On Windows, anyways. I know it’s only a couple of months, but not a single glitch or wobble, let alone a crash, of any sort.
Of course, the video engine is cocked up, since C13… But I get around that by forcing Cubase to use Intel Graphics, instead of my GPU.
As always, YMMV.
Deleted this bit
Apparently, others have have mentioned this, according to the robot behind the forum scenes.
Yep… And I just looked at my Documents\Steinberg\CrashDumps folder : not a single crash since having installed it, two months ago. Rather surprising as I remember having an issue, two weeks ago, when reloading Cubase after an user error : I forgot that Emulator X3 hates being loaded in two different projects, during the same Cubase session…
And that 10% goes on to blame the fleet mechanics. 
You used to be a bus driver!
I think the general lack of wailing and gnashing of teeth across the forum tells its own tale. C14 is indeed a first class piece of software with none of the upheaval suffered in earlier releases (particularly 13)
You must be doing something wrong then! 
In all seriousness though, I agree this is the best Cubase launch in years. Kudos to the Steinberg team!
I don’t want to minimize the reality of bugs, and there ARE bugs in C14 of course – every DAW has bugs – but your statement is generally true. I won’t elaborate on my theory of why this is true (I’m sure we’d agree though), other than I’ll jump to the assumption that you have a dedicated DAW and you usually follow best practices when building, setting up, installing drivers, apps, plugins, and configuring that DAW, right? That’s 95% of the battle right there.
The biggest problems for ANY DAW – pick any DAW “du jour” – is that some people treat their computer as a general purpose computer, or worse yet, a gaming computer. Or they simply expect everything to work out of the box and don’t spend the time to carefully configure their machine. This is especially true with Windows, unfortunately. So some people might be better off sticking with MacOS, which tends to work out of the box more often (but not always, I’ve got plenty of stories myself!).
The larger point is that a DAW is a very complex real-time low-latency ecosystem, as you obviously know, and there are dozens of tiny little factors that can impact a user’s experience. It’s unrealistic to think that a small-medium sized company like Steinberg can possibly test for all the permutations of hardware, drivers, and software on that computer, let alone all the inherent conflicts and disparate competing elements in a modern computer outside their control that will impact a high performance DAW environment. So treating a computer exclusively as a DAW and setting it up with best practices will go a long way to making sure you have a decent, stable foundation to begin with.
Anyway, I think Steinberg has done a much better job with C14 than C13, notwithstanding the normal bug curve of any commercial release. And I think they’ve been participating here in the forum pretty well, and have also been responsive to well-documented bug reports, especially the Dorico side with the new score editor. So hats off to Steinberg in general for improving in this area over the last few years. C14 has been a pleasure to use! I hope they keep it up!
I’m looking forward to the next patch/update, and I’m sure more small bugs will be resolved.
Cheers!
I checked my folder with the Crash Dumbs to be sure:
Not a single crash since the release of C14!
There were plenty of dmp files during the first three and a half months working with C13 and it didn’t stop there. So, yes, C14 runs really stable here on two systems!
Of course, I still miss some basic options that have not been introduced with some of the new features in C14. Also, there are old bugs that have not been adressed, yet. They should prioritize them. Yes, and there are a few other things that bother me, too. I know that there are features that are of the utmost importance for other users that have not been implemented, too. I get it. But nothing is perfect.
All things considered and the more I work with C14, here comes my personal opinion:
I think Steinberg did a great job! Kudos!
Note, I didn’t say it was perfect - fonts, in places, are way too small, dialogues with text entry should open with the focus on the text box, the Colours menu is now half-sized, which, with most of my colours added at the bottom, means a whole lot of scrolling to choose them, changes to the video engine mean that my GPU/Cubase combo won’t play videos any more. etc.
But, the paucity of crashes means I can get work done. And that is the important thing.
I raise my hand, in shame!
But, yes, I have done my research, and applied all the recommendations for a DAW-based PC, from tweaking the BIOS to turning off USB hub auto-power shutdowns to power schemes. I also use a decent audio interface, an RME AIO PCIe card. And no unnecessary software.
I also re-install everything every 12-15 months.
It’s funny – Cubase has been mostly ultra-stable for me for many years now, on both Mac and Windows., with gigantic CPU-pushing sessions. And 14 is definitely as solid.
Right. Concerning Cubase, I could make a list of, at least, 10 items for which I would like fixes/improvements. But it’s another topic.
That was perfectly relevant, ten years ago. I don’t think it is as much, now. I very carefully made countless tweaks on my i-870 (Lynnfield) based system with Windows7/HDDs, at the time (circa 2010). With the one I have since late 2019, the only thing I did is to disable any sleep states, either in the UEFI or in Windows 10 : took me 5 minutes…
For the same reasons as above, I’m not sure that it is still the case in early 2025.
Not sure of that, but maybe it’s because I have a good impression left of C13 : I remember discovering in it the new track inspector with finally a coherent way to manage the opening/closing of its sections, this, with the Channel strip in the arrange page : these ALONE were worth the upgrade. I have never re-opened C12, since…
Agreed, there are improvements in this department. This said, there are also still misbehaving aspects in Cubase for which we are still waiting either some improvements/fixes or, at least, a little interaction with us from the development crew : the VCA/automation issue comes first to mind…
But overall, yes, Cubase 14 is a good vintage, even at its still WIP 14.0.10 state… 
Agreed with most of what you wrote except this point. This is exactly why many people have trouble: they think it’s not relevant today. And yes, for some people they get a magic combination and it works out fine for them, which it did for you in this case, but not for everyone. It’s still very relevant today, and it rolls in phases in the industry… we just went through a very tough time IMO, with a huge number of issues on all platforms, although it is stabilizing somewhat in 2024/2025.
Again, many people are not so lucky. Windows can be frustrating for many DAW users, depending on many factors, especially CPU generation-related issues in recent years, etc… Apple users are not immune either! It’s not nearly the plug and play situation you imply. You rolled the dice and the timing was right for your CPU/chipset/OS combination, and/or you built/bought a lucky system.
Your system is from late 2019, so I can only assume you built perhaps an Intel 9900K (late 2018 release) or Ryzen 3700X (mid-late 2019 release) - or something similar. If so, those two were both very stable machines out of the box (I still have both of those in the studio, they both work great!), and same situation with that generation in general, depending on chipset. My 9900K machine needed very few tweaks, it’s true, probably the most stable DAW I’ve ever had, fewest issues. But simply take a look at the mess when Intel P/E cores were introduced in 2021, it took a while to resolve some of that, not to mention the 13th/14th gen issues with over-voltage (which were eventually resolved), not to mention thread scheduling differences between Win 10 and Win 11 now, etc… By late 2021 (12th gen Intel) things were actually in VERY bad shape IMO. Lots of issues, so many that Steinberg even said not to get a 12th gen until they could work things out (which they eventually addressed fairly well IMO).
I could give some examples from various issues with AMD Ryzen machines, USB issues, Thunderbolt issues, Apple Silicon issues, more P/E issues, various OS issues on both platforms, and so forth. Quick example, I just recently had issues resolved with iLok and my new AMD 9950x. What a mess that was. but it’s now resolved (thank goodness) and works great. But what a mess. There were workarounds, that only partially worked. It was so idiotic and frustrating. I’ve got personal examples from recent Intel gen, Apple Silicon, etc…
Point is, one could easily argue that things got substantially worse after your 2019 build, where my advice became very relevant again. In your case, looks like you timed it and lucked out. I’ve got many machines that had issues, almost all platforms (including Linux, but not yet Windows on ARM). My 2019 builds were among the most reliable and easy to set up, like yours.
Anyway, not to make a big deal about it, again, I agree with much of what you say, and I enjoy your posts in general, I’m just saying it’s not so cut and dried, and the advice is still relevant. And we didn’t even touch on portable machines, which is another mess. I have laptops from 6 years ago that work better as DAWs than laptops from 2 years ago. Go figure.
I think anyone having troubles today should start with the general premise that their computers should be treated as dedicated DAWs to get the most out of them, and that idea gets you about 95% of the way there. If someone wants to roll the dice (and might get lucky), or start adding other things to their DAW like gaming, streaming, etc., be prepared to introduce potential issues to the situation. Sometimes it works out fine, then great. It’s possible that the impact will be very minor, and so more power to folks who do that. But when someone STARTS with that premise, I predict many frustrations for them. All it takes is one misbehaving driver, or one OS patch, one conflicting app, one errant plugin, one sub-optimal OS setting, one dumb little thing, from breaking something or introducing instability. My view is, reduce those potential issues as much as possible, and start there as the basis. Then build up from there if you want to.
Anyway, cheers, this is just my opinion, YMMV, and again, I enjoy your posts - much respect as usual!
Very nice post, @XXXXXX , thank you.
I do however disagree with the quote above. My personal opinion is that marketing pressures almost always result in releases with bugs known to the DAW developer. “We ran out of time, we’ll fix it in the mix (i.e., the first update)” I absolutely believe is a common occurrence.
And then of course Steinberg* IMO absolutely deliberately releases software with bugs. One can consider the history of VCA faders in Cubase as one of at least several examples.
That’s all understandable, business is business, I just wanted to clarify that some of us (well, I can only speak for one of us - myself!) do “think that DAW manufacturers deliberately release software with bugs”.
*I’ve not used other DAWs enough to find bugs in them, so can only speak with first hand knowledge about Cubase. I’d bet lots of money the other DAW manufacturers are in the same boat.
I like that example a lot! 
I suppose we should be grateful that Cubase doesn’t spontaneously combust…
Good post to ponder, @XXXXXX – I appreciate your perspective!
This is, unfortunately, a reality of being in business in a very competitive (in this case saturated) market. Like every other DAW developer, Steinberg has limited resources and they have to decide where to allocate those resources. This “equation” is what every DAW developer has to come up with, and I do believe some DAW developers do this better than others. As a user of many DAWs, IMO Steinberg has struck a decent balance, on the upper tier of DAW developers in this regard IMO, but some people may prefer a different “equation” and I totally respect that.
I wish Steinberg would shift another 10% resources over to stability and bugfixes, but when I consider the other DAWs I use, Steinberg has already been going in the right direction for a while. Is there room for improvement? You bet, of course! But the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill.
Anyway, I appreciate the perspectives, just goes to show we all experience this differently, and our own personal experiences, preferences, and needs are different.
I don’t envy the decision-makers at any DAW developer who grapples with these issues, because they need to find their own balance to satisfy their users and keep the revenue coming. It’s a tough market right now, and as I’ve mentioned in other threads, the market is over-saturated right now, and so developers are feeling the pressure for sure. Hats off to all the developers who are trying to listen, care, and strive for a better balance.
