Hi all.
I’m in a desperate situation because I’ve worked with Cubase for over 10 years and I’ve never had this problem… I bought a new computer with an Intel i9 13900F processor, Asustek TUF Gaming Z790-Plus D4 motherboard, NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4060 graphics card, 64Gb DDR4 3200 ram memory, 2 NVME 4tB disks and I’m constantly having dropouts even though the buffer is high (1024 when I managed to work at 128 and it was a 6 year old computer!!) .
I have already implemented many of your suggestions such as:
Disable Hyper-Threading (this made a big improvement but didn’t solve the problem)
disable cpu core parking
Finally I turned off the Cores E and here I had a great improvement in the system in general, although I still experience drops occasionally without anything to predict it because I have the processor at 50% and in Cubase the performance bar everything is at the minimum but suddenly it jumps a peak and light up red…
However, it doesn’t make sense to have to turn off the processing capacity of the machine I bought for Cubase to handle the system well!!
On my old computer that was 6 years old, I worked without any problems like this on much heavier projects…
I tested it with the LAtencymon program and it says that everything is ok even when there are drop outs…
I can’t understand what else I can do.
I appreciate urgent help , all work stoped because of this !
I have an 13700k and am seeing fantastic low latency performance, even with hyperthreading and E cores enabled (and despite Cubase’s warnings on the 13th gen cpus). I always run with ASIO guard on high though. Are you using it?
I know the 13900’s run very hot. Maybe throttling is impacting its ability to maintain consistent low latency performance?
Nvidia cards often give problems with DAW’s. It’s well known in the sequencer community. I had crackel and even stutter with my Nvidia card. Don’t remember the model anymore but it was a middle priced one. I got a Radeon RX 560 secondhand card. Cheap! Crackels, stutter gone! Good luck.
I was told by support to just install the driver and nothing else, so download the studio driver install (not game ready) , do a custom install and only install the driver not GEForceExperience, CUDA, PhysX or any of the other choices, just driver.
It did help me with drop outs and weird artefacting, so might help you?
I had a similar problem with a gaming computer bought one year ago.
This August '23, the computer driver updates from manufacturer (HP in my case) fixed the problem.
Sad to hear that you have such issues with your i9 13th gen and Cubase. I think your issue could be on software side and not hardware.
Try to:
turn back on hyperthreading and E-cores in BIOS
update to latest BIOS for your mobo
update to latest Intel ME and chipset drivers for your mobo
update to latest Nvidia drivers (but do NOT install GeForce Experience)
check if Windows Update all updates are installed
turn on Windows High Performance power plan when using Cubase
disable core parking with ParkControl utility from Bitsum
I have now i9 13900KS with Cubase 12 and I dont have any dpc latency issues and hyper threading enabled and e-cores enabled too. It seems there are some major audio optimization issues in Cubase 12 and Windows 11 itself, a lot of people complaining about this on 12th, 13th gen Intel cpus. I had huge DPC issues as well previously, but for me helped turning off core parking and all issues gone. I use High Performance power plan as well when using Cubase. Your i9 13900 is very powerful cpu and it should provide awesome music performance for you for at least 5-8 years for sure. Sad to hear that you have those kinda issues, and I hope you will sort out those problems and all will work as expected for you! In my opinion Steinberg should work much harder with Microsoft to provide some updates to Cubase and Windows 11 to mitigate those issues. Its total disappointment that all that we have is some year old post from Steinberg ragarding this issue without any true explanation and fix from them. Cmon Steinberg, Intel heterogenous cpus are on the market for almost 2 years now as well as Cubase 12 and you did not improved situation regarding this! Its total absurd that people are buying such a powerful and expensive computers capable of huge performance but all we got - issues and custom workarounds by ourselves to just normally work in Cubase. I am seeing such posts here almost every week, but dont see any updates on this situation from Steinberg at all. Heterogenous cpus are here and such technology will stay here for sure.
Hej jag hade ett stort problem nyligen när ljudet försvann från min dator!
Jag Hade windows 11 Home! Jag uppgraderade till Windows 11 Pro! nu är alla problem borta för tillfället . felet låg inte i Cubase! utan i Windows. Uppgradera din windows version, så löser du problemen.
I have a somewhat similar new build, and had some spike-issues related to the nvidia card (mine is a 4070 ti). Try setting the “Power management mode” to “Prefer maximum performance” in the NVidia Control Panel under 3D Settings. I also assume you’ve disabled the onboard graphics in the bios?
I agree, that the whole P/E core thing is quite abysmal in regards to cubase. I tried locking Cubase’s core-affinity to the P-Cores only (using the Process Lasso utility), which appeared to work great - until i enabled monitoring on a channel (causing an PDC change), after which the whole audio-subsystem went silent … so it’s close, but no cigar - and also: it feels kind of strange to leave 16 cores of performance out of the performance-pool.
Hope Cubase 13 handles these mixed-core situations much more gracefully!
To rule out some things, you can check reaper, you have dawbench (benchmark project) and check how performance is with reaper and Cubase and rule out if it’s cubase or it’s settings.
Another thing is to strip PC(on very basic components) 1 memory stick, without external GPU if integrated is available, 1HDD… And check how it’s going. Often without any reason simple reinstall system can do benefits.
The key is to start small and go step by step to target the issue.
Nonmaskable interrupts NMI can cause problems. MB designers will sometimes resort to embedded software solutions when they could have used hardware.
Intel CPUs allow MB manufactures steal some of your CPU cycles to do things like control fan speeds, or some other housekeeping. Fortunately, you can turn most of those off in the bios (e.g., fan=high).
There are some ROG postings where gamers talk about that stuff. In the above example, the NMI routine would see that the fan is already forced on and just return to the OS, maybe not even be called.
Nonmaskable just means by software. BIOS switches or jumpers sometimes can.
FYI, CuBase runs really well on Apple Silicon (I.e., no drop outs even on tiny buffer settings). Before you sink another fortune in a Intel/Windows machine, consider sinking a half fortune in a Mac. I have not regretted it at all. The hardest thing to get used to is command vs control key and the stupid menu bar being stuck to the screen and not the window in the foreground, grrrrr.
I don’t know how to solve your problem but can I make a troubleshooting suggestion? Let’s try to isolate the problem and at least see if we can pinpoint a culprit. I’m still on 10th gen i7 so I don’t know much about your board, does it have on-board graphics or does it only work with a discreet card? My first suggestion is to physically uninstall your graphics card and use on-board if possible or even a super cheap AMD card that’s just meant for Desktop stuff (sub $50). Cubase 12 doesn’t need any particular type of graphics card so if this magically solves your problem then at least we know that the path to fixing it lies in addressing issues with the nVidia card and its drivers.
If that doesn’t fix anything then the issue is more likely somewhere in your OS or your CPU and so at least you can focus on researching possible solution there instead of wasting your time messing with the graphics drivers.
In general in IT we recommend unplugging and uninstalling everything down to the bare minimum required to get the target application to work and then slowly adding stuff back in until it breaks again so you can find the culprit. If you do that and still have problems then it could be an issue with the motherboard, BIOS or CPU and maybe even something beyond your control if Steinberg or Microsoft have issues they need to fix.
I had a GeForce 1030 video card with my motherboard the earlier version z390. I pulled it out and use the onboard graphics which was much better. I didnt download specific drivers I just let windows 11 do it. I use the older i9 chip.
I agree with the last comment. Get down to basics. I’m guessing your mb has onboard graphics you can try
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