C8 Pro: New User - MBP Fan Noise

Cubase
#1

Hi All,

I have just returned to the Cubase fold after many years purchasing the upgrade from version 4…

I really love the functionality, features and sound of C8! But I’m being plagued by acute fan noise. As soon as I have a few instrument and audio tracks on the go, my Macbook Pro fans are going at full blast. Is this normal? Anything that can be done?

I have made a little experiment, loading only a blank project with one track and activated one audio track, with click playback. All done under the same conditions. I took note of each DAW’s CPU % in Activity Monitor. Cubase 8 is by far the most resource-hungry:

Cubase 8 —> 38%
Reason 8 —> 29%
Studio One 2 —> 18%
Logic Pro X —> 11%

I would love to hear some feedback on this from you more experienced Cubase users…

#2

So either it’s “only me” who is plagued by a resource-hungry Cubase and constant Macbook fan noise----> or these conditions are generally accepted by Cubase users.

I wonder which one it is?

#3

Well I’m on a WIndows 7 desktop so not sure how relevant my figures are but as no-one else is resonding:

With a single audio file and click track in Cubase my task Manager shows between 0% and 5% cpu use.
And without Cubase or any other software running it shows the same thing.

#4

…and what audio buffer settings did you have set in each of those apps?

#5

I ran projects many years on MBPs and fan noise is just a consequence of running Cubase and other resource-hungry programs on this hardware. I found that by maxing out the ram and using multiple drives for samples & project files helped but the problem is never alleviated completely. Also keeping the fans free of dust also helps but requires you to remove the bottom cover and blow out the dust periodically.

#6

Thanks for your thoughts.

Buffer throughout: 128