# Cubase 9 (sometimes) crashes when opening project



## Jetzer (May 27, 2017)

This is an issue I have had for a long time. Cubase sometimes crashes when opening certain projects...but not always. For example, I open a template, work perfectly fine for a day, save, come back the next day and it crashes when trying to open the project. Now, the thing is..it doesn't always crash, so after a few try's normally I can open the project. 

Things I tried: 
- Updated from 8.5 to Cubase 9 + trashed prefs
- Updated all drivers (RME audio interface, Play, Kontakt, every Play Instrument)
- Reinstalled Zebra
- Reinstalled & updated QLSpaces
- Updated Video Card Drivers
- Updated Quicktime

Checked that there are no 32 bit plugins causing havoc, have deleted or hidden them from any Cubase folders. 

I have also tried to remove certain elements from the project, one for one. Nothing made any difference until I removed all Hollywood String tracks. That seemed to make a difference since the project saved without HS opened ten times in a row and the project with HS opening 1 times out of 10. 

A full HS template opens perfectly fine though, and other projects with lots of HS also load & work great. 

It's feel like a random issue, but it seems project related. So I'm aware of some project files that crash more often than others, who never crash.

I am on a disabled tracks template, so no VEP. Build in Cubase 8.5. (Had the same problem in C8.5).


----------



## Fishforce (May 30, 2017)

Hi Jesse,

I have exactly the same issue. Running Cubase 8.5 on Windows 7 64bit. After the first crashes I updated to the most recent patches, no improvement.
First encountered it while building my new Template using BWW, Hollywood Orchestra, some Drums, Synths...

If I abort loading the play instruments during the starting process Cubase does not crash and the rest of the template fully loads. By trial and error I can identify the patches that cause the crash and take them out of the template.
However, the funny thing is that I have used and loaded those patches on countless projects and never had issues before.
For example my "Hollywood Orchestra only" template is completely fine.

I noticed that crashes seem more likely if "free memory" (ressource monitor) is almost depleted and only "standby memory" remains. Could it be a memory overflow of some kind?
To the best of my knowledge that shouldnt be the case since standby memory gets automatically assigned to new tasks if needed. Additionally, I am only using about 17GB of RAM in the crashing template while my system has total of 32GB available.

Please share your thoughts. This issue is really annoying and help would be much appreciated 

Best
Matthias


----------



## Jetzer (May 31, 2017)

@Fishforce Sorry to hear you have the same problems. I have not been able to test yet because I have been building a completely new template. It hasn't crashed so far, but that doesn't say much. 

It does seem somehow play related, but no idea how or why. Everything is installed correctly.


----------



## David Chappell (May 31, 2017)

I've been having pretty much the exact same issue... interesting to see that I'm not alone with it.

It's actually happened to me two separate times now. The first time I managed to identify Play as the cause, and this was later verified by Steinberg support. I actually solved this by simply removing play completely from my system - thankfully I don't really use their libs any more, but obviously this isn't a solution for people reliant on eastwest libs. It's odd, too, because I had been using the same version of play for almost a year without issues.

The second time was about a week ago. Unfortunately, support couldn't identify one cause from the crash dump this time, and could only recommend that I update to 8.5.30. However, I had noticed in a separate project that my iLok licenses weren't being recognised. I solved this by moving my iLok from my usb splitter to a single usb port. This has managed to recover the project that was crashing, thankfully, but I've not started any new projects since to check if the problem reoccurs.

It's possible the play issue is related to the iLok issue, since I know EW libs need iLok, but this doesn't explain why the other iLok plugins I use seemed to run fine.

So yeah, hope this can help you at all, please do let me know if you get it fixed via this or some other means, I'm really anxious to get this problem fixed completely!


----------



## Jetzer (May 31, 2017)

Hmm, if it happens again, I will send the crash dump files to Steinberg, haven't done that yet. Maybe they can see what the issue is.


----------



## Fishforce (May 31, 2017)

Thanks for sharing David!  
I tried to fiddle with my iLok, tried different ports, but nothing worked.



David Chappell said:


> I'm really anxious to get this problem fixed completely!



Ya me too. My greatest concern is that this stupid bug shows up in the wrong moment while being on some deadline...

It seems I have solved the problem for the moment tho. I had some disabled tracks in my template, so I kicked them all out and now it hasn't crashed even once.
To compensate for the loss of all disabled tracks I created a second project and put those tracks in there. I can load them via the "import tracks from another project" function. If you set up a hotkey for this its quite fast.

I really hope that disabled tracks were the problem.
Could you try this and confirm?

Best 
Matthias


----------



## Headlands (Jul 6, 2018)

This is from over a year ago, but just to say that I've always had this issue (among others) with Cubase. Sometimes it will crash when opening the project, then the next time opening it will be fine. Frustrating as hell. I'm not a happy Cubase camper these days, for this and other reasons.


----------



## NYC Composer (Jul 7, 2018)

Funny-my issue (from 2011) is that with a high load, Cubase often crashes on closing.


----------



## Jeast (Jul 7, 2018)

Same on Cubase 9


----------



## Headlands (Jul 9, 2018)

NYC Composer said:


> Funny-my issue (from 2011) is that with a high load, Cubase often crashes on closing.



Same here, for many years now. Cubase needs a complete overhaul with years-long issues like this to compete with other DAWs. I'm starting to truly look at others now because in my work I can't be stalled constantly by stuff like this. I don't know how other composers deal with issues like this, but it's like a brick wall dropping many times a day in front of you when you have tight deadlines like I constantly do. Even single composer I personally know who's on Cubase (including two well known ones -- I won't name-drop here) complains about it when we talk about it.

Sometimes a project will crash Cubase when opening, then when you open it again it will be fine. And the problem with not being able to very big projects one after another has been an issue for so many years on Cubase and again. So frustrating for a great DAW in many other ways. This is not a functionality thing, but a being-able-to-use-the-damn-program-dependably thing.


----------



## NYC Composer (Jul 10, 2018)

I don’t find the crash on closing to be s dealbreaker, because obviously if you’re closing, you’re done for the time bring. It’s just an uneasy feeling.

If it crashed on opening, well hey. That would suck. I don’t get that on, er, Cubase 6.02


----------



## Headlands (Jul 10, 2018)

NYC Composer said:


> I don’t find the crash on closing to be s dealbreaker, because obviously if you’re closing, you’re done for the time bring. It’s just an uneasy feeling.
> 
> If it crashed on opening, well hey. That would suck. I don’t get that on, er, Cubase 6.02



Cubase 6! Wow! 

I hear you. For me, it's becoming a dealbreaker because I work on many different cues and projects every day with many deadlines, and having to restart Cubase when it crashes when closing adds up very quickly time-wise. And of course the opening crash on some projects is another nail in the coffin. It's usually very stable when actually working in the projects. I'm not sure what to do, because learning a new DAW is a big thing, especially at the deep and fast level that I know Cubase.

Steinberg is a very frustrating and deficient company with some of these issues that have been around for years that they simply don't fix.


----------



## Bender-offender (Jul 10, 2018)

Headlands said:


> Steinberg is a very frustrating and deficient company with some of these issues that have been around for years that they simply don't fix.



Yup, this exactly! I’ve been complaining to them for years about certain bugs and they still have not fixed them. On the other hand, I’ve submitted a single bug report to Apple about Logic 10 and it gets fixed in the next update. I really wish Steinberg would listen to and take their customers more serious like the Logic developers do. When I say “serious” I mean just that. I will post a bug or issue on Steinberg’s forum and the moderators kind of just laugh at my post and tell me “it’s probably supposed to be that way”.


----------



## Headlands (Jul 10, 2018)

it's frustrating and embarrassing (for them).

I don't know what to do! They're a pretty crappy company with a product that is great, but with some gigantic bugs and issues that they just don't want to fix. Outright bugs and issues, I'm talking about -- not features, though they could use improvement on the GUI front and others in a very major way.

I want to move to another DAW but I'm so deep with Cubase and don't really have time to learn a new one at this point, though I guess could start in some of my down time here and there. What other DAW competes with Cubase in the advanced scoring realm and overall stability (not including the issues we're talking about here)?


----------



## J-M (Jul 10, 2018)

Bender-offender said:


> Yup, this exactly! I’ve been complaining to them for years about certain bugs and they still have not fixed them. On the other hand, I’ve submitted a single bug report to Apple about Logic 10 and it gets fixed in the next update. I really wish Steinberg would listen to and take their customers more serious like the Logic developers do. When I say “serious” I mean just that. I will post a bug or issue on Steinberg’s forum and the moderators kind of just laugh at my post and tell me “it’s probably supposed to be that way”.



Sometimes I experience completely random crashing with my big template (my PC keeps up easily), once it was so bad that I couldn't write anything because it would crash every 10 minutes. Opened a case with Steinberg weeks ago, still haven't heard from them...But the problem seems to have gone for now, which is nice...


----------



## Bender-offender (Jul 10, 2018)

Headlands said:


> it's frustrating and embarrassing (for them).
> 
> I don't know what to do! They're a pretty crappy company with a product that is great, but with some gigantic bugs and issues that they just don't want to fix. Outright bugs and issues, I'm talking about -- not features, though they could use improvement on the GUI front and others in a very major way.
> 
> I want to move to another DAW but I'm so deep with Cubase and don't really have time to learn a new one at this point, though I guess could start in some of my down time here and there. What other DAW competes with Cubase in the advanced scoring realm and overall stability (not including the issues we're talking about here)?



I agree with you on this completely—they have an awesome product but don’t maintain it well. 

For me, I used Logic in the past for quite a while, and with all the crap in Cubase not being fixed, I occasionally try to do a small project in Logic. At first it feels good, but then there’s features I begin missing in Cubase and ultimately return to Cubase and just deal with the bugs. It frustrates me so much being in a pickle like this because Cubase could dominate the market if Steinberg would just get their act together and work on stability instead of “cool new features”. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand they need to add these features in order to entice people to upgrade or purchase Cubase, but are they staying ahead by doing this? If stability is not a priority then they will begin to lose more customers than they bring in. I absolutely LOVE how the Logic team has been on version 10 for five years now and just keep making it more solid of a product. I believe Steinberg used to be this way with Cubase but are now caught up in the “need to rush and release a new version every year” syndrome (which is ironically an Apple business practice with consumer products).


----------



## Bender-offender (Jul 10, 2018)

MrLinssi said:


> Sometimes I experience completely random crashing with my big template (my PC keeps up easily), once it was so bad that I couldn't write anything because it would crash every 10 minutes. Opened a case with Steinberg weeks ago, still haven't heard from them...But the problem seems to have gone for now, which is nice...


Same here. I think yesterday I had about four crashes within an hour—and I wasn’t even doing anything obscure! One of them was right in the middle of recording in MIDI CC data into the Key Editor. All of a sudden: BAM! Crash! Other times I’ll go all day without the slightest glitch. 

I do understand there could be a million reasons why Cubase crashes (plugins, OS, drivers, etc) but I feel like I do my best not to bloat my system with junk I don’t need. I turn off MacOS features unneeded and uninstall junk unused.


----------



## Headlands (Jul 10, 2018)

Bender-offender said:


> I agree with you on this completely—they have an awesome product but don’t maintain it well.
> 
> For me, I used Logic in the past for quite a while, and with all the crap in Cubase not being fixed, I occasionally try to do a small project in Logic. At first it feels good, but then there’s features I begin missing in Cubase and ultimately return to Cubase and just deal with the bugs. It frustrates me so much being in a pickle like this because Cubase could dominate the market if Steinberg would just get their act together and work on stability instead of “cool new features”. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand they need to add these features in order to entice people to upgrade or purchase Cubase, but are they staying ahead by doing this? If stability is not a priority then they will begin to lose more customers than they bring in. I absolutely LOVE how the Logic team has been on version 10 for five years now and just keep making it more solid of a product. I believe Steinberg used to be this way with Cubase but are now caught up in the “need to rush and release a new version every year” syndrome (which is ironically an Apple business practice with consumer products).




Yes, indeed. Really a disappointing company. Whenever I have an issue with Waves, I get to experience their totally top level customer service, and shines a light on how piss poor Steinberg's is, and how they take years and years to fix things that no pro DAW should be suffering from. I don't recommend it to anyone these days for these specific reasons. I'm so damn frustrated.

I've begun looking at others, will highly likely move within a couple of months. No DAW is perfect, but I'd at least like one where the company listens to its users and fixes things fast. Crashing on opening and closing and not being able to load up large projects one after another (which has been going on for years and years, on Windows and Mac) is utter shite for a pro piece of software.


----------



## HackAzz (May 3, 2022)

Jetzer said:


> This is an issue I have had for a long time. Cubase sometimes crashes when opening certain projects...but not always. For example, I open a template, work perfectly fine for a day, save, come back the next day and it crashes when trying to open the project. Now, the thing is..it doesn't always crash, so after a few try's normally I can open the project.
> 
> Things I tried:
> - Updated from 8.5 to Cubase 9 + trashed prefs
> ...


OMG! Here I am in 2022!!!! FIVE FREAKING YEARS LATER!
And this is still happening! On Cubase 10.5.0, Cubase 11 and Cubase 12, What is terribly buggy!

So I guess, like what all the doctors say when you suffer from anything where there is no cure for, You have to deal with it!

Steinberg = Bad Doctors!


----------



## Jetzer (May 4, 2022)

@HackAzz Wow, that brings back some memories. I'm still on the same system with largely the same plugins, but haven't had the issue in a loooong time. No crashes here anymore.

No idea what I did though. Probably a complete reinstall of windows.


----------

