Hi. I’m using Cubase 12.
During my work l noticed that Cubase uses only 6 cores of my i5 processor which has 12 cores.
Even during export it uses only 6 cores.
My operating system is Mac OS 11. how can I make Cubase to use all of my processors power because Cubase sometimes stopes working because of audio performance clipping. thanks.
Hello. Check this video. I think many things will be helpful…
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That would not explain why only half of the cores are being utilized.
Thanks , but as mentioned mlib, the video doesn’t explain why Cubase uses only a half of cores. It is just about real time processing vs export.
Well, maybe some of Steinberg members will explain that…
I hope so 
Is that true? I thought i5 CPUs had fewer cores and that what you’re looking at is the number of threads. In other words 6 cores with 2 threads per core.
If so this is sometimes normal behavior for Cubase and Nuendo in that the cores are loaded roughly ‘by half’.
You can try to increase the buffer size and if that doesn’t help you’ll need to either lower processing (freeze tracks etc) or a faster computer, unless of course you have a problem with RAM or storage (i.e. slow drives).
Look at the Cubase performance meter to see if the problem is drives or processing.
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You don’t give specifics on your cpu, but I’m pretty sure you really only have 6 cores. The other 6 are hyperthread cores and may or may not be of use, depending on the task being processed.
Check your system report and it will tell you the number of cores you have.
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Oh no, not that video again. 28 minutes of complete and utter nonsense.
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You are right, the processor does have only six cores and other six are hyperthread cores, but other programs like Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro use all of them. They use 12 cores during real time performance and export. So I think that Cubase also can use them. Why not?
Cubase is known to not utilise the full capabilities of your CPU, particularly on Windows it seems.
I don’t think Steinberg have talked much about this.
Monitoring hyperthreading in the activity monitor can be misleading. Just because they are in use doesn’t mean your performance will necessarily increase. In fact, things like latency (which isn’t as important in Premiere or FCP) can get worse.
In other words, I would humbly disagree with the bit in the thread title about “uses only half of CPU”. 100% of your 6 cores are in use.
How is the performance of Cubase on your machine generally? Is it it laggy in any way? Do you feel it’s running slow? I think how things run are more important than what is going on in a monitor. It’s not worth getting hung up on if everything runs fine.
All programs start to stuck when my mentioned programs (Premier etc.) start to use the whole power of the processor, the performance monitor shows all 6+6 cores 100% busy and I start to listening pocessor’s fan.
But when Cubase’s performance meter starts clipping and the sound goes cripping, I see just 6 cores in use, computer work perfectly and other programs perform normal.
So, I understand, that Cubase DON’T use all the power of my system, not only processor’s.
This is why I opened this discusion.
CPU overload in a realtime app like Cubase almost always occurs before 100% utilization of the processor. 100% utilization would require perfect distribution of the load across the cores, and that never happens in the real world.
Ok, but Premiere Pro is also a real time app and its behavior is opposite Cubase in this case.
Premiere Pro is not a realtime audio app though, it’s video first and foremost. So in order to compare the two you would have to load Premiere identically to Cubase to see how two things turn out: 1) load balancing on cores, and 2) actual capacity for realtime audio performance.
#2 above because it’s possible that Premiere balances the load perfectly but performs less well, in other words perfect balance but fewer audio tracks and/or fewer plugins.
So you can’t compare an NLE with a DAW really.
Also, you can play around with settings to maybe get Cubase to balance load differently. Settings like hardware buffer size, ASIOguard on/off and level, automation playback accuracy, and so on.
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I truly do see the point of this thread. Why would I care if an app uses 3 cores or 30 cores if it works?
BTW, Premier Pro is a perfect example why I wouldn’t care, as it uses more cores but works horrible compared to Steinberg’s software.
And just for your information; DAWs performance are dependent on your single core clocking not how many cores you have. You can have a 10000 cores, but if each one of them is clocked at 2 GHz you’ll always have trouble with big projects, while if you only have 2 cores that each one clocks at 5 GHz , you’ll be able to run smoothly almost any size of project.