End of Cubase? Performance Meter Average picking to 99% with very few Fx plugins

[EnGee]

I haven't tried Cubase on Mac, but on Windows my experience was not easy. It needs a lot of optimisation and care. It is very picky about certain plugins and online usage. Graphic cards like nVidia needs to be installed only the drivers. Disabling OneDrive while working with Cuabse, ... etc. Oh and traditionally Reaktor and Kontakt don't play well with the CPU (not only Cubase, but I'm noticing this in Logic Pro)! I can't say which fault it this one!

Buffer settings was 128 or 256 while in other hosts it is 64! I used only 44.1 or 48 kHz sample rate. Ethernet cards need not to be used while Cubase running! Yeah! It is a pain compared to other hosts. Anyway, once it runs fine, nothing break it except maybe Windows update!!

[mduke123]

Thank you guys. I agree the problem is Cubase and I will give a try Asio4all.

[4damind]

I almost forgot but maybe it was already mentioned, Cubase should never run in compatibility mode, it causes performance problems and sometimes strange behaviour.
For example, there was a known problem in this mode with Relab plug-ins... if you opened the plug-in, Cubase was no longer updated in the background (whether this is only a problem with Cubase, I don't know).

You can set this in the Cubase shortcut under properties or in the executable file under properties and remove the tick there.

[Edit]
The Asio driver of the sound card? That's so specific that you might find something about it in the manufacturer's product forum or maybe directly in the Steinberg forum someone with the same sound card has the same problem.
Steinberg also installs a generic low latency Asio driver... in any case, you can simply test it or switch it over to see what it does. Yes, you can also test Asio4All.

[jens]

Steinberg also installs a generic low latency Asio driver... in any case, you can simply test it or switch it over to see what it does.

Ah, yes - good call!

[jancivil]

Your issue may or may not be Cubase. My issue for that matter, and I have a fairly long experience with Cubase, since SX1, on a number of types of system, OSes, soundcards, etc may or may not be Cubase. I think some of it *probably* is, but I cannot eliminate all potential factors, and you definitely haven't, you won't even reinstall the thing.
You probably haven't deleted preferences, even. You aren't using Fernando to see if you can eliminate culprits. You aren't proactive, but you're conclusive.

It could be your audio device drivers are shit, for that matter, if we're now talking "ASIO 4 All" But we haven't trouble-shot this really, barely begun to.

[mduke123]

I will reinstall Cubase and send Fernando the project as soon as I arrive home. I will try before importing my preferences and also with Asio4all. Honestly I have tried Latencymon with negative results, but why Reaper works so well then?

[4damind]

Well, there is another approach that goes in the direction of having a "clean" Cubase for the time being.
1. Export/save important settings like keyboard shortcuts.
2. close Cubase
3. delete or rename the complete settings (the Cubase11_64 folder under AppData\Roaming\Steinberg)
4. rename the VST2 plugin folder e.g. to "Plugins Old" and create a new/empty plugin folder, the same with the VST3 plugin folder (Program Files\Common Files\VST3)

You can of course also reinstall Cubase but this is not really necessary. In this case, however, you should also remove the settings manually after uninstalling.

Open Cubase, takes a little longer the first time as the libraries are also scanned. This should be much quicker the next time. None of your own plug-ins should appear in the Cubase plug-in manager.
Open the last project and write down which plug-ins you definitely need or which are shown as missing. Close Cubase and download and install the latest versions.
The point is to only have installed what you really need and the latest versions. Also install the VST3 version if offered.
If an old plugin is no longer supported or cannot be downloaded, simply copy it from the old renamed folder to the current plugin folder....

[jancivil]

Reaper is in all likelihood notably more efficient than Cubase.
As to 'reinstall Cubase': There may be corruption, and while it's tending to be corruption of its preferences (personally I see higher frequency of prefs corruption in 11 than ever before, by a lot) it can't hurt. NB: not just delete the application, clear it all out. I don't know of any internal uninstaller, so you have to know where stuff is.

Delete preferences now. If you have key commands or user interface tweaks which are considerable, or you have controller lane presets or quantization presets, the top level preferences folder contains 'Key Commands" "UserPreferences" and in Presets below that you can find "RAM Presets" (controller lanes/quantization) and "Window Layouts", which if you have a particular order in your toolbars etc, which can save hassle when you come back by saving copies of the pertinent ones and reinserting after rebuilding them rather from scratch.
this is so known by Steinberg it gives the option to disable (Safe Mode) or delete prefs in startup after crashes. I hate this because for me if I don't quit it before it has fully launched it's going to probably fug with a couple of these anyway. AND my differences per the default prefs numbers up to 70 now. Point is, I can do that all by myself and [almost] nothing is lost.
But I get inexplicable failures which get corrected because it was some corruption.

this said, I doubt this is the root of your performance issues.
I don't know why Reaper would get on better with a given plugin than Cubase does, but with such a difficult situation we have to do process of elimination.

[jancivil]

as to isolating plugins to find a culprit, letting Fernando check it can eliminate or verify everything your two setups share, and save time.

[kmonkey]

It's more end of your current computer setup that is..

[jancivil]

Even before trashing prefs, I would 1) save a backup of the project, committing to/consolidating edits of audio (you can save that folder somewhere but the idea is to eliminate a factor, remove unused files, all of that - don't 'keep current project active' - and close and reopen the new project. Or 2) rebuild the project from MIDI and a lot of copy/paste, or import .mid, what-have-you.

The project itself can have corruption.
if it's doing this in all projects, feel free to ignore this but it's something to be cognizant of.

[oneway]

Comparing REAPER with anticipative FX off to Cubase might reveal your performance gap more clearly.

In REAPER anticipative processing does a bunch of work before playing it back. It’s like using a huge buffer. Any comparison to other DAWs (for testing purposes) really should have that turned off.

[jancivil]

another thing, if any of that is VST3, it can be made to not process unless actively receiving input, in Preferences.

[jancivil]

maybe directly in the Steinberg forum someone with the same sound card has the same problem.

yes, check for same soundcard on same OS.

[Functional]

I've had this very specific issue before that I tracked down to using Nvidia Geforce. I uninstalled lot of it - including the HD Audio Drivers, the Geforce Experience etc - basically everything except the videocard drivers themselves. Then it all got solved.

If this is the same issue, I do not know, but this is an extremely obscure issue from what I know. I went to ridiculous steps to diagnose it to no avail. Messed even with BIOS settings, because I was that desperate. Nothing else misbehaved - only Cubase. But after the Geforce stuff was uninstalled (because I went painstakingly through everything I could imagine that had remotely anything to do with sound & CPU), I never had this problem again.

The symptoms seem identical, though. Ridiculous performance meter average that could not be explained by CPU utilization. And Cubase itself was extremely sloggish. I couldn't even believe how bad it was because I upgraded from a Phenom x6 to a 4790k, which was lightyears ahead, and the performance of Cubase was far worse than I had ever seen before that.