To me this looks like some lines of code that get stuck into an endless loop that repeats thousands of times per second, taking up CPU ressources and thus slowing down the render.
2 Likes
i have the same problem alot of PEAK when i record and with the mixdown CPU Usage 100%
i have intel i9 10940x
Ram 128GB
RTX 2070 super
M.2 SSD 8TB
The strange thing is that the problem started after the last update 12.0.40and when I went back to version 12.0.30 I faced the same problem, I don’t know why But before the last update it was very good
Yes, this is a C12 issue since 12.0.0.
2 Likes
FWIW C12 is using slightly less CPU cycles than C11 exporting on my computer.
Intel i7-10700KF, 32GB RAM, SSD’s and Presonus Quantum 2626. Win 10 21H2.
Did a test exporting a 4 audio track mix with plugins, C11: 31% CPU, C12: 29%.
Both did it in exactly the same amount of time and settings were identical.
I’m not the other person of course, but I didn’t take it as an attack on you. Also, sometimes while we’re not getting a solution to the actual cause of the problem we can still learn from those replies.
So just in that spirit I’ll just say that in all my years of engineering (for a living) one thing I’ve learned is that it’s generally best to leave the computer alone as it’s rendering. Last time I was on a job someone else triggered the export and was browsing the web at the same time and those files came back from the QC department because of errors. Now, granted, that was on OSX and it was PT, but I think best practice for sure is to leave the computer alone when it does this.
And if you have a lot of long-form content to export the last thing you’d want is to have to redo the work because files were corrupted due to interference from browsing or other use.
Not saying your request or discovery shouldn’t be taken seriously, just offering a slightly different view.
PS: On my computer all threads are not pegged at 100% when exporting offline.
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Yes I know the risk, but I have been doing this for years and I think its safe for me. I’m not recommending my method to any others, everyone have their on way of doing things but I do appreciate your concern and your wisdom. I feel that way because of this statement. “It seems to me you’re just looking for issues that don’t pose an issue in real live use?” .
Agree.
But the main problem is not, that someone can’t surf during render (if you think thats a good idea, go for it), but that the export takes way longer and uses way to many resources for that (and therefore costs also a lot of energy) compared to C11.
Now if the CPU would go on 100% on render and take half or even a third of the time, then that would be awesome, but unfortunately its the other way round.
3 Likes
Just ran a test on my system. Here are the results. Song was 13 tracks a little over 6 minutes long. It took a little over 1 minute to export. Using version 12.0.40
Don’t know how, here it happens on 2 different PCs. I suppose the slowdown comes together with the high CPU usage. I am trying to reproduce it tomorrow with a smaller project, so I can share that one with you and maybe we can find togerher what is causing the issue.
Reading again about these issues with no SB statement at all, I will not make any advantage of the current sale which’d give me Cubase 12 Pro for 60 EURO. I need a working product and not a discount.
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I tested C11 vs C12 today again, to see if C12 has some issue with any plugin or sth like that. And I found out that it does not have anything to do with:
- 3rd party plugins (disabled all of them)
- events in the project (deleted all of them)
- with frozen tracks (unfroze them)
- audio tracks with offline processing/variaudio/etc. (deleted all of them step by step)
- reinstalling Cubase12 (uninstalled C12 and reinstalled it)
- Preferences (trashed the entire Steinberg folder in C:\Users\user\roaming\Steinberg)
The mixdown time and the CPU usage on C12 is always doubled compared to C11, everything else being the same (buffer size, etc.).
Even an empty project goes up to 100% CPU. The interesting thing is, that there the mixdown time on C12 is comparable to C11, but as soon as you add more tracks and plugins, it gets worse and worse.
4 Likes
Hi @Tj99 !
I’ve just run a series of tests with an effectively empty project, but could not find an appreciable difference in Audio Mixdown Export elapsed time except that on my system Cubase 12 used a lot less average CPU than Cubase 11 (rather than more). Cubase 12 in low 40s % and Cubase in the low 70s %.
Here’s my project folder used for both Cubase 11 and 12:
RenderTest.zip (2.0 MB)
And here are more details of my test project, my system and my test results:
Project Settings
Record File Format 44.1KHz 24bit Wave
120bpm
Time between left and right locator:
18:00 minutes
1 Empty Audio Track
Stereo
Audio Mixdown Export Settings
Exported Channel: Stereo Out
44.1KHz - 16bit Interleaved Wave file
Real Time Export: NO
TEST RESULTS:
CPU utilization:
before Export Audio:
Cubase 11.0.41: about 5% overall
Cubase 12.0.40: about 5% overall
during Export Audio:
Cubase 11.0.41: about 71% - 76% overall - but 100% for Core 0 Thread 0
Cubase 12.0.40: about 40% - 45% overall - but 100% for Core0 Thread 0
Elapsed Time for Export:
Cubase 11.0.41: about 24 seconds
Cubase 12.0.40: about 23 seconds
System Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4930K (3rd gen) Ivy Bridge-E 3.4GHz - Turbo (while running Cubase): 3.8GHz
MoBo: ASUS X79 Deluxe https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/X79DELUXE/specifications/ BIOS 4805 installed on 2018-10-11
RAM: 48GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER
Tests performed with Project and Export on spinning rust SATA3 RAID0 as well as on NVMe SSD with sub second (difficult to precisely measure) differences.
Stopwatch used manually: Clock app on mobile device
1 Like
Hey @Nico5
I think I found the issue.
thank you very very much for your help!
I tested this project on my side, and to my surprise I had in C12 a CPU usage of about 44% average on mixdown and the elapsed time was about 10 seconds.
I then created the exact same project from scratch and had the 100% usage again and an elapsed time of about 14 seconds.
The only difference I noticed was the sample rate and that seems to be the cause of the issue in C12.
If the project sample rate differs from the mixdown sample rate, all cores go on full load and the export time is multiplied.
Thats probably why some have the issue and some not. Those who work with the same format in their project as the mixdown format, wont have any issues.
Can you please try to set your project settings to 48kHz and retry to mixdown a 44.1 kHz file?
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Here the same project I tested in post #19 with different sample rates to illustrate the issue. Look at the CPU usage and estimated time difference of the upper and lower right pictures.
2 Likes
@Tj99 great finding! it behave the same way here! so the culprit is the down/up sampling?
48khz to 48khz
48khz to 44khz
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Yep! but only on C12. They probably tried to make mixdown more efficient and accidentally screwed up the part, where you’re mixing down to other sample rates.
1 Like
Great detective work!!!
Mismatched sample rates gave me the 100% CPU on C12, too!
Mismatched Sample Rate Test Results
- Cubase 12.0.40 (Project 48KHz 24bit; Export 44KHz 16bit ):
- 28 seconds; 100% CPU, 100% CPU on all 12 threads across 6 cores
- Cubase 11.0.41 (Project 48KHz 24bit; Export 44KHz 16bit ):
- 29 seconds; 65-75% CPU, 100% CPU only on thread 0 on core 0;
Cubase Project Folder: RenderTest-02.zip (1.1 MB)
Test Environment:
Project Settings
Record File Format 44.1KHz 24bit Wave
120bpm
Time between left and right locator:
18:00 minutes
1 Empty Audio Track
Stereo
Audio Mixdown Export Settings
Exported Channel: Stereo Out
44.1KHz - 16bit Interleaved Wave file
Real Time Export: NO
System Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4930K (3rd gen) Ivy Bridge-E 3.4GHz - Turbo (while running Cubase): 3.8GHz
MoBo: ASUS X79 Deluxe BIOS 4805 installed on 2018-10-11
RAM: 48GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER
1 Like
Good that we could find the culprit!
Now hopefully SB will recognize it as soon as possible and add it to the next Maintenance update.
The thing is, with an empty project the export time is atleast the same, more or less. But try to export a finished mix, it will take double the time and more.
1 Like