Cubase 8.5 and VE Pro 5 - Performance Question

Cubase
#1

Here’s one for the experts here. I’m new to Cubase so I’m not sure what to make of this.

I’ve been using Sonar for years and have used it with VE Pro running on the local DAW (not a slave). With the fairly large orchestral templates I use, this gave me better performance (= less pops and clicks) in Sonar. When I started my first project in Cubase I naturally used my VE Pro template and added more articulations. But I was getting too many pops and clicks.

Here’s the part I’m curious about - I moved all of the VSTis out of VE PRo and host them directly in Cubase. The result: goodbye pops and clicks! And I’m running at a lower ASIO buffer size…

Does anyone have any thoughts why VE Pro would perform worse that Cubase alone?

  • I have gone through all of the usual steps to optimize my DAW and my specs are pretty good. Latency Mon is all green.
  • I tried turning off ASIO guard when using VE Pro. It seemed to help but not enough.
  • CPU, RAM and Disk activity are nowhere near overloading the system. CPU goes to about 25%, RAM is < 50%, Disk IO is nil (and I’m using USB 3 SSDs)
  • Most VSTis are Play with Hollywood Orchestra Gold.

Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave

#2

I’ve been running Cubase 8.5 with VE Pro for about 7-8 months and haven’t had any major performance issues as long as ASIO guard is off. I have read that many people complain about ASIO Guard/VE performance, that ASIO guard has to be off. And that is indeed my case. If ASIO guard is on, I get hiccups and latency. Even though it runs fairly smooth for me, I am getting up there in CPU spikes.

Sorry this post isn’t any help. I guess it’s just confirming Cubase/VE performance issues. Steinberg told me they are supposed to release an update soon with lots of fixes. Hopefully this is part of it, and hopefully it is soon.

#3

The more pertinent question is why you would think running all your instruments in another host such as VE Pro would result in a performance improvement when you’re just using the one computer? VE Pro’s original reason for existing was for linking together 2 or more computers, with one of them hosting the DAW and the other computers hosting the plugins and virtual instruments… as computers have got more powerful there’s less need for such multiple computer ‘farms’, and thus less need for VE Pro I think! The only benefit to it now is convenience… it’s nice to have a VE Pro template with everything loaded into it and to be able to switch projects in your DAW and still have everything connect up smoothly and instantly playing, and to have MIR Pro embedded into VE Pro, etc. But in terms of performance improvements I’ve long found it redundant.

Personally I now just have a nice Cubase template saved with all my instruments loaded into it, and depending on the track I just load it up and add/subtract whatever extra/unnecessary instruments I need for the particular song and then ‘save as’.

Now, if you’re Hans Zimmer then by all means keep using your multiple computer fam and VE Pro, but for most of us Cubase and modern PC’s are more than capable of loading and running smoothly large projects. :slight_smile:

#4

Thank you for your replies.

David - Don’t worry, your reply is helpful. I did kill ASIO guard but still had some issues. Maybe I just didn’t test well enough (reboot system, etc.).

Cuttlefish - I get what you are saying and as long as I get good performance, I’m happy not using VE Pro. But it helped greatly when running Sonar. In some cases VE Pro can provide a performance boost even when running on the same PC as the DAW (though not nearly as much as when running on slave computers). It most certainly does for me with Sonar. There are reasons for this. One is that each application in Windows gets its own process space and access to resources. We use this principle in software development to “spread out” the processing load. Even in a multi threaded environment this can often result in better overall performance.

Thanks again for replying. I’m perfectly happy loading everything in Cubase and there advantages too. I might retest the VE Pro template - after I finish the current project!

#5

I do agree that you can’t really expect a performance improvement if you host all your instruments in VE using the same computer. The reason I do it in the same computer is for workflow reasons (and because I can’t afford a slave yet). My template is not huge. I have around 70 tracks (about +/-36GB of RAM when loaded). But it is huge when you consider loading times which at one point it would take about 7-8 minutes to load. And that was when I had around 50 tracks in my template. Can’t imagine how long it would take now.

I host all my orchestral instruments in VE so that I can close and open templates and projects without having to wait 7-8 minutes every time. That is more than enough time to kill ideas.

Another thing is saving with so many tracks used to take around 10 seconds which is too long especially when it’s every 5 minutes (which is a must for me) and you’re in the zone. It just kills.