I have both cubase 7.5 and cubase 8 and am about to jump ship from Reaperland.
My setup also uses Ve Pro 5.
Which of the two programs is better stability wise and performance wise? Please post your experience especially if you have Ve pro. Thanks!
Mac or Win?
Windows 7 x64. I also have waves, ni, Spectrasonics.
If you get anywhere near maxing out your system in Reaper then forget cubase unless you want a world of pain with cpu spikes etc. I prefer Cubase but theres no denying Reaper is more CPU efficient.
The performance experience compared to other DAWs might vary quite a bit from system to system, depending on several factors.
I tested a couple projects in both DAWs three weeks ago. Results of one of the tests as pictured (sorry, the system is in Italian), 44 stereo tracks, 264 plug-ins. Windows 8.1, Yamaha Steinberg USB driver, UR242 interface, 1024, 512, 256 and 128 buffers were tested (pics were taken with 1024).
The 44 tracks had 6 plug-ins randomly picked (pictured in C85_reaper_test_channel). The PC in use is DAW #1 as listed here: List of performing desktop DAW configurations - Cubase - Steinberg Forums
@OP: Under normal conditions, I would expect C8 to perform slightly better than 7.5. Unfortunately, this is not true for every user, especially on Win 7 (7.5 usually behaves better on 7 due to the different GUI implementation)
Thanks so much - THIS is what I wanted to see. So the performance of C8 without AG is roughly the same, if not negligibly better, as Reaper? Also I’m assuming in both cases you experienced 0 crackles/dropouts, etc.?
If so, that would be fantastic news to me and I’d turn off AG and run with C8 all day long.
Hello,
difficult to say. I’m sure one could find one DAW to perform better than others, while others could see exactly the opposite behaviour on a different system. No crackles, yes… both DAWs were close to dropping out around 128 samples (a couple plug-ins I used are quite CPU intensive). Some plug-ins might also be more efficient in a certain DAW and less in others.
You can set AG off indeed and you should if your system runs better that way 
Its efficiency is also pretty much system-dependent - moreover, it is designed to take advantage of Hyper-Threading, where you have (simplifying a bit) a physical thread and a virtual thread ‘running’ on the same physical CPU. HT can be detrimental to real-time performance, especially if there is a bottle-neck anywhere (something on AG can be found here: https://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/hyper-threading-and-asio-guard.html).
I meant to ask did you turn off AG in your setup for the test result you posted?
Yes, ASIO Guard was off. With AG on, the average performance was slightly higher (3% or something), while the real-time was close to zero (with 1024 buffer size, it increased with lower buffers sizes, of course).
Great! Can’t wait to jump ship to C8. I’m just learning C7.5 so as soon as I get comfy I’ll settle in with 8 
Fabio,
thank you so much for explaining the possible detrimental effects of Hyperthreading specifically on real-time audio performance.
I recently set up a new, very fast DAW. My projects are 100% real-time - I mix and record simultaneously all tracks of a live performance. I was pulling my hair out because I got spikes and crackles all over the place with a project load which should not cause any problems. Now with HT off, it works like a charm. Thank you
Mikael
As long as it’s being discussed, I linked from the above aticle to the ASIO Guard specific article here:
Very informative. But I find the following statement - referring to ASIO Guard and Multi-timbral Instruments in Cubase8/Nuendo7 confusing:
In Cubase 8, multi-timbral VST Instruments are running in ASIO-Guard mode, too, which enhances performance additionally. However, multi-timbral VST Instruments will be switched to real-time usage as soon as a MIDI track is selected, that is assigned to the instrument.
Why would ASIO Guard be removed when merely SELECTING a MIDI track assigned to this instrument?
No real time processing is needed until the track is Monitor or Record enabled.
Hugh