Cubase 15 has significantly worse performance and stability than Cubase 12 on the same system

Cubase
1

Hello Steinberg team and everyone,

I would like to report a serious performance and stability difference between Cubase 15 and Cubase 12 on the exact same Windows system.

I am a professional composer and use Cubase daily for large film/TV scoring projects. I recently upgraded from Cubase 12 Pro to Cubase 15 Pro, but after working with Cubase 15 for some time, I started experiencing several problems that I had not experienced to this extent in Cubase 12.

The most important finding is that I have now returned to Cubase 12 and tested the same large projects again.

The difference is immediately noticeable. Cubase 12 feels significantly more responsive and fluid. The slow, sluggish feeling that I experienced in Cubase 15 is largely gone.

This makes me suspect that there may be a performance regression or some kind of compatibility problem in Cubase 15 rather than a fundamental limitation of my hardware or project size.

System

  • Windows 10
  • Intel Core i9-12900K
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
  • RME Fireface UFX III
  • RME driver 1.017 (03.03.2026)
  • Cubase Pro 15.0.30
  • Cubase Pro 12 also installed for comparison
  • ASIO buffer size: 1024 samples
  • Windows power plan: High Performance
  • ASIO-Guard: disabled during testing

My system is primarily used for professional orchestral / film scoring projects with large projects, many MIDI instruments, Kontakt libraries, audio tracks and video.

1. Cubase 15 feels noticeably slower in large projects

In Cubase 15, large projects gradually feel sluggish and less responsive.

This is not simply an audio CPU overload.

For example, editing and navigating the project can feel delayed or “heavy”:

  • Selecting tracks feels less immediate
  • General project-window interaction feels slower
  • Scrolling and editing large projects feels less fluid
  • The whole application feels less responsive compared with Cubase 12

The important point is that I can open the same type of large project in Cubase 12 on the same computer and immediately notice that the operation is much smoother.

I have used Cubase 12 for a long time, so I am very familiar with how this system normally feels.

2. Cubase 15 has also caused serious audio-engine / interface problems

I have experienced several occasions where playback in Cubase 15 becomes unstable.

The symptoms include:

  • Playback stuttering
  • The playback cursor briefly moving backwards and then forwards
  • Audio becoming completely unstable
  • After stopping playback, Windows system audio can also stop working correctly
  • YouTube / browser audio and other Windows audio may also become unavailable
  • In some cases I have had to restart Windows or reset/restart the RME interface before normal audio operation returns

At one point I also observed red clipping indicators in TotalMix FX when this problem occurred, although this did not correspond to normal project-level CPU overload behavior.

I have updated the RME driver and also tested different Cubase settings, but the problem remained.

3. The most important test: Cubase 12 vs Cubase 15

Because I was becoming concerned that the problem might actually be caused by my computer, I recently went back to Cubase 12.

I opened the same large projects that had felt noticeably sluggish in Cubase 15.

The result was surprisingly clear:

Cubase 12 immediately felt much smoother and more responsive.

The sluggishness I had become accustomed to in Cubase 15 was largely absent.

This is currently the strongest evidence I have that something in Cubase 15 may be responsible.

Nothing significant was changed in the hardware configuration.

Same computer.
Same RME Fireface UFX III.
Same Windows installation.
Same general project type.
Same plugins and sample libraries.
Same workflow.

Only the Cubase version changed.

4. This does not seem to be simply a “large project” problem

If the project itself were simply too large for my system, I would expect Cubase 12 to behave similarly.

Instead, the same workstation and large projects feel substantially better in Cubase 12.

This is why I would like Steinberg to investigate whether there is a performance regression in Cubase 15, particularly in large projects containing substantial MIDI instruments, Kontakt libraries, audio tracks and video.

5. Other observations

I have also experienced an issue during a long video export in Cubase 15.

When exporting approximately 40 minutes of video with fewer than 10 audio tracks, the export appeared to have a brief stutter at the very end.

I understand that the export process does not normally depend on the audio interface hardware in the same way as real-time playback, so I do not assume that this particular issue is caused by the RME driver. I am mentioning it because it occurred during the same period of Cubase 15 problems.

What I would like to ask Steinberg

Could the Cubase development team investigate

2

Hi,

Whilst the team on here are helpful, it’s not a legitimate route to Steinberg support. I recommend that you raise an official support ticket.

That said, have you tried resetting all preferences in Cubase 15 in the first instance?

3

I don’t have an earlier version to compare to, but I agree with the assertion that the audio engine is unstable. I waste at least an hour every day just doing DAW and system restarts to get the audio engine playing nice again, because every other time I switch a project it’s a freakin’ coin toss on if it’s going to load or not.

If the system has used a different sample rate somewhere - forget about it. DAW or system restart is absolutely necessary or it’ll freeze when trying to load.

If the DAW crashed and didn’t completely unload the audio engine - forget about it - doesn’t matter what you close in task manager, you’re going to have to reboot before it’ll load up without freezing again.

It’s insane. I switched from Cakewalk Sonar and tried several different DAWS in between before settling on Cubase, and this is the ONLY one that has this issue. I thought it was surely a configuration issue on my end at first given how acclaimed and expensive the software is, but damn, that’s looking extremely unlikely at this point.

4

Have you also updated your device driver for the graphics card?

Also this:

5

That’s rough. what audio interface and Windows version are you using? Are you running any other applications while using Cubase?

For me (MacOS and UAD Apollo), Cubase performance is 100% solid.

6

After installing Cubase 15, I only changed the background color setting. All other preferences and settings have remained at their default values since installation. So, as far as I understand, there should not be any other customized preferences to reset.

7

so when you install a newer version it brings over the preferences from the old one. if it feels slower a common fix is to trash the preferences file & start fresh to see if that helps. At least on Mac. I think there is a preferences file on PC too.

8

That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware that Cubase 15 could inherit preferences from the previous version. I’ll test it with completely fresh preferences. However, in my case the issue seems to go beyond GUI sluggishness, as Cubase 15 can also cause audio playback problems that affect the Windows audio system, while Cubase 12 is stable on the same machine.

9

Remember, when you romove the prefs of C15 to also remove them from older versions as with missing prefs it will always use the older if present.