# Cubase 9, blasphemous save times.



## J-M (Jul 11, 2018)

My template is around 600 tracks (disabled), currently have a song that's barely three minutes long (project size 407mb), couple of dozens tracks active. I use instrument tracks (Kontakt, Play 5 and Engine 2). Cleared my audio pool, disabled automatic hitpoint detection, didn't help. I only have eight plugins in the whole template (Valhalla Room, Vintage Comp. and Stereo Delay). My save times take roughly around 30 seconds, yet I see guys here with bigger templates (no VEPro) and their save times are ten times smaller. Any ideas? The waiting is a real workflow killer. :/


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## Simon Ravn (Jul 11, 2018)

In Logic, hosting all your Kontakt samples etc inside Logic itself also results in much greater save times. You sure about those people in here that don't use VEPro, yet have fast saving? Can't see how save times should be fast if you 2-300 Kontakt patches that need to be stored within the project...


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## lucor (Jul 11, 2018)

I noticed that save times can be highly dependend on what Kontakt instruments you have loaded. For example Orchestral Tools and their _incredibly_ badly optimized CAPSULE instruments make my save times explode like crazy. As an example, if you save instruments as track presets, the size of the track preset will be around 0.2-1.0mb at max for almost every library I own. On the other hand, most of the CAPSULE instruments will take up to 12mb, making them almost 50x in size!
If you have have room left on an SSD, you could make it a habit to save your project there and move it to an HDD once you're finished with the project. It helped me quite a lot to reduce saving times, but they are still so bad in some cases that I'm currently in the process of moving back to a VEPro setup...


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## J-M (Jul 11, 2018)

Simon Ravn said:


> In Logic, hosting all your Kontakt samples etc inside Logic itself also results in much greater save times. You sure about those people in here that don't use VEPro, yet have fast saving? Can't see how save times should be fast if you 2-300 Kontakt patches that need to be stored within the project...



I'm sure, at one point there was much discussion about this particular issue (might have been an earlier version), and there were people with really short save times.


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## J-M (Jul 11, 2018)

lucor said:


> I noticed that save times can be highly dependend on what Kontakt instruments you have loaded. For example Orchestral Tools and their _incredibly_ badly optimized CAPSULE instruments make my save times explode like crazy. As an example, if you save instruments as track presets, the size of the track preset will be around 0.2-1.0mb at max for almost every library I own. On the other hand, most of the CAPSULE instruments will take up to 12mb, making them almost 50x in size!
> If you have have room left on an SSD, you could make it a habit to save your project there and move it to an HDD once you're finished with the project. It helped me quite a lot to reduce saving times, but they are still so bad in some cases that I'm currently in the process of moving back to a VEPro setup...



Have to try that tomorrow, at this point anything helps. Waiting over 30 seconds every ten minutes or so is driving me insane.


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## Øivind (Jul 11, 2018)

I am on a single computer and i had to go with VEpro, or else i would never get any work done. When you are ready to record and autosave kicks inn.. it's enough to drive you mad ^^


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## DMDComposer (Jul 11, 2018)

I'm not sure if you're on 9 or 9.5. But 9.5 does have longer save times then version 9 when doing the disabled kontakts instead of vepro. I learned about this recently from a comment made by Jason Graves in his new youtube tutorials.


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## J-M (Jul 11, 2018)

DMDComposer said:


> I'm not sure if you're on 9 or 9.5. But 9.5 does have longer save times then version 9 when doing the disabled kontakts instead of vepro. I learned about this recently from a comment made by Jason Graves in his new youtube tutorials.



I'm on 9. Funny, I watched that same video. That's why I'm buying the upgrade now and waiting for 10 to arrive...


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## J-M (Jul 11, 2018)

Yeah...moved my project to an SSD, barely made a difference. Guess I have to get VEPro at some point...


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## JeffvR (Jul 11, 2018)

VEPro and Cubase files of 4mb are a better option . Saves you a lot of drive space as well.


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## J-M (Jul 11, 2018)

JeffvR said:


> VEPro and Cubase files of 4mb are a better option . Saves you a lot of drive space as well.



I think I would've already bought it, but my audio PC isn't dedicated to just audio (gaming, internet, thing like that)+I'm mostly doing music for myself so it seems bit of an overkill...But if I don't find a solution to this "save times from hell"-situation I might just buy it.


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## kunst91 (Jul 11, 2018)

MrLinssi said:


> My template is around 600 tracks (disabled), currently have a song that's barely three minutes long (project size 407mb), couple of dozens tracks active. I use instrument tracks (Kontakt, Play 5 and Engine 2). Cleared my audio pool, disabled automatic hitpoint detection, didn't help. I only have eight plugins in the whole template (Valhalla Room, Vintage Comp. and Stereo Delay). My save times take roughly around 30 seconds, yet I see guys here with bigger templates (no VEPro) and their save times are ten times smaller. Any ideas? The waiting is a real workflow killer. :/



This is an issue that Steinberg has acknowledged on Cubase 9/9.5. The reason save times aren’t longer with VEP templates is the lag is caused by instances of kontakt loaded in cubase itself. I have a large disabled template as well and experience long save times, although they are more in the 10-12 second realm admittedly.


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## J-M (Jul 11, 2018)

kunst91 said:


> This is an issue that Steinberg has acknowledged on Cubase 9/9.5. The reason save times aren’t longer with VEP templates is the lag is caused by instances of kontakt loaded in cubase itself. I have a large disabled template as well and experience long save times, although they are more in the 10-12 second realm admittedly.



Huh, I remembered that it was only on Cubase 9.5. Well, I sure hope things are improved on 10. And while they're at it, a folder system for exp. maps!


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## Guy Rowland (Jul 11, 2018)

Beware the disabled tracks. I spent a fun few hours tracking down a similar problem, also related to project file sizes which had ballooned. Turns out some instruments take up loads of memory, even disabled, and thus greatly impact on save times (infuriating when using auto-save). In my case, I had half a dozen disabled instances of Action Strikes (which I never got round to really using, but I thought if I had them there it might encourage me). Turns out those 6 disabled channels, out of many hundreds, occupied an entire third of my total project size. I kicked 'em out.

So just set aside a bit of time and go through those disabled tracks to see if you have any memory hogs. I sort of use Track Archives more now partly for this very reason, but sadly they're as buggy as hell. Hoping desperately Cubase 10 improves our lot here.


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## kunst91 (Jul 11, 2018)

MrLinssi said:


> Huh, I remembered that it was only on Cubase 9.5. Well, I sure hope things are improved on 10. And while they're at it, a folder system for exp. maps!



Ah you’re right they’ve only acknowledged it in 9.5. I admittedly upgraded from 8.5 to 9.5 so I never used 9.


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## Alex Niedt (Jul 11, 2018)

Are Cubase save times normally long, in general? I've been thinking about switching to Cubase from Pro Tools, but Pro Tools saves instantaneously, regardless of session size, and if every save took ten seconds, I think that would drive me crazy.


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## Simon Ravn (Jul 11, 2018)

Alex, I dont think Cubase is any worse than Logic or other DAWs. Protools dont have as much information to save if you only work with audio files. I think if you hosted as many Kontakt instances inside PT it would be the same with longer save times. Remember, Kontakt saves every single patch with information about each sample, scripts etc. So with 100s of thousands of samples it begins adding up.


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## Alex Niedt (Jul 11, 2018)

I do host Kontakt instances and various others VIs inside PT, and it always saves instantaneously, which is why I asked.


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## Simon Ravn (Jul 11, 2018)

Alex Niedt said:


> I do host Kontakt instances and various others VIs inside PT, and it always saves instantaneously, which is why I asked.



OK that's interesting. PT must have a different way to save its projects. Maybe all changes to Kontakt are saved when you do the changes, then left untouched when you do a Project save.


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## benatural (Jul 12, 2018)

Lots of instrument tracks will cause crazy save times, there's no way around it. If you want to make saving faster AND you want a template, you need to use VEP even if it's on the same computer.


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## Pietro (Jul 12, 2018)

I've gotten uses to this, unfortunately. This is a problem of hosting instruments in Cubase directly. Something that Steinberg cannot fix, because it's also being caused by plugins that take time to save. 

In addition to that some projects files get ridiculously big. Like 150+ MB big over here.

Delete disabled tracks if you are not going to use them. Seems it's the only thing we could do. Or use VEP. 

- Piotr


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## Killiard (Jul 12, 2018)

My save times are around 5-6 seconds on my disabled template in C9.5.

It’s annoying but I still feel like the positives outweigh the negatives in a disabled tracks template in Cubase.

Guy pointed out to me a while back that Cubase keeps a good few back up files/versions in the session folder. If you end up with four backups of a session that’s 500mb, then it does start to eat up space!!


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## J-M (Jul 12, 2018)

Killiard said:


> My save times are around 5-6 seconds on my disabled template in C9.5.
> 
> It’s annoying but I still feel like the positives outweigh the negatives in a disabled tracks template in Cubase.
> 
> Guy pointed out to me a while back that Cubase keeps a good few back up files/versions in the session folder. If you end up with four backups of a session that’s 500mb, then it does start to eat up space!!



What? How many tracks do you have and do you use VEPro?


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## Blakus (Jul 12, 2018)

Pietro said:


> I've gotten uses to this, unfortunately. This is a problem of hosting instruments in Cubase directly. Something that Steinberg cannot fix, because it's also being caused by plugins that take time to save.
> 
> In addition to that some projects files get ridiculously big. Like 150+ MB big over here.
> 
> ...


Surely it’s something Steinberg can improve on though, considering the problem has only been bloated out of control in 9.5


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## Guy Rowland (Jul 13, 2018)

Disabled Tracks and Track Archives have been two great disappointments in Cubase's development, both potentially game changing but strangled at birth by bugs, still not fixed to this day. I don't understand how Junkie XL gets any work done with that gargantuan disabled template of his.


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## Pietro (Jul 13, 2018)

Blakus said:


> Surely it’s something Steinberg can improve on though, considering the problem has only been bloated out of control in 9.5



Not sure about that, Blake. I'm still on 8.5, so it's not something that suddenly started existing in 9.5. Although it may have gone worse, I'm not sure.

Over here projects take 20-40s to save, depending on the number of tracks, they go up to 200MB per project file (just the .cpr). What's taking the time is saving Kontakt/PLAY presets and Steinberg has limited control over it. Each of them has its own save format and Cubase is waiting for each instance of a VST to send its presets in order to save it within the project file.

I remember there was a change in save format in PLAY (which I use a lot). File sizes and save/load times changed at that point. So it's kinda out of Cubase control of how much time and space it takes to save an instrument. And it has to save the disabled tracks too.

With VEP I believe it's a bit different, as it's VEP that takes over the responsibility to save that data. Therefore the format is different and how it is handled from Cubase perspective differs as well.

- Piotr


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## benmrx (Jul 13, 2018)

I tried everything I could think of to get save times down in Cubase, and still have a fairly large template. I tried Track Presets, Disabled tracks, frozen tracks, purged instances of Kontakt, track archives, importing data/tracks from a 'master template', etc. None of them worked and/or created to many other work-arounds or had too many bugs to be a reliable solution. I eventually broke down and crawled back to VEP.


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## Guy Rowland (Jul 13, 2018)

benmrx said:


> I tried everything I could think of to get save times down in Cubase, and still have a fairly large template. I tried Track Presets, Disabled tracks, frozen tracks, purged instances of Kontakt, track archives, importing data/tracks from a 'master template', etc. None of them worked and/or created to many other work-arounds or had too many bugs to be a reliable solution. I eventually broke down and crawled back to VEP.



Very similar to me. I have made some changes though. I have a small base template and made some rugged versions of it - chamber, full orch, big band etc, all of which are much lighter than my full one. In theory I can then add any other bits by library via Track Archives, but that's still a weak link cos its so flaky. Despite the annoyances, I prefer working with a smaller template I've decided, so much lighter on autosaves, quick to get around.

Come on Cubase 10...


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## benmrx (Jul 13, 2018)

Guy Rowland said:


> Very similar to me. I have made some changes though. I have a small base template and made some rugged versions of it - chamber, full orch, big band etc, all of which are much lighter than my full one. In theory I can then add any other bits by library via Track Archives, but that's still a weak link cos its so flaky. Despite the annoyances, I prefer working with a smaller template I've decided, so much lighter on autosaves, quick to get around.
> 
> Come on Cubase 10...



I hear ya.

Lol, though I've got to say I've recently taken the path of the 'mega template' and built a few VERY handy workflows to get around more efficiently.


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## Francis Bourre (Jul 19, 2018)

- VEP is the way to go for short saving time and small file size.

- And about Protools, it has few known drawbacks with big VI templates




Alex Niedt said:


> Are Cubase save times normally long, in general? I've been thinking about switching to Cubase from Pro Tools, but Pro Tools saves instantaneously, regardless of session size, and if every save took ten seconds, I think that would drive me crazy.


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## kunst91 (Aug 1, 2018)

Guy Rowland said:


> Beware the disabled tracks. I spent a fun few hours tracking down a similar problem, also related to project file sizes which had ballooned. Turns out some instruments take up loads of memory, even disabled, and thus greatly impact on save times (infuriating when using auto-save). In my case, I had half a dozen disabled instances of Action Strikes (which I never got round to really using, but I thought if I had them there it might encourage me). Turns out those 6 disabled channels, out of many hundreds, occupied an entire third of my total project size. I kicked 'em out.
> 
> So just set aside a bit of time and go through those disabled tracks to see if you have any memory hogs. I sort of use Track Archives more now partly for this very reason, but sadly they're as buggy as hell. Hoping desperately Cubase 10 improves our lot here.



This was an awesome tip re: action strikes, I only had two instances and it was a big chunk saved from my project size. Any other hogs you noticed?


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## jneebz (Aug 1, 2018)

Alexandre said:


> Hey would you tell us more about the details of your workflow by any chance?


He is probably referring to this:


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## kavinsky (Aug 1, 2018)

6000 lol
guys, your templates are outrageous.
delete everything you don't need for the particular project
in any case you can import the tracks you need later


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## jononotbono (Aug 1, 2018)

I've recently been using Instrument tracks inside my template as an adhoc kind of thing. Using track presets to bring in Patches, render to audio and delete tracks etc. I usually have all tracks as Midi Tracks connected to Cubase's Rack Instruments and all VIs hosted in VEPro. I have never noticed the long save times until now. It's infuriating.

Basically, with VEPro, the save time is almost instant (depending on how you work) but then you really need to use Midi Tracks (because alas, more Instrument tracks = Save times in Cubase) and although I wish Midi Tracks had the same functionality as an Instrument track, I think using Midi tracks is small sacrifice to pay when comparing it to the constant waiting of Save times in Cubase just because there are instrument tracks inside the DAW. Anyone know why the save times are so long? So many people have been talking and praising about having an Instrument Track only template and how VEPro is no longer needed and I've always been sceptical. Now I know for certain. I am not stopping using VEPro. The constant waiting is a horrendous waste of time.

And we all know what happens when Auto Save is turned off! haha!


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Aug 1, 2018)

MrLinssi said:


> My template is around 600 tracks (disabled), currently have a song that's barely three minutes long (project size 407mb), couple of dozens tracks active. I use instrument tracks (Kontakt, Play 5 and Engine 2). Cleared my audio pool, disabled automatic hitpoint detection, didn't help. I only have eight plugins in the whole template (Valhalla Room, Vintage Comp. and Stereo Delay). My save times take roughly around 30 seconds, yet I see guys here with bigger templates (no VEPro) and their save times are ten times smaller. Any ideas? The waiting is a real workflow killer. :/



Good lord..600 Tracks? :D I mean..I know people with such big templates and even bigger ones working but I am not doing it. Besides that when you work with such many tracks I would highly recommend them outsourcing out of the DAW with something like VE Pro. People with that templates often outsource their kontakt instances to Ve pro. Apart from that I am not that big fan of such big templates because I get often lost. Maybe build a basic template and add things to it what you need? I remember a couple of years ago I built a template with 300 tracks and though I felt it was organized my workflow was staggering slow because most of the time I was searching for the tracks articulatons instead of working on the sequencing which caused me personally just a headdache.


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## jononotbono (Aug 1, 2018)

AlexanderSchiborr said:


> Good lord..600 Tracks? :D I mean..I know people with such big templates and even bigger ones working but I am not doing it. Besides that when you work with such many tracks I would highly recommend them outsourcing out of the DAW with something like VE Pro. People with that templates often outsource their kontakt instances to Ve pro. Apart from that I am not that big fan of such big templates because I get often lost. Maybe build a basic template and add things to it what you need? I remember a couple of years ago I built a template with 300 tracks and though I felt it was organized my workflow was staggering slow because most of the time I was searching for the tracks articulatons instead of working on the sequencing which caused me personally just a headdache.



You have some very valid points in your post. This is my solution to your points...



NB This is a template I'm building for someone hence Disabled Instrument tracks.


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## Guy Rowland (Aug 2, 2018)

kunst91 said:


> This was an awesome tip re: action strikes, I only had two instances and it was a big chunk saved from my project size. Any other hogs you noticed?



There were, but sadly I can't remember. Nothing quite on the Action Strikes scale though.

Incidentally, Steinberg support have just said on their forum that the multichannel disabled audio (and I think Track Archives) bugs will be fixed "in the next update". This is big news for Cubase large template users.


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## jononotbono (Aug 2, 2018)

Guy Rowland said:


> There were, but sadly I can't remember. Nothing quite on the Action Strikes scale though.
> 
> Incidentally, Steinberg support have just said on their forum that the multichannel disabled audio (and I think Track Archives) bugs will be fixed "in the next update". This is big news for Cubase large template users.



That's amazing news. Thanks man!


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## J-M (Aug 2, 2018)

AlexanderSchiborr said:


> Good lord..600 Tracks? :D I mean..I know people with such big templates and even bigger ones working but I am not doing it. Besides that when you work with such many tracks I would highly recommend them outsourcing out of the DAW with something like VE Pro. People with that templates often outsource their kontakt instances to Ve pro. Apart from that I am not that big fan of such big templates because I get often lost. Maybe build a basic template and add things to it what you need? I remember a couple of years ago I built a template with 300 tracks and though I felt it was organized my workflow was staggering slow because most of the time I was searching for the tracks articulatons instead of working on the sequencing which caused me personally just a headdache.



Haha, perfectly valid points there! I usually delete everything that I don't need in the song as I go along. But I made a good naming scheme for myself so navigating the template hasn't been a problem for me at all!


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## Francis Bourre (Aug 2, 2018)

Guy Rowland said:


> Incidentally, Steinberg support have just said on their forum that the multichannel disabled audio (and I think Track Archives) bugs will be fixed "in the next update". This is big news for Cubase large template users.


I hope they will fix the FX chain preset bug as well. So annoying!


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Aug 4, 2018)

Guy Rowland said:


> Incidentally, Steinberg support have just said on their forum that the multichannel disabled audio (and I think Track Archives) bugs will be fixed "in the next update". This is big news for Cubase large template users.



I recently switched from a "frozen tracks" template to a "disabled tracks" template. The first one was very stable but slower, the second is much quicker but I've never experienced so many Cubase crashes before.

Is this the "multichannel disabled audio bug" you're talking about ?


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## benmrx (Aug 4, 2018)

Alexandre said:


> Hey would you tell us more about the details of your workflow by any chance?





jneebz said:


> He is probably referring to this:




Yeah, I touch on a few workflows near the end of that video. I'll be uploading more videos VERY soon. Hopefully early next week. I wanted to have a bit more fun, get out the camera, and see what happens. 

I recently built a 'smart/logical' macro that I find SUPER useful. By 'logical' I mean that the macro does different things based on what I'm doing and/or what window is open. For example, I've got ONE button (a physical button thanks to the Elgato Stream Deck) that will let me make adjustments to the VST Instrument a MIDI track is connected to (for adjusting aux sends, EQ, etc.)..., and it works from the main project page, and the MIDI editor..., _and_ it takes me BACK to where I was before I hit button when I'm done editing the VST instrument.

So, if I was in the key editor working, and I want to adjust the aux send of that instrument:
I hit the button, it brings up the VST instrument (in a way that allows me to use a controller so I can use a physical knob to adjust the aux send), then when I'm done, it takes me right back to the MIDI editor, exactly where I was, so I can keep working. 
-OR-
If I was in the main project page, and I want to do that same thing (adjust the aux send.... or EQ, or fader, etc.), I hit that SAME button..., I make my adjustements, and then it takes me back to working in the project page.

I also built a sort of 'inception' mode for my template. Which (as silly as it might sound at first) lets me build a template in a template. This is GREAT when you have a template of 8 billion tracks but you already know the 10-20 you want to use..., or at least start with. I hopped on figuring that out because I was recently asked to write 86 orchestral pieces of music for a new app, and I wanted a quick way to build my palette of sounds inside my 'mega template' so all my routing, stems, naming conventions, etc. are ready to go.

Also, IMO..., folders. They're both a blessing and a curse. I personally can't stand it when tracks are buried 3-4-5 folders deep. 

Colors..., I just started re-coloring my template with a new system for identifying tracks. I broke it down to: Legatos, Longs, Shorts, Trems/Trills, FX (based HSL values). This way I can keep the naming conventions on my tracks cleaner and easier to read, and I can more easily see from a birds eye view where say the "SCS Violin 1 FX" track is. 

Selecting all tracks in a folder. Figuring that out has opened up some new doors I'm still discovering......., this should really be a native/default command in Cubase...... IMO. 

Having ONE button for finding any track, or group of tracks, or library, or articulation, etc. 

I'm a big fan of getting things streamlined. I want as FEW buttons as possible. For me...., the 'mega template' only works if it's easy to use..., and for me..., having pages and pages of buttons quickly turns into a case of diminishing returns. 

_I'm a huge nerd for this kind of stuff. _


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## kunst91 (Aug 4, 2018)

Guy Rowland said:


> There were, but sadly I can't remember. Nothing quite on the Action Strikes scale though.
> 
> Incidentally, Steinberg support have just said on their forum that the multichannel disabled audio (and I think Track Archives) bugs will be fixed "in the next update". This is big news for Cubase large template users.



Oh if true that is HUGE


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## J-M (May 30, 2019)

I am resurrecting this thread just to ask one thing (which I should have asked in the beginning really): instead of loading every instrument inside its own instance of Kontakt, Play 6, Engine, etc; does loading multiple patches inside ONE instance and using MIDI channels yield any pros/cons when it comes to save times?


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## ALittleNightMusic (Jan 14, 2021)

Did this ever get any better with Cubase 11?


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## ThomasS (May 15, 2021)

ALittleNightMusic said:


> Did this ever get any better with Cubase 11?


No


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