Merged soundbites disappear

[simul]

So, I've been using DP since DP4, almost 20 years! but this never happened to me, and it started a while ago, let's say around when I upgraded to DP11. I was recording some vocals today, and I had quite a lot of soundbites in various tracks (not that much honestly... let's say 7-8 tracks of vocals, and around 30/40 different takes on different soundbites for the song). As I always do, since forever, when we finished tracking, I simply merged the 8 tracks. right after that I cleaned the unused soundbites (removed, NOT deleted) and right after that, I flushed the undo history to clean the session and make it lighter. I've been doing this since forever, but lately, 1 or 2 of those merged files simply disappeared. I did NOTHING but the merged soundbites became unavailable and when I checked the audio files folder, that merged file simply wasn't there. When it happened the first time, I thought I did something wrong and blamed myself only. but now it's been quite a few times, and it's really frustrating, even more since it seems random. I managed to open an automatic autosave version and luckily saved the performance, but I really would like to understand why this is happening. I tried to write to Motu but they asked me how to replicate the behaviour and I didn't manage to succeed in that.

anyone has an idea on why is this happening?
many thanks for your help.

[EMRR]

There seems to be some failures with unused soundbites since dp11. I haven't had problems with remove, but delete has definitely nuked some non-selected soundbites. Back to dp4, I never had a problem using delete willy-nilly to clean up sessions. It's become habit for me to drag off a backup copy of anything new before using that tool since dp11. It's not unusual to occasionally have to drag some things back from the backup afterwards.

[simul]

I just discovered after a few tests, that I now can replicate the issue. so basically if I merge a portion, then remove unused soundbites, then flush undo history and right after that I temporarily open another app (so let's say, I open finder, or I switch to safari, or any other app) and then come back to DP, that merged file won't exist anymore. So weird.

[HCMarkus]

I never delete recordings, so haven't experienced the same phenomenon, but I have noticed that, on occasion, a group of soundbites will refuse to merge... select the bites, merge, and I get a blank waveform. Undo, and all is well again. Don't recall exactly how I got around this; maybe just duplicate the track, then merge.

This has only happened to me a couple of times, but may be related to your recent experience.

It would be lovely if you set up a MOTU Tech Note on this; feel free to report my experience if you do.

[mikehalloran]

I never delete recordings, so haven't experienced the same phenomenon, but I have noticed that, on occasion, a group of soundbites will refuse to merge... select the bites, merge, and I get a blank waveform. Undo, and all is well again. Don't recall exactly how I got around this; maybe just duplicate the track, then merge.

I've had the same experience. The one time my tracks wouldn't merge, I saw the problem and corrected it. Unfortunately, I no longer recall the details.

[simul]

I'll set up a Motu Tech Link and will keep you updated.

thanks.