# Weird behavior Cubase playing sounds randomly when clicking with the mouse



## Woodie1972 (Apr 21, 2020)

I've posted this on the Steinberg forum as well, but until now nobody has responded, so I tought to drop it here too.

Every time when I switch editor windows in Cubase 10.5, or when I click in a window of Cubase with the mouse, I hear a low note coming from Low woodwinds and/or Bass Trombone. The same thing happens when I stop playback with the spacebar, but then only when I stop the music, not when I start it. It's always a short staccato note somewhere in the lowest playing region, differing a bit in pitch, but never more than a minor third apart from each other. All other instruments in my orchestral set-up don't have this problem, only the four mentioned above. Obviously Cubase is receiving some kind of signal from my mouse and keyboard, which is translated to those channels. 

There's almost no info about this on the internet, or maybe I enter the wrong search criteria, but what I found and tried until now (restart project, restart pc, change mouse settings, change the sample rate of the project) didn't help a bit. I couldn't find anything else, so I'm out of options.
It's driving me crazy, so I sincerely hope someone has a solution.

I'm on Windows 10 x64, all drives SSD, 64 GB RAM, Cubase 10.5.12 (= latest version), wireless keyboard and trackball. My set-up is in VE pro, hosted on the same machine, seperate instances for every instrument group (8 in total).


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## chrisr (Apr 21, 2020)

Does this still happen when your (midi) keyboard is off/unplugged?

Have you tried monitoring the midi on said channels?

Is it just happening in one Cubase project, or the same problem across completely different projects?

The fact that it's consistently low notes makes me think this could be a problem with your midi input chain, but perhaps exacerbated by cubase, as it fails to deal with the weird midi info it's getting.

I used to get weird ghost notes appearing in CB. After I cleaned my master keyboard out (2 day job to fix slightly sticky keys etc!) I stopped seeing the ghost notes also.

So - cubase was definitely contributing to the weirdness - but the actual root of the problem for me was the midi keyboard.


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## labornvain (Apr 21, 2020)

It would really help, for diagnostic purposes, if you were more precise in your description of the problem.

The first thing you need to do is precisely identify which tracks are making the sounds.

You mention low Woodwinds and or bass trombone. Then you refer to four instruments mentioned above. It's a bit confusing.

What you need to do is identify precisely which tracks are sounding the notes, then try removing and recreating those tracks to see if the problem goes away.

Always when attempting to diagnose problems like this in Cubase, one of the first things to do is to delete or rename your preferences file so that Cubase will be forced to create a new one.

The next step would be to reinstall Cubase.

This process of elimination should precede any attempts to track down hardware issues.

If you can identify which tracks are causing the problem, and which libraries and instruments are loaded into those tracks, and then share those with the forum, it might help to diagnose what's going on.


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## Woodie1972 (Apr 21, 2020)

Thanks for your replies.

The problem is like I said, every mouse click triggers notes in some instruments, in this case bass trombone, 1st and 2nd bassoon and bass clarinet.
Bass trombone is in the brass instance of VE pro (channel 7) and the other three in their own woodwinds instance (channels 9, 10 and 11).
All other instances don't play a note when I click with the mouse, or hit the space bar for start/stop playback.
I'm using expression maps for all instruments, so at first I thought an expression was triggered somehow, but I checked it thoroughly and all settings for every single keyswitch are correct, so I'm pretty sure that's not the problem.

Deleting the preferences file might be a good one, but before I do that, I will see if I can find out if a particular expression is causing the trouble.

I don't think it's my midi keyboard, since there are no notes entered in the editor when I click around.


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## chrisr (Apr 21, 2020)

Woodie1972 said:


> I don't think it's my midi keyboard, since there are no notes entered in the editor when I click around.



If I'm right with that idea (which I'm usualy not) that would just be because cubase is is compounding the error. It isn't good at handling screwy midi messages in my experience. Easy way to be sure is to unplug the midi input.

I think the expression map thing is a good lead also - typically key changes are down there in the bottom octave for most libraries with notable exceptions like Project Sam - do the problematic instruments belong to the same library and did you create the maps yourself?


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## Woodie1972 (Apr 21, 2020)

I will unplug my keyboard first thing today, as it may save me a lot of trial and error in finding the source of the problem. 

For the bass trombone I built my own expression map, which is used for the tuba and contra bassoon as well, but they don't play notes with every mouse click. For the bassoon and bass clarinet I use the map from the Steinberg website, adapted to my own preferences. 
The one for bass trombone/tuba and contra bassoon has only four keyswitches, none of them with hidden data in the low register, the other one I'm not sure about and I will investigate this today. 

I'm very glad you're thinking with me this much!


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## Rob (Apr 21, 2020)

This happens to me as well when applying an expression map to low pitched istruments, whose playing range overlaps with the keyswitches. Then I have to make a new expr. map with keyswitches in the higher octaves...


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## Woodie1972 (Apr 22, 2020)

This can indeed happen from time to time, but on forehand I was aware this could occur, so I built my own map for the really low end and here is no keyswitch pointing towards their playing area. 

Still it is very strange clicking the mouse/ hitting space bar sends a midi note. As if the frequency triggers a note. 
Both are wireless, maybe I should try corded ones, see if that makes a difference.


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## Woodie1972 (Apr 22, 2020)

Well, I feel pretty stupid, as it appeared to be 

a) indeed a hidden keyswitch and 
b) Bass Trombone accidentally used the same expression map as the low woodwinds mentioned above, hence it responded to the click all the time as well.

I'm glad it is solved, but as I said, I feel a bit stupid that I couldn't find it yesterday and today I found it in a few minutes and found out it was my own mistake

Anyway, thanks a lot for thinking with me, although I could have saved us the time spent on it...


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## chrisr (Apr 22, 2020)

My goodness if I had a pound/dollar for every mistake I'd made in a studio I'd be a wealthy man. I'll spare you the details but I've done pretty much everything there is to do wrong and then some


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## Woodie1972 (Apr 22, 2020)

Haha, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Feeling so stupid sometimes. I'm glad it was this easy and not a faultt midi keyboard or something


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