Cubase 6.5 Glitches on Mac even with low CPU load?

Cubase
1

Hi all,

I’m new here, and I’ve recently upgraded my system to a Mac Pro platform (see deets below). Previously a PC user.

I’m getting sporadic audio glitches despite the fact that the ASIO/CPU load shown in VST Performance is a steady 25%, and I’m only using about 30% of my RAM. This suddenly started happening with a project that had previously run without the slightest problem. I’m seeing no spikes in the performance meter on either the ASIO or Disk side.

The project has just 3 VSTis (BFD2 and two instances of Kontakt) about four instances of Guitar Rig, and a handful of Waves EQs and Comps; really not a lot going on. I’m in 32 bit mode (coz of the Waves plugs). I’ve tried increasing buffer size on the Babyface but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

The glitches are not constant; sometimes I can get thru the track with hardly any and others it’s about one every second. There are no other apps running and checking the Activity Monitor there’s no evidence of additional CPU load or any external processes accessing my CPU.

I guess I can start freezing stuff, but surely I shouldn’t need to with such an undemanding project?

I’ve heard that Mac’s aren’t the best choice for Cubase but I find it hard to believe that a system this powerful would under perform to such a degree…

any assistance gratefully received!!!

ta,

Nick

2

Your system should definitely be able to handle what you are working on. Do you have the latest driver for the Babyface?
You may want select “built-in output” in the device settings and take a listen through your Mac’s analog output to see if the problem is still there. If the stuttering goes away, you have an issue with your interface.

3

what’s loaded into the Kontakt instances?

4

I work with MIR and load plug-ins directly from the MIR mixer. I have two xeon processors and 40 gigs of ram on windows 7 cubase 6 64 bit latency at 1023 and I still get some popping. Is there an area where I can extend the amount of recorded tracks allowed in Cubase 6. I occasionally get a prompt which states too many recorded tracks. I may do several drum and trumpet tracks for audio but that is it all else is vst related.

5

Hi, I’m new here too, returning to computer music after a few years hiatus and thinking I’ve made the most horrible, expensive mistake…

I have very, very little free time (3-4 hours per week max) so I decided to throw some money at the issue - I wanted something that would just work, that I wouldn’t have to fiddle around with, and could get on with creating. So I bought the (at the time) top of the range Macbook Pro, 15", quad core i7 2.5 GHz with a 7200RPM 750GB disk, and fitted 16 GB of RAM. I’ve been using Cubase since VST, and most recently ran SL on an iMac running Windows XP under bootcamp (I had never actually used MacOS X on it, except to install XP - long story, but it worked for me). With so little free time, and already knowing Cubase, I didn’t want to learn Logic. XP is not supported under Lion, so… I made the decision to jump completely over to Mac, and bought Cubase 6 and Wavelab 7.

I’m horribly disappointed. Wavelab 7 uses 80-90% of my CPU in 64 bit, with one file open and no plugins. The laptop fans quickly spin up, very noisy, making it pretty much useless for any kind of audio work. Steinberg support have been useless - first suggesting that they could not reproduce the issue, then ignoring me when I gave them some more information to try to pinpoint the problem.

Cubase 6.5 continually glitches, performance is horrible and again the noisy fans spin up. This is with just one instance of Miroslav Philharmonik and one reverb plugin. It’s much worse than it was in Windows my old iMac (a 2006 dual core 1.8Ghz with 4 GB of RAM). I used to be able to run full SATB Symphonic Choirs with Wordbuilder on that thing, and it barely got warm- the only limitation was the 4GB of RAM in 32-bit XP.

Seems to me things have gone backwards in the last five years - Cubase SL must be positively ancient now. I’m several thousand pounds down and horribly disappointed. I’ve spent the last few weeks fiddling and tinkering, trying to get my system to work, and haven’t done anything musical apart from one mastering session in Wavelab (which I had to do on my HD280 closed-back headphones to try to drown out the noise of the fan). I was really looking forward to getting back into creating music, but now I’m horribly disillusioned and will probably just give it a miss. I’ve wasted too much time on this rubbish already.

My own fault, though, I should have researched it properly (I’ve been reading about the whole sordid issue on the web the last couple of days) and bought myself a Windows laptop instead. I’m a bit stuck now though - I can’t even get Windows 7 and bootcamp it as I’ve already bought and authorised Mac versions of several expensive plugins (Melodyne, Ozone5, Alloy2 and Wavestation).

So yes, to the OP, Steinberg won’t acknowledge it but Cubase (and seemingly Wavelab) are pretty crippled under Mac OSX- but Steinberg support can’t replicate the issue :cry: .

6

Sorry to hear about your problems, but on the other hand I have to totally disagree with your assessment of Cubase running on a Mac. I’ve been doing just that for three years now, and have none of the problems you’ve described even with large orchestral compositions. I too have been using Cubase since it’s very first version many years ago. It’s definitely something system specific that is causing you grief, and generalizing like that won’t help. I understand how frustrated you must be, but also hope a solution can be found.

7

I really, really want it to work the way you describe, but unless Steinberg have another update in the works (judging by the comments here 6.5.3 is even worse on Lion than 6.5.0) I’m a bit stuck for now. Looking online, most people who are satisfied with their Cubase performance on Mac seem to be running Snow Leopard, the problems seem to start with Lion. I don’t think there’s any way for me to downgrade to Snow Leopard.

8

Enable option to suspend vst3 processing when not in use.

…it will spread the processing better over the cores, in theory, because it’s not cutting it on and off as the song plays.

Worth a shot.

9

Hi there - original poster here; sorry for delay!

First up - thanks for the responses, especially from VV. It hadn’t occurred to me to try running VST thru the built-in audio and you were quite right - the glitches disappeared.

Turns out I did need new drivers for my RME Babyface - what a rookie error! It’s such a new system and I was sure I’d checked for updates on everything before getting down to business but clearly in this case I hadn’t. There was an issue with “random interruptions to audio stream” (or something much like it) on the old driver. Since updating all seems ok :smiley:

Huckleberry I feel your pain. I threw a load of money at my home studio about 5 years ago to get what was (at the time) a really powerful PC - but it never worked right and for 5 years of having little spare time I struggled with a machine that was clearly flawed - and there’s only so many times you have the patience to replace the ram, reinstall windows etc etc.

This time I took the plunge into Mac world (despite my preference for Cubase) and I was very worried when these glitches appeared and I started to read that Cubase “doesn’t run well on Macs”. However - thanks to help from here - I found that it was a solvable problem. Stay with it - I hope it turns out the same way for you.

cheers,

Nick

10

Huckleberry, there are many Cubase users who have not and will not move to Lion for a very long time yet for obvious reasons. If you wish to revert (fresh install), you can. Snow Leopard is not “online” anymore though, so you need to call (not log into) the Apple store for your country or Apple Support for your country and ask to purchase it. E.g. Telesales agents.[1-800-MY-APPLE (1-800-692-7753) or Customer Service and Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775.] Ask for a Sales Representative. Amazon.com or ebay is selling copies but charging more than Apple (Apple charges $29 US, Amazon charges $52 US). Hope that helps.

11

Maybe I’m late to the party but just wanted to let you know I too expierence glitches running 6.5 on a new iMac (with Lion).
The strange thing for me is that it only happens when I try using “piano” type sounds from Omnisphere and Alchemy.
My CPU’s at about 25% (quad core) as well and I’ve got 16GB ram but only using about 20% of it.
Can’t for the life of me figure out why it happens but other than that my iMac and Cubase work flawlessy.