Hi folks. I'm currently on Cubase 6, and one issue annoying me is Cubase insisting on a realtime render when I've frozen external instruments.

I find that I'm able to get an offline render immediately after freezing instruments, but if I close and reopen the file, it insists on a realtime render (as though it's forgotten that I've previously frozen the external instruments).

Please can someone check this for me; is this bug sorted in 7.x?

Checked it for you, it works as expected here, also after saving and reloading.
Cubase 7.5.20

Thanks Bradovic! Glad to hear it.

Just upgraded, and it still happens. This bug's still here. 200 quid down the drain. Gutted.

This is a very long standing bug... when loading external instruments - turning them off - loading the project again - they're "on" again while they're actually off.

The workaround is to send the track to an audio channel that's set to monitor and do all the processing on that audio channel. When you're happy with the synth, record the audio channel and turn monitor off. (and turn the instrument off)
You can use a group or a bus to send it to an audio channel.

Or as an alternative, send the external instrument to a group, create an audio channel that goes to the same group. Send the audio of the instrument to a bus that's the input for the audio channel, using a send.
Do all the processing on the group.
When you're happy with the synth, again record the audio and turn the instrument off. The synth will then come from the audio channel instead of the original channel. But the group will do the processing so there will be no difference in sound.

You can hide the original channel then so it won't clutter the mixer.

When reloading a project you have to turn all the external instruments on and off again to do an off-line export.

If you set this up from the start it's actually a pretty good way to work.

Thanks for that, but it seems like more work than simply refreezing instruments before exporting.

Well, actually, if you set it up in a template the recording of the instrument takes just as long as freezing.. You'd only have to do the work once.

Well, you have 7.5 now, but you didnt need to make the switch to fix the bug i guess... Im not sure why you didnt demo it first? ONE person said it was fixed, and you ran out and bought it? If you DO feel gutted, you have no one but yourself to blame?

Are you talking about a VSTi played with an external controller? or just a VSTi? The others seem to know what you are talking about, but really there is no such thing as an "external instrument".
Is this ALL VSTi? Maybe you started another thread that i didnt see? I mustv missed something. The reason i as is because im considering Cubase

Actually there IS something that's called external instruments... It is a way to get external instruments into your Cubendo mixer through an audio channel. But it is different then a normal audio channel because it measures all latency and compensates the midi accordingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUfXoZMijas

It's under VST connections in the devices menu.

Well yeah, sure there is a place to configure the routing, but its not freezable or capable of being loaded into a project as the OP suggests. I'm familiar with the term, just not in a context that the OP is using it.

well.. it is freezable though.. How come you know it's not freezable when you don't use Cubase yet? :P

When you configure an external instrument you can load it just like a vst and there's a freeze button next to it.. The problem we're discussing here is a bug in THAT freeze button :D

Freezing an external instrument is just a way to record it's audio, but "made easier"

I used Nuendo up until version 5 at the studio i worked at.
The VSTi itself is what you are freezing. The external instruments tab in the VST connections is just a place to set up the routing for it. The routing might be rendered useless because it is tied to that instrument, but you cant just set up the routing without a VSTi and freeze it. It would be pointless to freeze routing configurations because the CPU load they initiate is probably close to immeasurable.

I'm really wondering if you do understand what we're saying or we just don't understand each other or that you're just beeing a troll.

You setup the device yeah, but that device is not active unless you load it as a VSTi. Otherwise it functions as any other non loaded plugin (so it does not function )
Once loaded you can freeze the instrument and then you'll get the dialog to freeze just the instrument or the instrument and the channel.

The latter option also freezes the plugins, so that saves CPU.

Besides that you can't do an off-line export without any of the 2 freezes because off-line export is faster than realtime and midi can't go faster than realtime. So you can either freeze the VSTi (external instrument) or record the audio that comes in through that channel and turn the VSTi off so you won't get an error message.

A decade later, still having this issue in Cubase 13....

I have a project with the Rev2 and DeepMind 12 set up as External instrument tracks.
I freeze them (in realtime at this stage, obviously, also checking the box to Unload instrument) and verify it's working. I can hear the sounds the synths were playing even if I physically switch off the synthesizers.

However, when exporting the mixdown, Cubase insists on doing a Realtime export because it claims external plugins are used. If I delete the two hardware instrument tracks from the project, offline export works as expected (but then I obviously can't hear the sounds from the hw synths) so the issue is definitely the two frozen hardware instrument tracks.

I thought the whole point of freezing hardware instrument tracks is to free you from the limitations of working with realtime MIDI and audio? Once frozen, they should just be plain audio files in the background.
Is this really a bug that has been around for over a decade, or am I doing something wrong?

Edit: So I did some more testing.

1. I unfroze the tracks and immediately refroze them again. Then I did an audio export. This time it would do an offline export without problems.

2. I closed the project and re-opened it, and offline export still worked.

3. I quit Cubase completely, restarted it and loaded the project. This time Cubase refused to do an offline export until I unfroze and refroze the tracks again.

So it does indeed seem to be the exact same bug OP experienced in Cubase 6 a decade ago. Absolutely fascinating that this bug has been around since at least Cubase 6...

I think I'm just going to move away from External Instrument tracks since this feature appears to have been bugged for at least the past 13 years, and just use separate MIDI and Audio tracks the traditional way. At least until Steinberg fixes this, maybe in Cubase 28?

what are your system specs? cubase 13 is lightyears ahead of version 6 by the way! I still have a boxed version of 6, are you using mac or pc?

Specs shouldn't really matter for this functionality but I'm running a Ryzen 3800X, 32 GB RAM and Cubase is installed on a 1 TB NVMe SSD, running on Windows 11.

I also tested with a completely blank project and experienced exactly the same thing when using external instruments as plug-ins. Every time I restart Cubase, I have to unfreeze and re-freeze all hardware instrument tracks before offline render will start working again (or record them to a separate audio track and delete the hardware instrument plugin from the project).

Yeah I noticed this recently, it’s quite annoying that you need to delete the external instrument to force offline render.

Yeah it makes working with external plugins so inconvenient you might as well just use MIDI+Audio tracks. Then you can just mute the MIDI track (and optionally disconnect the output) once you've recorded the audio, and offline rendering works. The MIDI is still there if you need again, unlike deleting an external instrument track which also deletes the MIDI.

The whole idea with external plugins is to make working with hw synths faster and easier, not make you jump through extra hoops. It's unfortunate since one of the big reasons I switched to Cubase was its supposed great integration with hardware synths. Conceptually, being able to treat external hw almost like plugins is a great feature, but apparently it hasn't worked since at least Cubase 6.

What's most interesting to me is how no one except the OP noticed this bug which has apparently existed for 10+ years. Does no one else use External Plugins in Cubase?

Same bug exists in Cubase 14.

Apparently Steinberg have opened a bug report but no guarantees that anything will happen.

I've worked around this using render in place. I usually leave the external instrument tracks in the project in case I need to return to them and reprint the track. If I want to export a project offline and I have external instruments in the project, it's just a case of enabling and disabling the instruments and the offline export will work. I can see why this problematic when using freeze, that's why I started using render in place instead of freeze.

Agreed, but freezing tracks, both hardware instruments and VST's, is a feature Steinberg do advertise so it should work properly. It's like a car company advertising 5 gears but only the first 4 work unless you turn the car off and on again at least once an hour.