After the last update UAD Spark Pluggins from January 18th, 2023 I have 100% cpu load without the uad spark plugins being inserted into the DAW.
- All UAD Spark Pluggins Installed
- Start Cubase.
- New Empty Project
Result => High Cpu Load (100%)
Hi and welcome to the forum,
Are you on Mac or Windows, please? Do you have the chance to install an older version of the plug-ins to test it by any chance?
Are you sure you don’t use any plug-in in the Control Room (monitor) bus by any chance?
THX for welcome 
Windows 10 (latest updates)
no chance to install the old Pluggin versions by UA Connect App
.
No Pluggin’s inserted in the Controllroom.
Apparently I’m not the only one. there are similar reports in the Reaper (DAW) forum.
Hi,
I’m sorry for that. Then it will be fixed soon hopefully.
Yes, hope so.
I did everything I could do. Opened a Ticked at UAD, reinstall all UAD Spark. A few dozen tests… Phew. These new “in the box” studios are just as exhausting as the old ones.
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You have installed the UA connect app or uninstall it after updating?
Check if there is any update for the spark plugins. I had a similar issue
I can’t prove it 100% it is related
For chance I noticed that I had UAD updates |both spark and UAD hardware versions|, while struggling with strange spikes by cubase since a couple of days
I usually uninstall the UA connect app after updating, so I noticed these updates by email
Anyhow, I reinstalled the UA connect app, updated the plugins [I have everything from Spark] and uninstalled it
Opened Cubase and everything was gone
Next update I will report if there’s a relation. I suspect yes, because of Cubase 12’s licensing check…
After noticing the problems with UAD Spark, I reinstalled the UAD Spark.
I now check daily for UAD updates.
Could of course be a network problem with the Cubase license check. But you don’t know exactly. The CPU problems with Spark are also discussed in the Reaper (DAW) forum.
One user has tested it on Apple, runs smoothly. Seems to be a Windows problem?
I have similar issues.
Spark updated to latest version.
One thing is that it seems like plugins are not released after closing the current project so the CPU load remains the same even if there are no plugins loaded and no project active.
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It’s getting better for me lately, but this Cubase 12 it’s still a nightmare for stability. I have to open projects with C11 sometimes, for using certain plugins [Arturia, XLN Retro and DS10]
Anyway
I suspect that the latest Spark update has something bigger than other, it seems that I can’t use the plugins if I uninstall the UA connect app after this. So I am keeping it.
Can’t be sure as I didn’t do any scientific test, so don’t trust my words 100%. I don’t “risk” tests as I see that the system is working. Who grow up on Windows with 20 USB devices and 10 midi hardwares knows what I mean 
Can’t say it’s everything 100% smooth now, but it’s getting better than a couple of weeks ago.
Let’s hope…
Last UAD spark version is buggy. UAD confirmed id, it’s not Cubase related.
Yes, I have read about that. But you know what? After last spark update for me it’s going better. I am talking about Cubase 12 on Win 10
I can open 24 Neve 1073 + 24 Oxide [empty project for testing] and both Task Manager and Cubase’s meter have a normal/low CPU usage. Am I lucky? Probably yes but that’s all. We know that Windows is a strange world…
As stated, otherwise, if open one instance of the plugins I talked about Cubase starts to lag, but only if I OPEN THE plugin’s GUI TO TWEAK PARAMETERS, when I close the GUI everything gets back working. The problem, in certain cases, is that the GUI needs 4-5 minutes to close, leaving Cubase playing and frozen. I check the Windows task manager, and it shows high CPU usage but not “Cubase not responding”. I used to kill Cubase, then considering my experience with Windows, I said: let’s wait and see what happens. Then I discovered that after 4-5 minutes the GUI closes and Cubase 12 gets back working as intended
NOTE: I reinstalled C11 for testing and goes like a charm…
NOW: should I think that all those issues are due to Spark plugins? Could be… But the Spark plugins are working flawlessly now. [I also use UAD DSP plugins]
Who knows…!?
They know since they admitted it.
They’re releasing an update earl next week 
every update I start freightning ahahahha : ) thats the windows user life
anyhow this will be interesting to test: now that I remember, I started having heavy issues in the days BEFORE the update. As stated, I didnt have the UA connect app installed, so I didnt realise there was an update. I just noticed it thanks to the email, after a couple of days. And during those 1-2 days I had BIG BIG issues with lags, freeze and crashes. I started to be very disappointed. After I did the update everything went back working, but after I rebooted the computer several time in a day or two. Thats another very strange thing, I know : ) I am 100% sure that I didnt change any setting or installed/uninstalled any app., only updated Spark and everything got back working
NOW: maybe the UAD mothership was calling for the update and this process put all my system under pressure? Thats my hypothesis. I will have more infos after next update I think.
don’t know.
What I know is that introducing scalable GUI broke the usage.
That’s for sure related to how plugin calls the GPU, it’s one of the main cause of problems in plugins…
The strange is that they didn’t noticed that before releasing the update.
interesting. I have no problems with windows 11 and spark. I have been running a lot of their stuff lately. I had problems with the UA connect app in the early days, it was a windows problem with changed permissions so connect would open everytime I loaded a plugin
Just a heads up in case somebody missed it::
UAD updated Spark and fixed the “CPU spiking” issue.
Cubase Pro 11
Mac Mini M1, 16 GB RAM
OS 12.5.1
Opening older projects were I had no issues regarding performance.
Now I get dropouts in the audio performance
Hope Uad will fix this asap
The grass isn’t greener on the other side. Mac OS updates constantly caused incompatibilities with almost all plugins out there, with devs telling you not to update at all, at least for some time. Performance issues happened on top of that. Took quite a while to sort that out.
There’s some pro and cons for both systems.