Ive recently upgraded to cubase 14 pro and im getting audio dropouts ! The audio performance monitor fluctuates like crazy and it spikes and overloads my system with just a handful of vst’s playing. My system was fully optimised for cubase 13, I never had any issues but now im getting these dropouts. WTF ! the audio guard swings rapidly from high to low, it bloody awful. My system has been fully optimised for audio playback, it was fine with cubase 13, I have a 12 core processor and plenty of SSD space, this has only started happening after upgrading and using cubase 14 pro, is this just another steinberg mess !!? Has anyone else experienced these problems ? Is there a fix ? As I said , everything has been tweaked and optimised for cubase 13, no problems, but cubase 14, wtf !!!
lots of people are having to clear preferences which should resolve
That actually made things worse, Im basically left with an unusable system. The dropouts just occur randomly, ive even frozen several vst tracks and im STILL getting dropouts !
so 4 VSTs are enough to push my audio performance monitor into overdrive, so now I guess I have to wait for the patch !? ffs !
Can you confirm whether or not if the Audio Performance Monitor is outputting any information in the Dropout - Position & Related Tracks / Suggested Operators area ?
It does, so I freeze that track, then it reports dropouts on another, so I freeze that one, then it reports dropouts in another ! I end up with all vst tracks frozen and the meter still fluctuates wildly. Its the same on new tracks I create, the meters just go crazy. Cubase 13 was pretty stable in this respect, 14 just seems a mess
Can you clarify that it is only happening with Instrument Tracks ? or is the issue happening with other types of tracks too ? Also are you noticing any similarities between the tracks such as using the same VST Instruments or plugins on each track ? or are they all different and the issue is seemingly random ? What operating system are you using on your computer ?
and here’s my answer direct from Steinberg
"Hi mark,
thank you for contacting Steinberg Support.
We’ve seen some issues with performance in Cubase 14, which is under investigation and to be fixed with future maintenance updates, but I’d like to ask for some information."
are you on mac? have you tried disabling gpu acceleration ?
The Steinberg official support channel typically sucks.
It would probably be better if you can follow this bug report format guideline and post it here on the forum.
I was excited after hearing reports of improved performance with C14 update…well has gone backwards…same story here, relatively light session totally s$%ting itself…AND the dropout culprit being identified as a track I tested with their own flagship new studio delay plugin that whilst sounds awesome, is totally unusable seems to completely collapse the session when a track is armed…c’mon, give me a freakin’ break!
I effing hate Cubase 14 !!! its anyone’s guess if it will work without stuttering and spluttering and causing audio dropouts ! One track seems to be ok, another just splutters and overloads , causing dropouts. How is anyone supposed to work like this !!! for fck sake steinberg get your f’ing act together and supply QUALITY software !!! I cant use this bloody software !!!
and if your asking , Im on a PC and Windows 11 pro. Cant see why cubase 13 pro worked perfectly, this is a pile of sht !!! (yes Im bloody annoyed !!!)
@mark_w_w …I 100% feel your pain
I’ve had mega issues with C13, but it was manageable with freezes so at least could playback…but this is totally unusable…and fwiw I have a beast of system (12/24 core i9, 128GIG, etc etc) built and configured/os (win10) optimised by one of the most experienced daw builders on the planet…it’s 100% a software issue, and this release seems inconsistent performance-wise across different systems as we have at one end of the spectrum some users reporting improved performance and stability and at the other what we’re experiencing here virtually unusable…I’m also hosting all my VI’s in either VEP or audiogridder outside cubase because if i try to load directly into an instrument track the realtime engine maxes out when track armed on certain instruments if hosted within cubase…so am used to dealing with a constant workaround ,but this is crazy - incredibly frustrating…AND when I check the taskbar the cpu cores are all purring at 20% so it’s hardly like the system is being pushed - nah there’s some bottleneck happening within the software before it hits the system…y’know, I could kinda have some understanding if it’s 3rd party plugins causing the collapse but in my case it’s actually their own inhouse plug that’s the culprit…but even if I get rid of that the audio performance meters are still jumping all over the place at idle and zero headroom in this regard…suppose will just have to shelve this version and wait for a maintenance update 
my system is basically the same as yours (win 11 pro though) , very powerful and easily able to handle anything I throw at it, this is 100% a complete screwup from Steinberg, totally unacceptable.
I’m getting these dropouts with a simple piano recording in Version 14 originally made in Version 13.
However, I’m also getting them in Version 13 on similar projects that worked flawlessly before.
The only thing that’s changed since the last time I used Version 13 (several weeks ago) are many system updates, including Windows 11, Intel motherboard chipset and wifi code updates, BIOS updates including CPU-related code to fix Intel-design-failure voltage spikes, and NVDIA GPU driver updates.
With Microsoft and Intel in particular, never underestimate their ability to eff stuff up.
Doing my best to look into this further.
Same here…
C14 takes forever to load then when I open a project it locks up for a minute after loading then eventually crashes.
Add to that, it messed up my mediabay and now C13 (Which worked fine) now has the same mediabay issue.
I had to spend HOURS just trying to get C13 back…
This is wild how sloppy this whole thing became.
No way I’m paying for this rn. Really sad day for Long Time customers who are now relegated to BETA duty for them.
Update from my earlier post:
No longer getting the dropout issues after troubleshooting as follows.
I have a Windows 11 HP laptop that isn’t a gaming PC and a custom-built Windows 11 desktop that is a good gaming PC with a 13700k CPU, 4080 GPU, and 32GB of RAM. Both PCs are fully updated for Windows 11, hardware drivers, and their BIOS systems.
Cubase 14 was initially installed on the desktop. It’s used for work and play. Normally, there are many apps running in the background related to both work and play. Many frequently talk to the Internet. Some apps, such as Riot Games’ anti-cheat, Samsung Magician, and NVIDIA’s apps, are rather hardware-invasive.
After installing Cubase 14 on the desktop and getting the dropouts issue in not only Cubase 14 but also now Cubase 13, I installed Cubase 14 on the laptop. The dropouts issue didn’t occur on the laptop in either Cubase 13 or 14.
After rebooting the desktop normally, retrying Cubase 13 and 14, and still getting the dropouts issue, I terminated every non-Steinberg app that could be found, including hardware-related apps such as NVIDIA’s Control Panel and the NVIDA App that runs its in-game overlay. The dropouts issue went away.
Oddly, upon rebooting the desktop normally and leaving all the usual apps running in the background, the dropouts issue hasn’t returned. I had Cubase 14 looping the earlier-mentioned simple piano recording project the entire time spent writing and editing this post and haven’t had a single dropout. The project is a recording of four mic channels with a reverb plugin set a 1% for each channel. Earlier, immediately after installing Cubase 14, I was getting dropouts every few seconds.
You should be using the NVIDIA Studio Driver rather than the NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready driver.
You should disable as many start up applications as possible to prevent them from automatically running in the background.
Ideally you shouldn’t have multiple applications running at the same time while using Cubase.
All of these things are potential trouble makers for DPC Latency or processing issues.
Here are some articles that might be useful for you:
Good info. Thank you!
In response to the Steinberg support articles…It seems crazy in this day & age when we have high performance multi-core processing power that we still have to carefully baby our daw machine like we did back in 2001 and be diligent in regards being super conscious of running multiple applications, and furthermore potentially divert program resources away from the “evil” e-cores…Seriously??? lmfao…Isn’t that the point of multi-processing? Fair enough need to be sensible but I’d guess for most users it’s not like we’re playing resource intensive games at the same time as doing music production, but we may need to have a few other things open at the same time…Does anyone know if there are other DAW’s that have support advice that suggest crippling your hardware performance capacity as a workaround!!!..anyone??? …clearly the program isn’t optimised for hybrid architecture and underlying threading/timing issues remain…fine, but at least disclose it on the tin so we know buying in that presently it’s a prob a safer bet to run it on a mac