Audio dropouts which lead to complete loss of audio

Cubase
1

First of all, I want to point out that this is a recent thing (I think it may be related to specific non-Cubase plugins, but can’t say for certain). My processor/ASIO use is as follows:

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I’ve been having a persistent issue lately where I will have frequent random peaks (as you can see in the chart above). It’s not a huge deal, but eventually I will stop having any audio whatsoever - even without any dropout issue. In fact, the image above is during one such incident.

Basically, when the problem occurs, I lose all audio coming out of my speakers on that specific driver (if I switch to a different one, I can again get playback until that driver has the same issue.

When the problem occurs, the only solution is to completely restart Cubase. I had brought up this issue during one of my other posts (the random crashes when rendering in place), but put it aside for the time being as I thought it was just a specific plugin that was causing it. But it turns out not to be the case as I don’t even have that plugin in my current project.

My hardware and configuration hasn’t changed since Cubase 12, fwiw.

Anyway, not really sure what to try or if there are any logs that would help identify the issue.

2

Hi,

What Audio Device do you use?

Are you on Mac or Windows? Do you see any suspicious activity in the Activity Monitor/Task Manager at the same time?

If you are on Windows, have you tried LatencyMon utility?

3

I use a MOTU M2 interface, if that’s what you mean.
On Windows 11, whatever the latest build is.
Haven’t used latencymon as I’ve not had issues until recently. I can give it a shot, but I’ve never really gotten much useful info out of it in the past.

Not sure what you mean by suspicious activity - if implying the possibility of a virus, that’s certainly not the case. Otherwise, no - no excessive CPU usage (13700k CPU, even with a full project, runs at like 30%), no excessive ram use (64gb total ram).

4

Hi,

I mean anything which appears in the given time when you can see the spike. Any activity/process which pops up suddenly.

5

I think you need to try latencyMon again. That doesn’t look like a Cubase problem. As well as the normal tweaks on win 11 I also suspend updates if doing serious work. If not windows thinks it’s ok to start installing in the background. That’s the only time I see spikes like that