Cubase 14 Pro: Performance Issues and Unreliable Behavior

[Lollo_12345]

I actually do have some specific issues (and currently in touch with support, some have been solved, some not)

• A series of graphic glitches, including flickering of plugins and pop-ups appearing in places outside of the working window as well and objects dragged with the mouse being in random places on the screen
• File saved not opening (and having the need of re-opening in safe mode, save the file under a different name and then reopen)
• Constant freezing while loading MACKIE CONTROL devices

It important to note that none of these issues happened on the previous versions.

I guess a forum is to find out solutions but also see if other users had similar problem. You might understand how frustrating it is to upgrade to a new version and feel like being used as a beta tester - I don’t see the point about complaining about people complaining. And if there is an area where someone can help, asking questions is always the best way to understand what a user is experiencing, no?

I do find it useful to see which issues other users have, being a more general description of their experience or a more detailed one.

[Vantage]

My unscientific research continues…

I thought buying Logic Pro was cheaper than an M4 Max Studio and run some back to back tests. Logic Pro v Cubase Pro 14 on an M1 Max MacBook Pro.

Logic runs more simultaneous instances of Omnisphere and Diva until it locks up.

At idle there are no meter flickers and it distributes load accross cores equally.

So unsurprisingly Apple’s own product runs on its chips better but it’s about 25% better on my machine and the gui is smoother/snappier.

I’m not sure where I stand with Cubase on Mac and my instinct is now to build another PC DAW rather than get any deeper into Mac and Cubase because I think that Steinberg are more concerned with rushed development bells and whistles rather than developing a stable Mac product and I’m not prepared to drop $5k on another Mac to spend more time pissing around and not making music. My support ticket has been unanswered for 9 days.

[cubace]

@R1PPA-C

Mine is a complete mess, the dropouts are out of control, I’m getting crazy stutteing when using certain plugins, random crashes, midi stops reading, automation stops working, the list goes on and on. 192gb DDR5 7950x and all fast NVME drives,

Is more important what audio-card graphics card you use than how much ram and what CPU. . And what latencies you try to archive. Crashes should be sent to the vendor.

[alexis]

@deleted_by_self - not a perfect solution, but perhaps contacting a company like http://www.studiocat.com/ or https://pcaudiolabs.com and paying $50 or $60 dollars for an hour of consultation would be productive?

(Assuming you’ve already tried to reach Cubase support by phone?)

[Vantage]

Good one, reaching Cubase support by phone with a two hour window on Central European Time (which changes on Thursdays) they don’t even answer support tickets via their own support hub.

Update from my side stopping Google Drive made an improvement and running the amended Dom Sigalis/Scan stress text rendered 110 tracks on my M1 MBP Max/16gb before stuttering.

[alexsMusicComps]

I recently upgraded my Audio Device which is now also pluged into USB-C from USB2 in the past. I now have the Esi Amber #1 and in Reaper my Performance has become more stable… I recently converted projects from Cubase to Reaper with the same VSTs used … and still Cubase has serious performance trouble.

In one Instance Cubase had over 90% of Performance Meter use with 2048 Samples and the Guard on High. While Reaper and Cubase 12 pro was running under 10% on the peak in the track.

I mean what the zoinc is going on. I want to use Cubase on my Windows 11 PC but this is unacceptable. I payed a shitload of money and also paid some experts to get a hint on the issue they all told me … better you use not Cubase because its a performance hell. Is this the moment when i seriously should consider to get rid of Cubase ?

I asking the developers when you get this problem resolved? Reaper, Ableton Live 12.2 Suite, Dorico Pro and Cubase 12 pro running great… Cubase 13 and 14 pro are a mess.. when you guys start to fix and overhaul this entire engine?

Also going back to Windows 10 is not an option when the Support for Windows 10 is officially dead and only Windows 11 is acceptable.

[TwanV]

Same problem over here. Tested some other daw’s and switched to Studio One.

[Gsus2]

Dito, as posted here.

[alexsMusicComps]

i don’t find words honestly for the state of Cubase as well as for the ignorance of Steinberg to get this Engine Working that they have introduced inside of Cubase 13 and 14.. I have no doubts its the interface in times when Graphics can be run on a 5000 Nvidia Card with no effort.

[alexsMusicComps]

Half Baked Solution Found - Worth to be tested:

Today i tried out NV Clean Install for Nvidia Drivers. Since my 5060 ti comes with a shitload of functions i tried out NvCleanInstall to get a cleaner installation of Nvidia.

Interestingly this had some impacts on the Performance Meter of Cubase 14.0.32 Pro.

→
Doing the default express Installation which installs Shadow Play, Telemtry Data as well as NVApp stuff which is default installation Method this might be part of the problem.

Installing only these Components leads to some issues with Nvidia App and full feature driver functionality however in my case it has reduced the Performance Meter Peaks and Instability by over 50%!!!

This could also mean that the GUI of Cubase Pro 13 and 14 is the cause of the issue. Maybe thats the reason why Cubase 12 Pro runs smooth.

[Gsus2]

Doing this would help with the ASIO guard performance changes between Cubase 12 and Cubase 14 that I linked above? I got no NVIDIA graphics card…

[alexsMusicComps]

hmm interesting

[alexsMusicComps]

After using ChatGPT heavily for searching an answer and using latency monitor heavily. I found out that the spikes in the performance meter are caused mainly by modern Nvidia GPUs like the 5000 series. Nvidia APP which is necessary to get all features of the card maintained are responsible for large latency spikes and it dose not matter putting the card to ultra latency mode or high performance energy supply. Through ChatGPT i found a reddit post in the cubase subreddit about latency. The post really solves the spikes caused by Windows 11.

Edit: So to clarify, the main issue are Nvidia Drivers but the cause for them to get insane are Windows 11 CPU behaviour settings. In Windows 11 the CPU is asking every 15 milliseconds if a CPU should trottle up or down. Each of these iterations starting a cascade of addional requests especially for the Nvidia driver. Something like 150 Thousands Requests in 30 seconds.–you get the point.
The Fix essentially is to reduce those iteration requests to a bare minimum. Still 100 Thousand Requests in 30 seconds.

Especially using PowerSettings Explorer helped to get the performance now close on pair with Reaper to the extend of like 90%.

Follow point two in this link and you will see how your latency spikes vanish.

Reddit - The heart of the internet

i have slightly different values:

for threshold of downscaling i have 80% and for upscaling 96% this makes sure that the CPU is able to throttle down, which lowers the overall energy consumption as well as let the cpu run on low clocks in idle.. using 100% on both will further reduce latency but will let the cpu always stay at the maximum clock speed which is not wise in my humble opinion.

The question is what can Steinberg do to improve the Software to make such steps not a requirement?

I will ask the Moderators to rename this thread into partially resolved.

[Googly_Shakespeare]

@alexsMusicComps

modern Nvidia GPUs

I always think it odd that a whole heap of people on this forum sing the praises of AMD CPUs, and yet go for Nvidia GPUs, which seem to me to have a long history of issues with audio software, especially Cubase.
I remember 12-ish years ago, having to upgrade my GPU (because of a Waves GUI issue, another story), and there was a lot of people posting about issues with Nvidia, even then.
Around October last year, an update in the drivers caused chaos with certain games, and a lot of those users had newer, high-end GPUs. Maybe that spilled over into the “Studio” versions.
Like I say, just my impression, because of which I avoid Nvidia like the plague.

[Norbury_Brook]

If people want the best from Spectralayers Pro then Nvidea is the way to go unfortunately .

M

[alexsMusicComps]

When you are a Content Creator or Production Studio there is no way around NVIDIA sadly but its a fact.
For example i am Content Producer, my main workhorse is Davinci Resolve Studio 20. Its right of now the best Film and Video editing software with Next Level Color Grading Tools and AI Tools to enhance images and Color. In fact everyone who has a glimpse of Quality Mindset will see that Premiere or Final Cut are toys. Thats why almost all modern Netflix productions are graded in Davinci Resolve.
For this you need Nvidia there is no way around.

Next is what if you do modern 3D Graphics to enhance your Story telling… yes Nvidia GPU Rendering is the only option on tight budgets these days… To give you perspective.. Rendering a photorealistic Car from Volkswagen, closeup , with 50 Million polygons will take 2 Hours to clean render for one single Full HD Frame on CPU AMD Threadripper 24 Cores.. On a Nivdia it takes 3 minutes. on a AMD GPU it takes half an hour. ..

Besides that. Many Composers out there are Game Music and Sound FX designers. Because of the matter of the fact that you need to be able to test your Sound and Music in a Development enviroment there is no damn way around Nvidia. The majority of Dev tools these days are made for Nvidia.

Nivida has successfully build a monopoly. Who is responsible for that? → Sadly it was AMD for many years not giving full access to their Card Architecture…

I love AMD CPU’s but their GPUs are weak for creative tasks. I work in the Media world for 26 years for premium Clients.

[deleted_by_self]

@alexsMusicComps

Is this the moment when i seriously should consider to get rid of Cubase ?

Umm… I hate to say it, but probably yes. I really get the sense that the current team is in way over their heads, and I don’t know when this situation is likely to improve, if ever. They seem to be under an enormous amount of pressure for probably all the wrong reasons.

I’ve been saying it for years now: features don’t afford you anything if the program itself is too unstable or has too many recurring performance problems to be practical in the studio or in front of clients.

I don’t know what it’s gonna take for them to show some humility, back up, reassess, and refocus their energies on the fundamentals.

[deleted_by_self]

Actually, I get the very, very strong sense after literally years of trial and error now, of losing my mind over these issues, that yes, there very likely is a strong GUI component to this.

The best thing I ever did so far has been to disable Core 0 entirely for Cubase using Process Lasso.

Cubase’s ability to schedule threads properly is simply not adequate and I think needs a total overhaul. They should probably replace their performance team, actually, or at least get new leadership in.

Too many of us have been having showstopping performance issues for far too long. It’s unacceptable. It’s hurting us–professionally, financially, and even personally.

Friday before last, I was basically forced to spend 16 hours troubleshooting a critical VST3 issue that was preventing my then-current project from launching. I missed an important gathering with my friends: had no choice.

I want Steinberg to comprehend that these issues cannot just be sat on or sloughed off any longer: they need to become the company’s primary focus until they are resolved for anyone using mainstream 12th, 13th, 14th, or 15th gen Intel CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, etc.

As I said in my own case, I’m running nothing exotic in terms of hardware. There’s simply no way this should be happening after probably over three years now of myself and others lodging complaints.

Yes, I think it’s somehow related to the GPU and yes, I think a whole lot of stuff is fighting over Core 0, stuff that should be smartly distributed to other cores so the real time audio stream stays intact.

I have, for instance, confirmed 100% that Cherry Audio’s Voltage Modular’s GUI is the culprit for some of this spiking behavior, some of these overloads, and this while using a module that is only a MIDI controller for an analog hardware synth: no actual audio processing going on. But even MIDI processing causes some kind of extra load on the GUI rendering engine which freaks out Cubase’s VST meter. It’s utterly mental. Something is very, very wrong.

[deleted_by_self]

I just want to say that this is exactly the type of post I love to see on these forums! You very clearly know what you are talking about and are assigning blame correctly in every instance so far as I can tell.

I think it’s really important that we hear the voices of more MODERN professionals who are doing MODERN things for MONEY. There’s a huge, huge difference in the sense of urgency: a semi-retired English dude in the idyllic countryside, for example, who does mostly guitar-bass-drums type music simply cannot comprehend or sympathize properly with the demands that working professionals in the electronic music, game music, or media content creation industries so often feel, why they believe their voices are no longer being properly heard.

I agree with you and I think it is critically urgent that Steinberg form a tiger team to get whatever access to whatever they need at Intel, NVIDIA, and Microsoft to put these problems to rest once and for all. It needs to happen this year.

[alexsMusicComps]

Thanks i will try this with core 0 and process lasso.