Audio dropouts - note : not the usual culprits!

Hiya Guys,

So I have made the jump over from Ableton to Cubase 9 pro and while I am mostly pleased, Im having an awful problem I am PREYING somebody with some veteran Cubase knowledge can help with.

So Ive been working hard on a track for a client and all was going well until one day I loaded it up and there is now periodic audio drop outs (KEEP READING lol) during playback.

The dropout lasts half a second BUT the audio shows as playing in Cubase but I get the drop through the monitors…comes back in, 10 - 15 seconds later, dropout, and this repeats. - seems almost rhythmic! - The problem literally just appeared out of nowhere one day - no hardare changes - no windows updates or interface updates, nothing - just one day I loaded it up and bang - problem - went through all of the .cpr and .baks and its on them too where as it wasn’t the day before. ( I know because I reverted to a previous .bak as I wasn’t happy with the current .cpr version and the work I did previous day before that - never write tired - its a waste of time lol)

Now, I’m sure some of you have instantly thought, (as I would) ram, disk and cpu - its not. All loads are fairly minimal - if it helps stop a stream of these replies - I have 32 gig ram, cpu is an 8core at 4.5ghz, and all of kontakt and associated libraries and Cubase are all on an ssd. - I grant you - it does sound like a disk spike - trust me, it isn’t! :wink:

The problem now exists on all 16 of my .cpr and .bak files for the project and more importantly, even exists when I bounce to .wav too.

It exists when I use my interface (roland quad capture - really must update that at some point - Cubase doesn’t seem to like it for some reason, even after 64bit driver update- something for another day though - lol), asio4all and even the generic windows low latency driver. So I feel I can rule out a driver issue with some confidence.

It really doesn’t matter what I do, the problem still exists. The dropout is not at specific bars of the track - it seems time based almost approx. 10-15 from where ever you start the track - I can start from beginning and it will dropout 10seconds later for a split second - if I play from just before that dropout, it will play through the previous dropout fine but drop 10seconds later.

NOW - I have taken a pain staking time to transfer all midi stems over to Ableton with exactly the same libraries and bang - no issues. - although the chance of it being a midi issue is pretty much none - may show some of you how desperate I am to sort this. - I also wanted to check it wasn’t a windows thing (8.1 btw)

Im totally at an end with my knowledge - I want to blame Cubase as its perfectly fine on Ableton but its strange to me that the level meters show the audio is playing in Cubase throughout the drop but not through monitors. I HAVE to fix this as the client requires me to have working knowledge of Cubase aswell as the fact I really don’t want to go back to Ableton after spending over £500 on “updating” to Cubase, as im sure you can all understand - This Cubase transition HAS to work I’m afraid, but right now im very frustrated with it all.

I appreciate its a stab in the dark asking, but im hoping that someone, somewhere has come across this and can help - I REALLY don’t want to have to bounce a dozen wavs and stitch together to cut out the cut outs! :wink:

Sorry for the long read - PLEASE, somebody, somewhere HELP a poor Cubase new boy!

VERY kind regards to you all and THANKYOU for reading,

Sean

Hi! Have you checked with greater buffer setting? (By the way what latency setting are you using?) Is it the same behaviour? Have you getting real time peaks in the VST performance window? (Not just the bar but the red light) Can you check it with any other soundcard? (For example the motherboard’s one) Have you checked it with asio guard disabled? Are you using plug-ins in the master channel, if so then which ones? Have you tried removing them?