Cubase 5 freezes during sequencing

@DAS:
Digital Performer 8 will work in a Windows environment.
http://www.motu.com/newsitems/digital-performer-does-windows/

Well, I started working on another film score project about a week ago, and last night while I worked on more of the arrangement, the SAME thing happened again.

Except this project doesn’t yet have quite as many tracks as the previous one I was working on. So, I began to think and consider another scenario. I do believe the problem is partly because of the limited bandwidth you get with the USB2 protocol for my audio i/o.

Both, I think part of my problem has been my Disk Streaming settings in my s/w samplers (Kontakt 4, YT Independence 3). I thought they were set to my previous settings when I was running them stand alone. But when I ran them as individual plug-ins in a new project, they didn’t have my previous optimized settings!

When I adjusted the buffer sizes, and other settings in both samplers, which are the crux of my Orch Templates, everything seemed to work without any problems. So far… I reserve judgement after I finally finish the score.

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  • DAS

I really, really, really hope this will finally solve the problem. Although I’ve always loved MOTU DP since ver 2.11 (yeah long time ago), I didn’t really feel like going through the change with a major Windows DAW again. I have gotten used to using Cubase for the past several years, and am very comfortable with it.

I know how to get my work done with Cubase, and I really enjoy using it. The only DAW I can really see myself investing in outside of Cubase is Pro Tools. And that will ONLY be so that I would be completely PT compatible with a potential business client.

Other than that, I’m happy with Cubase, as long as this problem doesn’t occur anymore, which is a major problem so far. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Well, I tried all of those things, and NOPE, didn’t change a thing. Still having everything lock up on me when playing a sequence back. So, maybe it’s the usb2.0 audio interface. I don’t know, but I’m not feeling this at all.

I will try the freeze track option later, and see what happens.

I would surely try to see if I could snag a firewire or pci interface just to swap out long enough to see if that’s the problem. My other thought would be a hd with a higher cache (32mb) for your sample streaming.

Yeah, I actually had thought about updating my HD for my smple library anyway. I guess being that at least 95% of the samples that I’m streaming from my libraries are 24bit/44.1khz, it could maybe be a problem. The only weird thing is that it appears that it only happens when a sequence is playing back after some time.

I would think that if my HD can’t handle all of that data at once, that it should just choke. But it keeps up with it very well.

There is 1 thought I’m thinking of trying anyway. I want to setup a midi-over-ethernet. Where my main DAW would just be my sampler I’m triggering, and my laptop would house Cubase 5 for the seq project. So my main DAW desktop doesn’t have to run Cubase, and my plug-ins all at once.

Then I would be interested to see how Cubase 5 would react.

A slave system would surely give you more breathing room but if your problem is indeed an interface or hd cache problem, the problem may still occur. Even though it may take a while for the problem to develop, the longer a sequence is running, the better the chance for bottlenecking in the bandwidth.

I’m not doing the same type of work you are but I believe I encounter some pretty involved projects and there’s been no problems running anything I’ve thrown at my system and we have very like systems. My audio and sample HDs however are 32mb cache and my interface is firewire.
Just use the ole trial and error technique and attack the possibilities one by one.

Well, after thinking about my situation, considering I’m still having the problem, I thought of taking your advice Suprawill1 in a more practical manner. Having a PCI audio i/o should be like night and day, and eliminate my problem. However, I wasn’t trying to spend $800+ on a PCI audio i/o.

Then I looked on eBay for comparisons, and I forgot that RME made the HDSP9632 PCI audio i/o. But the COOL thing about this is I bought a Behringer Ultramatch Pro a while back. Which was dirt cheap brand new, and to my surprise, very clean. Doesn’t have any color, or make anything sound flattering. But it doesn’t take away from what you put into either.

I can use the adat|optical i/o from that as my front end to the RME unit. And all for around $300. That sounds doable to me.

The other alternative audio i/o would be the Echo Gina3G PCI. Still around $300+ . Either way, I’m getting PCI bandwidth. I’ll sell my Tascam US1800 for whatever I can get locally in my area through Craigslist or eBay, and use that money towards the PCI i/o.