Serious Problems With Direct Offline Processing

That’s just stupid, preview should play whatever the selection is, one should be no need to “reset” preview.

Yep, they need to fix this DOP, hopefully very soon.
Or make it removable, right now it is completely useless anyway.
I have several issues using it, I can understand there can be issues in a new release, and most normally gets fixed in the first patch. But this feels like it is still in Alpha stage, a little worried.

Customer story: let’s overhaul a straightforward menu, WITHOUT ANY CONPLAINTS SINCE IT’S EXISTANCE and turn it into something as unintuitive and useless as possible

Eh, what? So far it sounds like your whole problem with DOP is that you simply aren’t making any effort to get your head around it.

You’re not resetting the preview, you’re resetting the changes you made without hitting apply. Hitting Audition lets you hear the changes you’re making in real time, without having to apply. (this is the same as the old preview button…)

No it’s cumbersome. Previously it was select the function you want, hit apply, happy move on, not happy crtl-z
Having a preview (appreciate we had the preview function before) just doesn’t make any sense. Plugins can just go into one of the 16 plugin slots i just want the old processing menu new one is counter intuitive IMHO. Straightforward destructive processing was fine, when I want to commit plugins I will just render in place. This is just more clutter IMHO.

The main problem I have with it, is that realtime preview only allows you to hear the track your working with… you can’t listen to the entire mix. If I’m doing DOP with an EQ on a bass guitar track, how am I supposed to hear how I want to tweak the EQ if I can’t listen to the bass along with the entire mix??? As it currently works, I can hear only the bass!

Direct Offline Processing is a GREAT “idea”, but it seriously NEEDS WORK. As it currently stands, I will NEVER use this feature. If they add better realtime monitoring (so I can hear my entire mix), I would use this feature all the time.

I do not know about you, but I can not preview. The monitoring button is ineffective. I see working the plug-in in real time (say a compressor), but no sound. I wrote another Thread on the subject, but no answer. I forget something?

Yup, I purchased the update for this feature (DOP), particularly to use with Acustica Audio plugins and it currently works horribly. Nebula 4 doesn’t work at all with it which may or may not be Steinberg’s fault. As has been mentioned, there needs to be a system with presets/chains in place.

I can confirm there are many problems with this feature. Against my better judgment, I bought the update to 9.5 specifically for THIS feature, and it is UNUSABLE for anything but the most basic workflows based on my heavy testing. How was this even released? As soon as you start really pushing it with reverbs and delays and rendering tails, then cutting, chopping regions, multiple-selecting, applying to regions, undoing, redoing, using certain plugins, etc… you introduce all sorts of problems. The list of problems I came up with is very frustrating, so I cannot use it AT ALL. If you stick to very basic workflow, it works okay, but even then I can’t trust it yet. With anything complex, it messed up so many times I couldn’t believe it.

I actually bought it after watching some cool videos about the feature on Youtube, but eventually realized that the coolest of all the videos that made me buy it was actually from Nuendo 8.1, which introduced Direct Offline Processing (DOP) 1.5. Inexplicably, Cubase 9.5, which came out AFTER Nuendo 8.1 does NOT have DOP 1.5. It has a prior, buggier, problematic version of DOP.

So it seems to me that Steinberg likely knows of many of the DOP issues people are experiencing, but for some reason, they decided NOT to include DOP 1.5 in the current Cubase 9.5 as of this date.

So what I am hoping for is that Steinberg will release a maintenance update for Cubase 9.5 ASAP that will include DOP 1.5.

What I am shocked at is how the current DOP made it through to final release of Cubase 9.5. It makes no sense how they approved it. It just confirms yet again that I should never, ever buy a Steinberg upgrade so soon after release. Cubase 9.0 was a bummer for me, and I basically vowed to never buy another update of Cubase again (long story, I won’t bore you with the details in this thread)… but then they released this very promising, potentially awesome feature in Cubase 9.5, and I decided to give them one more chance, and here I am, kicking myself once again… the current DOP is a mess… not ready for prime time. It’s alpha software IMO. Now I hope they will release an update with DOP 1.5, and maybe it will be usable. Sigh.

Processing a clip with pitch plugin or auto tune is something I do every day countless times. DOP is incredibly buggy and to that end, also makes 9.5 unusable for me.

10 minutes using this feature for any user including SB Beta testers should have confirmed that it was not fit to replace ‘process using a plugin’ in this release.

I just left Avid (and Pro Tools) to return to Cubase, after many analysis (and many years). Avid promises but offers little in comparison to Steinberg. But this dysfunction of “direct offline processing” is a serious mistake. I will wait and stay at version 9. We must hope that Steinberg will solve the problem. QUESTION: There are users for whom the DOP works?

Look, DOP basically works for a very simple workflow with most plugins I tested, more or less. If you just want to use it here and there, and just want to select one clip at a time, don’t do anything fancy, and apply some basic plugin or series of basic plugins to that one clip, you’re probably going to be okay, as long as you don’t do much else. I personally don’t trust it even for that, but my guess is that Steinberg had a very simplistic workflow testing scenario when they approved it. If you want to stick with that basic situation, you’ll probably be okay. Cross your fingers.

However, if you want to venture out from there, from my personal testing, the risk seems to expand exponentially with each step you take. Where it started to get messy for me was when I changed clip lengths or cut them, etc…, and then used DOP to apply plugins with tails, adjusted the tails, then perhaps made edits to the clips afterwards, or multiple-selected, or used regions, etc… just combinations of those kinds of steps, or even try undoing then redoing a sequence like that and see what you get. It became unreliable very quickly with some surprisingly, unpredictably, inconsistently and OBVIOUSLY unacceptable results.

If you ABSOLUTELY HAVE to use the feature, I’d suggest the most simplistic approach – ONE clip at a time, don’t do anything fancy, and don’t tweak the clip again. If you need to edit the clip again in any way, I’d suggest removing all DOP processes, then do your edit, then apply the DOP processes again. Much more than that is an invitation to disaster IMO.

As for me, this whole feature is currently, completely UNUSABLE and not to be trusted.

And frankly, a lot of this is probably ALREADY solved by DOP 1.5, which Steinberg already gave to Nuendo 8.1. One would think Steinberg would give DOP 1.5 to Cubase 9.5 ASAP to resolve some of the more obvious issues.

And do we even need to speculate as to how on earth this kind of alpha-level feature got approved for final release? I don’t get it.

FYI – Steinberg just released Cubase 9.5.10 with the following fixes to DOP:

  • An issue has been resolved where Direct Offline Processing could not be applied to audio clips in the Pool.


  • An issue has been resolved where no “New Version” option window was shown when applying processes.


  • An issue has been resolved where applying processes to audio data edited with VariAudio removed all VariAudio edits.

Looks like we did NOT get DOP 1.5! Just some fixes… Installing the update now and will confirm.

Follow-up – I installed 9.5.10 (build date Nov 28) and I can confirm that we did NOT get DOP 1.5.

Also, I can confirm that its behavior seems more stable than before after light testing, but we are still missing the much-needed enhancements of DOP 1.5. I don’t know what that means for Cubase 9.5 in general with regard to DOP… but Steinberg seems to have decided that at least for now, we don’t get the great features of DOP 1.5. Perhaps that’s going to be a Nuendo exclusive? Very disappointing if that’s true.

In any case, as disappointing as it is that we don’t (yet?) have DOP 1.5 as of Cubase 9.5.10, I can already tell that there has been a slight improvement. However, after just 10 minutes of testing it with clips, regions, tails, multi-selecting, undoing, resizing clips, etc., I was able recreate issues and inconsistencies once again… so for me it ultimately remains UNUSABLE except for very basic workflows. And I still cannot trust it. In a hard-core project with lots of edits, I don’t feel like I can rely on it already… and it took just 10 minutes to realize that. How does Steinberg allow these things to get released?

As always, YMMV. Good luck.

I might play with it some more and report back, but I won’t do another deep testing of it… there’s no point for me to waste more of my time on this version. It doesn’t do what I originally hoped it would do, and the only thing I’d marginally use it for would be very simple workflows. I will probably wait until Steinberg finally releases DOP 1.5 to bother with it again.

Very disappointed, at this point I’m just worn out from wasting enthusiasm and precious time on new features like this. Still can’t believe they didn’t give us DOP 1.5.

For my part, it was a routing problem and Steinberg gave me a very good support. For general use, I guess you’re right, but it’s a little bit the case for all systems. That said, I do not know if it’s better in Studio One or Reaper. As for Pro Tools, it does not do it (or it’s destructive and one plug at a time).

The gold standard for this kind of feature IMO is actually Samplitude, which has a very mature object editing system, that is really outstanding for this kind of workflow. Steinberg’s implementation, while of course very different, is at this point very simplistic compared to Samplitude’s approach. Nuendo 8.1 has introduced DOP 1.5, which is a half step forward, but still not as mature as Samplitude’s approach, which essentially treats every clip/item as a separate object and you can do all sorts of lovely things to each object, independent of the track. It’s built from the ground up on this object concept. And it’s been there for years and years… and is super stable for that workflow.

As for Studio One, the somewhat similar feature is actually called an Event FX, which at this point IMO is significantly superior to Steinberg’s DOP in usability and stability, and it’s been there for years as well. Many people don’t know it’s there… they mistakenly think of Studio One as a “junior” DAW but in some ways it’s extremely advanced. The Event FX is a nice gem of a feature, and it’s been stable for a long time. The difference is that the Event FX in Studio One are real-time by default, but you can of course render them with the click of a button, with user-defined tails. Easy… So the workflow requires an extra click basically, but it’s very well done and intuitive once you get the hang of it. And well, guess what, it works. So there’s that important issue.

However, if Steinberg ever gets around to releasing DOP 1.5 (and that’s also assuming that DOP 1.5 is actually stable), then Steinberg’s implementation begins to look pretty interesting and very competitive IMO. In theory, it could be a real killer feature if they ever get it working well. DOP 2.0 would theoretically be awesome.

As for Reaper, it is also a very mature and deep DAW and of course it also has something similar – in Reaper, it’s called Take FX, which is misleading, it should really be called Item FX. In principle it’s very similar to how Studio One does it, and well, it also works well. :slight_smile: Surprise surprise. It’s also been there a long time. Reaper has a very decent item properties approach that is very powerful indeed. However, these Take/Item FX are real-time, so the workflow is not as elegant or flexible as Studio One’s approach IMO. But again, it works, and it’s very powerful. My guess is that someone has a key command or macro that makes it just as fast (or faster) than Studio One’s render approach.

In all cases, the end result of the various approaches is to allow you to apply effects to a subset of a track (i.e. a region or clip or item, etc.)… and each approach has its advantages/disadvantages. Naturally, one key difference is that Steinberg’s is OFFLINE, and their marketing will say that it saves CPU resources… but the other approaches can also be offline of course. Studio One’s approach lets you be either offline or live with the click of the render button for the Event FX. Bottom line with all these approaches is that you can add effects to PART of a track…

So in theory, Steinberg’s approach will be very good if they can get it to work well one day. Right now, both Studio One and Reaper (and even though you didn’t bring it up, Samplitude) have had this kind of feature for a long time. I’m just hoping Steinberg will spend more time on it, because it could become a truly workflow-changing kind of feature one day.

Besides all this the former “freeze edits” until version 9 would simply overwrite the original file, but now the “make direct offline processing permanent” gives the file a new name and the function doesn’t even work when selecting files in the pool (“freeze edits” did). And this function worked over numerous Cubase versions flawlessly, which was great for sample-editing or simply importing a mix and applying a fade destructively without having to rename the file (which is now needed). I posted a more detailed description under “issues” yesterday.

MANY PROBLEMS!!!, this update broke my workflow, makes CUBASE 9.5 literally unusable for me! Its a pity, offline processing and processing history worked like a charm before they had to bling it out and advertise it as if it was a brand new feature.

  • You can no longer pitch multiple clips and expect them to resize acordingly, instead you must first consolidate each individual clip

  • You have to set the processing tail before you choose the plugin! this means that when using my many shortcuts for offline processing with specific plugins, i have to unload the plugin, adjust the tail, and then load the plugin again in the DOF editor

  • Rather frequently it also just renders silence onto the clip (seemingly confused about where the processing should stop or start)

I realy want to use Bezier automation, but until Steinberg fix this or at the very least make it possible to revert to old school offline processing i am forced to stay in 9.0

P.S. Anyone know how to be able to hear the “listen key” in pitch shift process? it seems to have dissappeared.

Yes DOP 1.5 please

agreed - something is broken, just had large e-learning project which involved pitching up and down a lot of clips and I found it to be quite unreliable where suddenly other clips were affected as well. Pretty hard to pinpoint but seems dangerous to me.