Hi,
I’m experiencing a significant slowdown in Audio Mixdown with Cubase 15.0.30 on Apple Silicon.
I’m working on the same large project/template that I have used recently. Previously, a project of around 4 hours 20 minutes took approximately 27–28 minutes to export.
Now, the same project/template, which is currently around 3 hours 30 minutes, takes approximately 50–52 minutes to complete the Audio Mixdown.
I have not intentionally changed anything in the project or template.
My system:
- Mac Studio – Apple M4 Max
- 36 GB RAM
- macOS Tahoe 26.5.2
- Cubase Pro 15.0.30, Build 287
- Apple Silicon / Native
- ASIO buffer: 2048 samples
I have already tested several things:
- Disabled VSX Systemwide → no difference
- Disabled the VSX plugin in the project → no difference
- Exported to the internal SSD → same result
- Exported to an SSD connected through my OWC enclosure → same result
- RAM usage is normal, memory pressure is green and there is no swap usage
- During export, the system still has approximately 75–80% CPU idle
- Cubase uses roughly 140–155% CPU, so the M4 Max is clearly not being fully utilized
- A short 5-minute export in a completely new/empty project is fast and behaves normally
The slowdown therefore seems to be related specifically to this large/complex project or to the way Cubase 15.0.30 processes it.
What is particularly strange is that this same project/template was significantly faster before.
Has anyone experienced a similar issue with Cubase 15.0.30, especially on Apple Silicon Macs, where Audio Mixdown becomes much slower on large projects while CPU and disk resources are not saturated?
Could this be related to the Cubase audio engine/offline export processing in 15.0.30?
Any suggestions or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!