Cubase 13: 5950x unusable, especially with large orchestration setups

Cubase
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Hi just wanted to report my situation.

Cubase 12 was flawless for me. Since switching to 13, I am living a nightmare. Random freezes, especially while playing a VST instrument… (Even on a totally empty project with a single piano instrument) Recording dropouts. Poor glitchy performance with a combination of sample instruments… and now the latest : complete freezing to crash on the start or end of an audio clip in a busy project!!

Is it my setup or is Cubase 13 faulty? Any similar experiences out there? Please share!

Thanks.

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I’m on Cubase 12 and I had the opportunity to test Cubase 13 with the trial version
I also have a 5950x and I haven’t encountered this type of problem.
But I’m waiting a bit before updating.
Are you sure you didn’t modify anything before during or after installation?

1 Like
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One thing maybe worthwhile checking into is video drivers. There was one recent version of AMD video drivers that caused me grief, and after updating those, my system seemed fine again.

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Is the project still running flawlessly in CB12?

Hippo

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Thanks for the replies. All drivers, graphics, system even bios, also Rme drivers and firmware are new. I have also tried “Amd optimal performance” power scheme which runs at highest performance at all times without core parking etc. In the bios, hyper-threading (SMT) is disabled. I have looked at services and background tasks etc, nothing unusual. I disabled windows search and all things related to anti-virus etc. that will consume Cpu and disk in the background.

As for the projects, even an empty one with a single plugin, say a Pianoteq 8 or a Keyscape, or Kontakt while playing something, all of a sudden, the playback line freezes along with other stuff, as if Cubase loses focus and some 4-8 secs pass unresponsive. During this the playback continues (with a stuck playback line) my keyboard doesn’t input anything and when this sort of “seizure” is over, I am left with the midi part with an endless length note at the time of the freezing. In large orchestral projects, the situation is worse with an overall slugishness, and sometimes freezing to crash. I also tried 512 sample buffer size to no avail, and the same project, where Cubase 12 handles 256 setting just fine.

That’s the best I can describe. The most annoying thing is these random freezing moments. I also looked at Dpc Latency checker, everything looks good.

By the way, the midi keyboard is connected via Rme Midi Input so I guess nothing to be suspected there, since they are the king of drivers.

Anyhow, I am sadly going back to Cubase 12.

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If the propblem is still therewhen you go back to 12 then the problem is almost certainly with with one or more of all those other changes youve made to your system.

I think you were very brave to make so many changes all at once.

Good luck

Hippo

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What do you mean? The changes? These are recommended for Cubase? And there is nothing wrong with these settings under Cubase 12.

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And many others mentioned in your posts

Now you are back to CB 12 is every thing fine?

Thats the first move and you seem not to have done it and posted the results here

Please post your findings after you`ve done it.

Hippo

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Do not dissable SMT on a modern AMD CPU. You’re shooting yourself in the foot straight away there.

I’ve run 3950x, 5950x and 7950x machines and I’ve tested this and it really does make performance a lot worse.

TBH, the 5950x doesn’t do large VI/Sample projects as well as the Intel 12900 which was its counterpart, the 5950x does large mixing as it’s forte.

My 12900 laptop would outperform the 5950x easily on VSTi projects.

M

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Don’t know if this is relevant to you, but if I run just ONE track of the latest Halion Sonic 7 OR Groove Agent 5 (full) under C12, I see a maxed out performance meter causing glitches and drop-outs using a very old 2 core 4 thread ThinkPad. ie, this machine is way, way below the SB recommended spec for C12 (or C13), so you might expect this and suggest I go buy a new computer!!

However, whilst running the track (say GA5), if I open the instrument and go to Options, Performance, VOICES, and reduce the number (the default number of voices is super high), eventually I find a lower number of voices where the track runs glitch/drop-out free!
If I have both HS7 and GA5 tracks present, then I have to reduce the number of voices to a low number in BOTH to get either to run glitch free.
Conclusion, HA7 and GA5 have resource-hungry default voice numbers causing glitches as soon as you load them, let alone play them?

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“All drivers, graphics, system even bios, also Rme drivers and firmware are new”

Oh my bad English. I said “new”, when I should have said “up-to-date”. They did not change prior to installing Cubase 13.

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Hi Norbury_Brook,

I re-enabled the SMT (hyper-threading) setting, because it didn’t make any change (if not worse at other programs).

I’ll also try using Vienna probably, which will enable using my 16-core CPU more efficiently alongside Cubase, I guess. Also that will hopefully cut down those awful autosave duration, since the Cubase project will be light.

I’m using more VSTi’s than FX plugins actually. I think I might switch to the new Intel 14*** chips as soon as I know people are using it well enough on Cubase 13. Or one of the new max/ultra macs? I don’t know. Thanks for the info.

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And the big question is

No problems here with 14700k about 3 times the cubase performance I got with my 9900K

Hippo