I also have an issue with side-chaining that goes back to Cubase 7 and still is not fixed, but I also beieve it’s not just side-chaining that has the issue but with channel bugs in general.
I have a group channel to where all instruments are routed and that in turn is side-chained to either a vocal track or a vocal group track so that Vocal Rider has more accurate leveling input.
On the vocal track or group, I need to side-chain to a compressor on another track (audio or instrument, doesn’t matter) but the send list doesn’t include the compressor in it’s list.
If I duplicate the vocal track, the send then appears to the compressor, but I can no longer send to the vocal track from the group track where all instruments are going.
So on tracks that have either inbound, outbound or both side-chaining, the side-chain list in the send area is not accurate and breaks in various ways, on either the sending or receiving side, or both.
The reason I say there is general channel corruption happening is because, in the same way side-chaining fails (stops updating whatever elements may be involved in the signal flow), randomly, I can have an audio or instrument track that simply stops outputting any audio, or the sends just no longer work for inexplicable reasons, or the related meters are just blank all of a sudden. Most of this can be fixed by duplicating the track in question, then Cubase will somehow re-init everything and it works normally again, at least for a little while. This work-around pretty much points directly at Cubase as the problem.
Mixing 100+ tracks and having a send stop working means I have to completely stop what I’m doing and manually “fix” all of them by duplicating tracks (because one side or the other is now broken and not ‘seeing’ everything that’s been activated). Whenever I have a common object that so many tracks are using simultaneously and it fails, it is extremely tedious to correct.
This is the workflow stuff Steinberg should be working on…not stupid-ass hover tabs.
Sorry, I’m pretty hot about the lack of fixes because I feel like a fool for backing this software for nearly two decades while unfixed issues like this are blown off for things like VST Cloud and “workflow” enhancements to make sends take up twice as much space now.