How do I manage files in Cubase?

This is a very important step to think about when first starting to use hard disk recording. The one thing you don’t want to do is to record all songs of all your sessions into one big directory- it can get to be 20 or 30 gigabytes and can contain hundreds or thousands of files, depending on the number of tracks, songs, and cuts & splits. Cubase will handle this situation without problems, but should a file problem arise, or if you wish to delete or backup a session, you may need to spend hours just to retrieve one session.

Cubase, by default, will ask for the directory you wish to store your audio files in the first time you record-enable an audio track in a session. This is where you should create a new folder for your session’s audio files. The next step is to name your tracks before you record onto them. This will give it filenames such as Guitar-1 and Bass-1 instead of Audio01-1. The advantages of doing this is lowering your file maintenence time in the future. If you wish to backup a session onto CD-R, or delete a session entirely, you can simply find the [SESSION].all file and the audio folder associated with it, and do with it what you wish.

If Cubase does not ask for a directory but assumes a preset audio file directory, you can either: Go to Options-Audio-Audio files folder and select your directory for each new session you create. Or, you can delete (or rename) your def.all file in your Cubase directory, which contains all your presets. Setup your Cubase, and save the new def.all file before specifying an audio directory.

If you do find yourself with one big audio directory for all of your sessions, Cubase can help you.

Go into each of your sessions, and go to Panels-Audio Pool (or Control-F). Go to Do, Erase unused files. Save your song under the original name. Then go back to the Audio Pool screen and choose File-Prepare Archive. This will duplicate your audio files (only for this session) into a new directory of your choice. After you’ve done this for each session, you may delete the original audio folder after you make sure the separate folders exist. Cubase has now separated only your used audio files for each session into their own location.

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