9.5 Various crashes and audio issues under load

Cubase
,
1

Hi all,

I sat down to do my first big project in a while and I’m having major issues. I’ve tried to solve the problem myself but one issue nearly taking my bloody ear off has prompted me to get some help from the community! :open_mouth:

This is a (relatively) new PC build, and I’ve not used Cubase 9 on it, just 9.5 - so finding the source of the issues is proving to be rather difficult.

Here’s the issues I’m having, in order of when they appeared:

1. Video stutters
Upon upgrading to 9.5 I immediately had issues with framerates in the app dipping to sub 5fps, if not outright freezing. I thought I’d fixed this issue using advice in the forum’s I found about nVidia cards, but in the current project - where I’m hitting about 50% on the CPU performance meter - I get a about 20 seconds of this every 30 minutes or so, not lasting too long fortunately.

2. Crashes
Again, in this project that’s currently sitting around 50%, I’ve been getting more and more persistent crashing issues that aren’t seemingly connected. I’ve had a freeze (audio continuing to play) when opening a channel strip, one when editing a VST, and I also can’t close the program without forcing it to quit via task manager (projects are fine, the application is not).

3. Audio ‘spikes’
This is the one that prompted me to come on here. If I dare put a limiter on the master bus (Pro L2 in this case) one channel will, without exception, peak so far past +6dB that the fader lights up like a christmas tree and I get incredibly loud hard clipping from that channel, and being the idiot I am I’ve nearly been deafened 3 times now. This has happened without Pro L2 too, so it’s not just that plugin, but seemingly whenever the loudness levels are increasing (I’d hazard a guess of them being about -14LUFS).

Thoughts
So my thought is that something is going wrong with power distribution within the computer somewhere? Each of the crashes and audio ‘spikes’ have come when the computer is under load and I’ve experienced audio stutters/not being able to play anything back when exporting video files from Premiere too (but only when played back through my interface). I’ve experienced all three issues when using the mobo’s soundcard, as well as through the interface.

I also have issues with ‘crackles’ when playing back anything through my interface that is loud (not volume, loudness) - which again sounds like a power issue to me?

I’ve attached a screenshot of the final issue, and I have 2 dump files and a CPUz ID spec file too - but it won’t let me upload these.

Any assistance would be great, but I’ll be continuing to try and fix the problem in the meantime by removing the GPU on the mobo to single that out.

Here’s an abbreviated spec list:
CPU - Ryzen 1800x
GPU - Asus nVidia 1070ti
RAM - 32GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance
Interface - Focusrite Pro40
Firewire card chipset - Texas Instruments

Mix crash.png
Mix crash.png3000×1920 1.34 MB

2

Hi,

Try to trash Cubase preferences, please.

3

Hello again,

I manged to find a backup installer of 9 on an old hard drive and that’s a much, much smoother experience, but I still experience those ‘audio spikes’ and crashes (again, with no discernible trigger). I’ve done more work on the project thanks to this but with more work has come an even more intense CPU load.

Deleting the preferences seems to hab alleviated the visual problems in 9.5 but it still freezes up and becomes unresponsive within a few minutes of opening the project, even if the audio is still playing (resulting in a force quit).

I have ruled out it being the sound card and the interface, as all the problems persist using the MOBO’s audio. Removing the GPU was a no-go as I couldn’t get the MOBO’s HDMI to work, so I’m going to try another GPU soon.

Failing that, I’m going to transfer the project into Reaper with the same plugins etc. to see if it’s an issue with Cubase itself.

:slight_smile:

4

Hi,

Do you have NVIDIA graphic card? If yes, read the knowledge base, please.

5

I do yes, and as mentioned I’ve already followed the advice given here in the forums. As my CPU doesn’t have an onboard graphics chip the knowledge base solution won’t work for me.

I’ve transferred the project to Reaper (now with even more plugins) and the CPU load there is between 10%-15%, when compared to Cubase’s average of 70% (on both 9 and 9.5). I’ve monitored the CPUs and it seems that Cuabse only uses 2 threads (0 and 10), whereas Reaper utilises all 16.

Considering this, I’m presuming Cuabse has a problem with AMD Ryzen chips as well as nVidia cards?? If so I won’t be able to use Cubase until this is resolved.

6

I don’t know about the AMD Ryzen chips it issue. But the NVIDIA issue is on NVIDIA side. They have a bug in a part of the driver, Cubase is using.