Is Steinberg planning to let Win 11 manage the core handling in future updates of Cubase/Nuendo?
It is well-known that Cubase doesn’t do this brilliantly today, and that much can be learned from Reaper, which leaves the core handling to Intel’s Thread Director and the Windows scheduling, instead of - like Cubase - trying to achieve this on its own.
To me, this is the one and really only area where I see room for major improvement in Cubase. It would be super useful if Steinberg could let the users know if they are addressing this in the near future. That would be huge.
There’s been a lot of discussion over at Gearspace about the core handling of various daws, and Cubase is not worst in class. It does, however, try to outsmart Window’s own core handling, which is the reason for audio dropouts and Asio Guard maxing out long before the cpu has reached its limits. Cubase “achieves” this by overloading single cores, and not distributing the processing load to all cores equally.
According to the knowledgeable persons on Gearspace, Reaper - which is best in class in distributing core load evenly - relies entirely on Windows to do this, and does not - like Cubase - try to outwit it.
So, this specifically is what I am asking about here. And I would really love it if someone from Steinberg could comment, preferably telling us what is in the pipeline.
This really needs to be addressed, Steinberg. Like, it really, REALLY needs to be addressed. We’ve exposed a major, persistent flaw in Cubase for a large number of users with Intel hybrid CPUs + NVIDIA GPUs. We should not have to rely on third-party workarounds to unlock competitive performance in your flagship (and very expensive) DAW.
Sorry to be that person. But I’m running an Intel hybrid CPU and Nvidia and all is peachy. Spec in Bio. No work around a just up to date Windows 11. Cubase 14:pro and a nice selection of plugins from Arturia, Native Instruments, Universal Audio.
My specs are in my bio too. I have a well-functioning system, just like you. This thread is about the one area where Cubase is in dire need of improvement, nothing else.
How many tracks can you run with how many plugins each? without saying this you are not saying anything.
Cubase´s bottleneck is a track with several plugins going to a group (or master bus) with many (or heavy) plugins. I mean if you have a hundred tracks with 2 plugins each that is not a problem.
Current project…50 tracks…15 VSTi…including 4 instances of Arturia Pigments, 2 Groove Agent. Multiple other Arturia. 10 x Modulators. 8 groups with UAD compressors. 2 x UAD reverbs channels. Multiple Fab Filter Timeless. 8 plugin chain on Master out…UAD, Fab Filter, Arturia. Control room running Sonarworks.
So for example…here’s one of my chains
Arturia pigments with 6 Inserts (sidechain compressor, Arturia FX Motions, Fab Filter timeless, Steinberg studio delay, UAD verve, Arturia Reverb, 1 Send to UAD lexicon long reverb. Bussed to a group with UAD Fairchild compressor and Stereo widener.
Then into master chain - UAD Curve bender, UAD pultec, UAD SSL bus compressor, Arturia compressor, Arturia clipper, Steinberg Maximiser, Brick wall limiter. UAD are the Native versions so not benefiting from DSP.
Then into control panel with Sonarworks
I have ASIO guard on normal. 128 samples. At 48/24bit BIOS is up to date and not tweaked other than to disable on board audio.
I run Intel XTU on default settings, which does a small amount of over clock, that is mid to low performance looking at benchmarks for my CPU
thanks for the detail, it seems a “normal” usage. Pigments is a heavy plugin but most of the others arent (UAD I´m not sure). But there are so many variables to consider, for example Pigments is really heavy if you use several key polyphony but if you use only one note at a time it is not. Another example: inserting a plugin like Ozone in master out stresses a lot Cubase., Vocalchain stock plugin can be a heavy one depending on the modules you enable…
And all this doesnt say much either but when compared to DAWs as Reaper or StudioOne that are reported to handle much better CPU cores.
In other words, 50 tracks with 15 plugins should stress a given system? It´s hard to know but when you run the same project in another DAW and it runs better than in Cubase then you know that something is not right in Cubase.
Hi Magnus,
I understand your problem, have the same.
What I did is making some exclusions in the Microsoft Defender Antivirus scans, see picture.
On my system it helps!
C:\soundbanks are all big sound libraries and on D:\ I have my projects.
