I'm not sure what the developer guys did between Cubase SX 3 and Cubase 4, but 4 is extremely buggy and unstable compared to SX 3 for what I do. I've never had any problems with either LE or SX 3 with MIDI connections, but regularly in 4, it just randomly loses connection to MIDI devices and simply chooses not to talk to them. I have to restart the app to get it to reconnect. Sometimes, even that doesn't work.

Further, I'm trying to load a project with various VSTs including FM8, Absynth and Battery 3. On load of this specific project, Cubase 4 goes into lala land when trying to load and setup VSTs for the project and the whole app hangs forcing me to kill Cubase 4 with Task Manager. Sometimes the project will load, sometimes it won't. I'm not certain of what the issue is, but it's extremely frustrating.

Again, Cubase SX 3 was rock solid and I never had MIDI connection issues ever. I did have one occasion, with SX 3, when I couldn't load a project with VSTs after quitting out. On load, it just hung Cubase SX 3 and I never was able to get into that project again. But, it was so early into that project, I just started it over.

I'm very disappointed in the stability of Cubase 4 over Cubase SX 3. I like some of the new features in Cubase 4, but it really doesn't help when you can't get into projects again later because the whole app just decides to hang.

I'm on Windows XP using the latest update of Cubase 4. I have a midiman USB MIDISPORT 4x4 with 3 devices attached (Alesis Micron, Proteus 2000 and Roland DR-5). I hope that with a future release of Cubase 4 that you can fix these MIDI synchronization issues as it really makes it very difficult when working on projects. Worse, you have to attempt to open a project several times just to get the MIDI working again. The stability of MIDI in Cubase SX was one of its main selling points. Unfortunately, that apparently has now gone away with Cubase 4.

BTW, I do have all the latest updates from NI for each of these VSTs.

One last thing.. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE set the Windows task priority AFTER the project is loaded. Always load the project at 'Normal' priority so it doesn't kill the machine during load. Also, please set the task priority to 'Normal' when doing fast mixdowns (or at least, let the user set it in the mixdown panel). There is no need to kill the machine during a fast mixdown.

One last issue with Cubase 4. On projects were I'm using Battery 3, some drums are cut off abruptly or the effects sound odd during fast mixdown. If I use real-time mixdown or listen to it in real-time, it doesn't do this. I've never had this issue with SX 3. SX 3 has always mixed down sounding proper either in real-time or in fast mixdown. This is definitely something new that was introduced in Cubase 4.