Hi @MattiasNYC !
Thanks for that great explanation!
If i could follow up with a question please: is there any downside you see to just routinely setting ASIO Guard to high all the time?
Much appreciated!
Thank you peAk, I appreciate you taking the time to test with the Demo project. The issue I noticed was not so much with the meters, but with the click/pop I get when switching between instrument tracks, I donāt think I even looked at the meters, I just heard the clicks.
Thanks MattiasNYC for joining the discussion! I appreciate you sharing your explanation of how ASIO Guard works (we are in full agreement on this). It is very helpful to know what the expected baseline behavior is, and in that regard, I see AG working normally as expected when seen from the metering.
I think this is the real issue with C12. For me, I notice this behavior from the audible dropout/clicks when switching between active tracks (not so much from watching the meters). This was never problematic in C11. Iām curious to know what changes/improvement where made (if any) in C12 in this regard?
Interestingā¦
Donāt know. Only thing I can think of is a slight delay before playback maybe. I havenāt really needed high ASIO guard (Iām on Nuendo doing post for TV) so I donāt really know, but generally I tend to keep buffers at āmediumā settings generally speaking.
Thanks, @MattiasNYC !
Maybe also some lag when moving faders?
Anyway, again, I appreciate your explanation of ASIO Guard a few posts up 
1 Like
Yeah. I am also using C11 at the moment. Very disappointed with this. I have so much better performance on C11 that itās ridiculous. I do love the new stuff C12 offers, but the performance is so choppy and poor, I rather use C11 for now.
5 Likes
This is an interesting post and Iām sure Steinberg is paying attention.
I want to add another possible element to the slow graphics behavior. First up: Is your HiDPI set to 100%? From my experience, Cubase 11 and Cubase 12 NEED to be set to 100% and nothing else.
As to clicks and crackles this might be another issue. If you are completely āIn The Boxā on a lap top or a Desktop using headphones or the monitor speakers this 2nd thought wonāt apply to you. However, if you have EXTERNAL gear that uses a seperate AC supply and ultimately CONNECTS to your Desktop DAW, then at the very least you need to gang all the AC connections together. via a power strip (that can be fused and surge protected). This would include your standalone audio monitors, your visual monitors, and any other external gear (including the Desktop DAW) you may have. I have maybe 8 external preamps and 6 comps that all run on AC that are connected to a patchbay system that are, depending on usage, randomly connected to the Desktop. I have 3 non-fused, non-noise filtered (or spike protected) 6 input power strips connected to a 9A (1000W) isolated Tripp Lite power supply (that is fused and spike protected) to run my entire DAW. This wasnāt a big outlay of $$ to purchase, $280 shipped new (and I see an open box type sale on ebay for $180 shipped!) and truly one of the best investments Iāve ever made for my home studio. Without this setup in days past (at times, particularly at lower buffer sizes) there were various crackles and such, typically as I started and stopped playback. This solved all those problems, Iām not saying that your problems are like mine, but the AC supply to your setup is very important. And, too, this Trip Lite product performs as well as a $2500+ isolation transformer setup, albeit less amperage, that might be used in a pro studio. Food for thought.
What is disappointing (apart from wasting $150) is that Cubase lacks any real metering to show you whatās using all this CPU. Also it seems kind of crazy that I could spend $1800 on building a new PC for the studio and itās really quick - except for Cubase. I may have to investigate Reaper again. I didnāt like the GUI, but I heard that they built the code from scratch.
1 Like
I can confirm this as well and I am on Mac OS Big Sur.
Definitely something wrong with the ASIO guard and latency controls.
Cubase 12 doesnāt appear to be actually changing latency the same way as in Cubase 11.
The same exact settings in Cubase 11 produce normal/predictable latency behavior.
In Cubase 12 the ASIO guard behavior is 2-3 time the amount regardless of the setting.
Something definitely broken.
1 Like
I cannot speak for everyone elseā¦but I can assure you the issues I have with C12 are not power / grounding related (my studio is on an isolated circuit, and has never had issues with fluctuating / dirty power).
That being saidā¦100% agree with your recommendations and the importance of proper power configurations in a studio. 
2 Likes
Not power-related here - although I do agree itās important. I just did an hour of testing and for me, itās the track count. I deleted 20 FX channels; turned off inserts; removed inserts - basically went through every track trying reset or delete. As far as I can work out, C12 just allocates more memory to each track - and I have a lot. So if I delete tracks - even raw tracks - it comes down. I tried a demo song. It ran very well but there are much less tracks.
PS: The Austin Hull demo song is seriously good; especially to test an install.
Running the demo projects, as previously suggested, particularly running the UNMIXED followed by the MIXED version of each producer, has proved useful. I simply played back each project and tweaked the CB12 Studio Setup performance settings until it broke, then re-tweaked to get the best performance.
As you may expect, the Mendel UnMIXED is the least demanding having just bare MIDI tracks with rendered audio, and no plugins. The MIXED version also ran faultlessly, as the plugins applied are modest in number.
Austin UNMIXED also plays without dropouts/glitches on my optimised settings, but broke down much earlier than Mendelās project when degrading studio setup settings.
Austin MIXED, however, was a nightmare! Using the optimised settings found during Mendelās projects, Austin MIXED would run OK until Marker 5. Chorus, then completely drop out, only for playback to recover during the last dying seconds of fade out as the project ends.
Switching off global Inserts, EQ, Strip, and Sends both in turn, and in combination, proved useful, as it narrowed down the root cause of the performance hit to running the inserts in this project. That is, Austin MIXED with just inserts switched OFF played back end to end with no dropouts, albeit with the occasional crackle.
I then tried selectively switching off inserts within each track in order to find a combination, or absolute number of, inserts that would play back without fault, but failed to find a sweet spot, mainly because I got bored/ overwhelmed given the high number of inserts applied to Austinās MIXED project.
Then I attempted to repeat the experiment within CBP11, but it proved less useful because of the missing Fx plugins new to CBP12 (Raiser , Fx Modulation etc). Also, the performance meter in CBP11 isnāt directly comparable with CBPi2, so it makes comparisons less useful anyhow.
Teaching moments for me are;
- Render all instruments to audio, then disable all instrument tracks.
- Use inserts sparingly.
- Use separate projects for UNMIXED and MIXED (I never thought to do this precviously!)
1 Like
Interesting. I can run the Austin Hull Mixed CB12 project smoothly on my PC and Scarlett 4i4 without any dropouts or glitches. This is what the performance meter looks like when running at peak, all Cubase settings at default:
Edit - and for shirts and giggles I ran the Austin Hull Mixed project in the background while playing Elite:Dangerous at the same time and the performance was about the same. 
1 Like
Maybe create a project in C11 and get it to point that it will not play anymore due to power limitations. Then remove items until C11 plays perfectly. That would be the standard. Then open that in C12 and delete tracks/ plugins until it plays. Probably easier to start with C11 then move to C12 as everything in C11 should be compatible with C12 (except any synths Steinberg ditch between the two)
Been tweaking my Cubase12 settings and my Windows 10 computer back and forth and now Iām basically back where I started with a setup and configuration that works like a charm with Cubase 11.
So for me, like for some others here, my issues are when I ārecord enableā a track.
Here is an example mp3 of how it sounds. 5 seconds in I record enable a track.
1 Like
Exactly the same for me!
Thanks mr.roos for joining the discussion! I really hope Steinberg is paying attention. Itās been a very constructive thread. Iām optimistic the user experiences here can be positive feedback toward improving the software. In the end, we all just want Cubase to work at itās best. I appreciate your mentioning the need for proper care in setting up AC supply. Itās an important topic, we all should give special attention to.
Thank you bloodline1, pkmusic, Phillipus for testing using the Demo tracks as a group reference.
I really appreciate you all taking the time to do this, and report back the details of your experiences. It does greatly help to see what issues youāre having, but also importantly how you are finding ways to deal with these issues. I will try using some of your suggestions and see if this improves things for me.
Thank you for posting this! It is very helpful to have this kind of example as proof.
cubase 12 pro problems are massive!
projects made with c 11 pro wonāt load or close before opened, or no sound on outputs (shows no cpu either)