# Cubase 9: A little trick to reduce file size (and saving times) of big disabled track templates



## lucor (May 28, 2017)

Hey guys, here's a little trick I found while working with my disabled track template in Cubase. While I love the concept of working this way, I had some issues since my empty template was around 1.2gb in size and saving times of up to 10-15 sec were driving me mad. The caveat of this workaround is that it requires you to make one additional click when reactivating a track, but it reduced my project size from 1.2gb to around 40mb, making saving times almost instantaneous, so it's worth it for me.

What you have to do is basically create a track preset for every one of your tracks, then remove the Kontakt instrument completely:

1. Right click a track in your template and select "Save Track Preset...". Give it a name and press OK.

2. On the left in the inspector, select the instrument section and select "No VST instrument"

3. That's it. Now all you have to do additionally to enable the track, is to press the little reload symbol in the inspector to recall your patch (I wish there was a shortcut for it, but I don't think there is, so you'll have to do it manually with your mouse.)






You'll then have to repeat Steps 1 and 2 for every track in your template.
Overall it's a little bit more work than the normal way, but for me it was worth it to save HD space and sanity.


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## Phillip (May 28, 2017)

Thank you for sharing. I regained my sanity by abandoning disabled track template all together. All the best


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## InLight-Tone (May 28, 2017)

Great tip thanks! How many tracks do you have in your template BTW?


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## Fab (May 28, 2017)

I don't really understand what your talking about.

Isn't disabling a track the same as having 0 of it used in RAM?


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## lucor (May 28, 2017)

InLight-Tone said:


> Great tip thanks! How many tracks do you have in your template BTW?


 1021. 



Fab said:


> I don't really understand what your talking about.
> 
> Isn't disabling a track the same as having 0 of it used in RAM?



I'm talking about the size of the actual Cubase project file. With the usual way of doing it it was 1.2gb in size, resulting in very long saving times and it ate up a lot of HDD space. With this trick the file size is down to 40mb.


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## tack (May 28, 2017)

1.2GB, ouch. Out of curiosity, how many tracks was that?
Disregard. I'm blind.


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## T.j. (May 28, 2017)

Seems I've found yet another way to crash Cubase (toggling between enabled/disabled is what did it this time).
I'm getting reeeeally fed up with it tbh..

Thanks for the suggestion anyway, Like @Phillip I gave up on disabled templates a while back and switched (back) to VE but that never worked 100% either

Quick question for the OP:
Do some of your disabled tracks still show the M(ute) and S(olo) buttons? 
(greyed out but visible nonetheless?)


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## jononotbono (May 28, 2017)

Yeah Cubase's track preset option is great. Although I do use some disabled Instrument tracks in my template for things I don't use all the time, the majority are midi Tracks connected to VEPro as I hate waiting for things to keep loading. My template is now at 2296 tracks. Adding more computers is my preferred option.


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## airflamesred (May 28, 2017)

jononotbono said:


> My template is now at 2296 tracks.


Get out of here!


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## ChristopherDoucet (May 28, 2017)

jononotbono said:


> Yeah Cubase's track preset option is great. Although I do use some disabled Instrument tracks in my template for things I don't use all the time, the majority are midi Tracks connected to VEPro as I hate waiting for things to keep loading. My template is now at 2296 tracks. Adding more computers is my preferred option.



How many computers are you using with your 2296 template?

Are those tracks in surround or Stereo?


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## jononotbono (May 28, 2017)

airflamesred said:


> Get out of here!



Sorry, my bad, I forgot I deleted a load of Audio tracks a couple of days ago. It's actually at 2247. I shall endeavour to pump that up to 3k as soon as possible.


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## jononotbono (May 28, 2017)

ChristopherDoucet said:


> How many computers are you using with your 2296 template?
> 
> Are those tracks in surround or Stereo?



2 Computers and just in Stereo. I haven't moved to Surround yet but if I'm successful with a Video game pitch a recently did I shall make the move to quad to begin with and have a rethink about templates (after learning how to use and mix in Surround) solely for quad and Surround. I really want to build a 2nd Slave but I have other financial priorities at the minute.


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## T.j. (Jun 5, 2017)

@lucor 

Did you notice any increase in Asio use with this template even though tracks are disabled?
I've been working on a template that has a lot of folders with disabled tracks so i don't have to load them inside of kontakt but something strange is happening though:
A. The 'base' level on the meter is higher even though nothing is enabled (not a lot but say 15% with nothing active).
B. If i take my regular piano (same patch as always) and hold down the pedal i can see the asio meters rising rapidly.
The same piano in an empty project doesn't even go above the 10% mark with sustain pedal pressed infinitely.
When i add a stringpatch to layer it, it quickly shoots up to nearly 100%.
I've deactivated all plugins that could be cpu intensive and disabled all sends,
so it should technically be the same: just those patches to a master bus but it behaves totally different.

any ideas what could be causing it?
I tried the Asio guard options (usually have it off completely) but that didn't make any difference


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