ASIO Guard per Plugin in the Plugin Manager - what is the purpose?

Cubase
1

Just noticed ASIO Guard can be enabled/disabled per plugin

Has anyone experimented with this? What’s the purpose?

2

Hi,

Some plug-ins don’t work well (performance-wise) with the ASIO-Guard enabled, some other work better with the ASIO-Guard enabled. Thanks to this option, you can decide per plug-in.

3

Interesting, what are the signs of a plugin not working well with ASIO guard? Are there predictable factors that play well/don’t, like low latency vs high latency plugins?

4

Hi,

I don’t know, sorry. Most often, it’s the users experience (here on the forum).

5

You will find an excellent explanation of its usefulness on page 1157 of the manual.

If you can download an old Cubase 7 “Put the 5 on it” demo, you can experiment with enabling and disabling on Steinberg’s VST LoopMash which is a Real time-dependent signals plug-in. If the Asio Guard is Enabled (VST Manager window information plug-in), the audio performance is greatly affected to the point where it is necessary to freeze almost all of the tracks in order to achieve some stability. With the Asio Guard Disabled, the performance is very smooth and there is no need to freeze tracks.

1 Like
6

Hi,

Could ou provide a link to the online manual, please?

7

Here is the link: https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro/v11/en/Cubase_Pro_11_Operation_Manual_en.pdf#_OPENTOPIC_TOC_PROCESSING_d139e321607

8

Hi,

Sorry, I was thinking the online version, something like this.

9

Bluearp for example gets a sloppy timing with latencies greater than 256 samples and also with asio guard enabled. Instead of turning asio guard off I just excluded bluearp and could leave the asio guard enabled.

10

but timing is maintained with the DAW? ie, everything else is getting buffered by ASIO guard, but BlueArp is in real-time but playback shifted to be in time with ASIO guard latency?

11

Sorry, I oversimplified it.
I use bluearp and the synth it drives within patchwork on one instrumenttrack and excluded patchwork from asioguard. That way I didn’t experience any sloppiness anymore

12

I’m just wondering how it syncs and if it syncs up with other things that are ASIO guard enabled. ie, do ASIO Gaurd ‘Disabled’ plugins account for ASIO guard latency

13

Hi,

Everything is in sync at the end. The ASIO Guard just allows to pre-process the channel or VSTi. So the resulting signal is available earlier, but played back in the right time.

Disabling ASIO-Guard doesn’t mean the Channel/VST/VSTi is processed in real-time. It means, it’s processed the common/old way, with the Buffer Size only. With the ASIO-Guard enabled, you can pre-process more data ahead, if the Buffer is not full yet.

14

Great info Rene,
I downloaded the Cubase demo projects recently and they all played well, except “Put the 5 on it” …

Thank you :wink: