I have a session, that when opened in Cubase 8.5.20 is unplayable, with ASIO meter maxed out. (regardless of turning ASIO Guard on/off etc.). My ASIO is set to 2048 samples. Cubase is taking around 75% CPU at idle.
I open the same session with the same settings in Cubase 8.0.35 and the ASIO meter is not even half and the project plays fine. Cubase takes about 56% at idle. Is there something wrong in Cubase 8.5.20?
I have remained with Windows 8.1 (+Cubase 8.5.20) and everything seems to be going well for me. It does seem that most of the issues with performance are related to Windows 10 which is why I did not take Microsoft upon their cynical upgrade offer. Have you investigated the set up possibilities for windows 10 with regard to using music software?
My windows 10 upgrade had turned the power profile back to normal. Once I’d realised this and changed it back to High performance I stopped getting the spikes.
To add insult to injury, I have a session that works in 8.5.20 (with somewhat poor performance) and I recently discovered that this session will not open in Cubase 8, nor Cubase 7.5. Cubase will just crash when trying to open the session due to a stackhash error. Great.
Just for the record… I’m having similar issues to the ones described here, with sparse CPU spikes from time to time. I’m also using an RME HDSP AIO, Nvidia GT 640, Windows 10 Pro x64, Cubase Pro 8.0.40 x64, and already tried every performance optimization discussed in these forums without success. Waiting for Cubase 9 to decide what to do.
A bit late for that, I’m afraid… I already purchased the update to 8.5. I’m just waiting for the announcement of 9 to activate it during the grace period.