and adopt the same best practice as you guys. I just like to have it all ready at any time of the day, even when I'm not in the studio. Since it's a home studio in my basement, whenever I have an inspiration, I can start working on it right away.

flugel45 · Post by **flugel45** » Tue Apr 12, 2016 8:29 pm

grizzlymv wrote: I just like to have it all ready at any time of the day, even when I'm not in the studio. Since it's a home studio in my basement, whenever I have an inspiration, I can start working on it right away.

Completely understand, and you can still have it that way. Instead of shutting down at the end of the day, just do a daily reboot whenever convenient.

Groundhog #31684 · Post by **Groundhog #31684** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:56 am

Back in the SX days audio used to go all crackly when you left it on too long.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 10:44 am

FWIW, Windows 8.1 or 10 shut down to hybrid mode by default anyway, which is kind of a standby mode, so that the PC boots up faster next time you start it up. Booting up my Desktop PC from a SSD takes about 10 seconds here, the login and starting up background tasks probably takes another 10-15 seconds. Loading up your DAW will probably take another 20 seconds. Considering it'd probably also takes you around 20 seconds to get to yout DAW PC, that'll probably all end up to about a minute or so. And you won't have trouble related to leaving your PC on all day. It'll save you some energy costs too.

Mushy Mushy · Post by **Mushy Mushy** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 11:17 am

Groundhog #31684 wrote:Back in the SX days audio used to go all crackly when you left it on too long.

Mine does now after about an hour; it's very frustrating.

Cubase 8.5

grizzlymv · Post by **grizzlymv** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 12:21 pm

Alright then. I guess I'll start my daily routine with a full reboot of the PC and both Macs just to be safe from now on... Based on the feedback here it seems that it is a general best practice not just for Cubase but to save problems in general down the road. It is just a bit sad that we're still there in 2016, in the era of all these intelligent systems in our lifes, but still can't have reliable software on the long run.

Thanks all for the feedback. At least I feel less alone in my world now.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 3:39 pm

Smartphones or routers also appreciate a full reboot once in a while... pretty much everything with sophisticated software on it i guess.

Cubase stability issue on long runs?