When I deselect “Release Driver when Application is in the Background” under device setup it seems to have helped stop the CPU drop-out and spikes.
I’m running and testing Cubase 8.5.15 on my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (256 GB, 8 GB RAM, Intel Core i5, Steinberg UR22 [Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver 1.9.8]).
Hi,
I have just invested in Cubase Pro 8.5 and Steinberg UR22mkII only to discover that I have dropouts especially on the vocals which makes it useless for recording and production.
I have spent a fair amount of money and now time on this issue - not good enough Steinberg…
Either fix this issue on windows 10 or loose customers…
Best regards
Brian
Win 10, 64 Bit
I5, 3.2GHZ, 16GB ram
UR22MKII
8.5 seems to use far more CPU then 8.
For most of my projects that i start in 8.5 I have to switch back to 8.
This is really annoying and I challenge that the new features outweigh the huge amounts of spikes and dropouts.
3 months between the original post and now and no Steinberg input? Speaks volumes 
I’m getting the same problems, white screens, untold crashes, losing of functionality and no response from Steinberg either on a support ticket in 6 weeks.
I upgraded from Studio 4 which was rock solid. Worse thing I ever done.
Steinberg - your customer relations suck 
not sure if this issue has been fixed yet or not. if so please advise if this is old news, as no one has posted on this recently.
was having audio dropouts and performance meter spikes. windows 10 64 bit, 64 bit Cubase pro 8.5.15 with a Steinberg ur44. I had to do the following to finally solve it:
and i’m not even sure yet THIS fixed it…I may yet still be getting performance spikes…
I tried TONS of other configurations, and this is the only one I landed on. if there is a better fix out there and this is old news, please advise, as this is a rather extreme solution to what should be an obvious fix.
current system configuration:
asus g752vy i7 (skylake)
64 gb ram
512 ssd
1 tb sata
NVidia GeForce 980m
windows 10 64 bit
please advise
mitch
For me, the installing of the update “Cubase Pro 8.0.40 Update” works!
I had the situation that with Cubase 8.5.20 i had spikes and with Cubase 7 have no(!) Spikes.
I tried a lot to find the reason for that spikes in Cubase 8.5, also made a new clean install of Win 8 . . . .
If you have installed Cubase Pro 8.5.20 Update try this link:
http://download.steinberg.net/downloads_software/cubase_pro_8_and_cubase_artist_8/8.0.40/win/Cubase_8.0.40_Update_win.exe
Same problems. I get random spikes with Cubase open, and I don’t even have to load a project. Program open, MR816s and midi connected. Nothing else! I get randon 100% spikes into the red intermittently every few minutes. Recording stops. LatencyMon says the machine is fine. I’ve been going around with tech support for weeks. 100% no help at all. I’ve even asked them to provide me with a local referral to a tech that I would be glad to pay for. (I’m in Los Angeles. Lots of Cubase’s “important” users are here - musicians, studios, etc.) No response and now I can’t even get a call back. Today I sent a request to talk to a customer service manager. I’m not holding my breath…
A short video of my main monitor, with Cubase open (no project loaded) running Latency Monitor and Cubase’s F12 resource monitor has been sent to them. No response!
A copy is here for your amusement: - YouTube
i75820/GigaX99SLI, 16gigs, 3xSamsung850 SSDs, Asus GTX750, 2xMR816s. System is fully optimized in the bios and in W10 (as far as I can tell). Should run like a racecar! Work’s fine with Ableton. Oh yes, the headphones and the in-mixer control of the MRs keep failing as well. That “seamless” integration between Cubase and Steinberg’s hardware… a marketing myth… Have to run the MR utility and change the buffer size to get them working - and that lasts until I shut down Cubase at which time they are gone yet again.
Ridiculous…
I too have this odd problem. I thought it might be a sound card issue.
My set up is:
Can’t wait for the cure
Lloyd Plueschow
ok so I dug a little deeper…forgot to mention I have a UR44 interface. here’s the screwed up part:
IF I UNPLUG THE UR44, AND USE THE STOCK SOUND CARD (realtek I think) with the ASIO4ALL driver, THE PROBLEM (spikes, intermittent audio, etc.) SEEM TO GO AWAY. how ridiculous is that?? is the UR44 using USB 3.0 on a windows 10 system the problem for me??
if you’ve encountered this before, please tell me what to configure to make it stop so I can continue to use the UR44 I paid for…
mitch
Not sure if this is the problem directly since I have the same problem with a fire wire card
LP
perhaps the problem lies with Cubase and usb/firewire/thunderbolt interfaces and how it communicates with them. I would be curious at this point if the problem is limited only to those users who are using externally connected audio I/o devices…as opposed to card based audio interfaces…
mitch
Well, USB / FW / TB interfaces represent the vast majority of interfaces used in combination with Cubase. A general communication issue would affect virtually every user.
When using a USB interface, make sure to install the latest USB (or USB3) Controller driver for the motherboard (download on the manufacturer’s website). Also worth a try to use a different port, especially if using USB3 and a USB2 port is also available, as well as trying another USB cable. Power options need to be set to High Performance, all sleep options disabled.
With FW devices, it’s worth a shot to use the Legacy bus driver (directly selectable on Win 7, on Windows 8 and 10, please see here: FireWire port-based device does not work correctly in Windows 8.1 or Windows 8 - Microsoft Support).
This is unrelated to the OP issue, though.
Moving to Miscellaneous as there is no consistently reproducible issue to file.
I use a RME Fireface 400. This problem never occurred before. I use the RME drivers. What is the difference between the two drivers?
I hope you don’t mind if I quote Matthias from RME here 
The newer FW driver is a complete rewrite from MS. It should work better than the old one. In reality it had a serious bug that required workarounds in our driver to make it work, and proved to be less efficient after all. In its latest version under W7 it works ok for most users. Under W8…well, time will tell…
The post is taken from this thread: Win8: For those needing the 1394 OHCI (Legacy) driver. (Page 1) — FireWire & USB series — RME User Forum
I had the driver drop a few times on a Win 7 system I used a while back with a FF400 (all metering black, no input or output, warning of missing connection and device not recognised). This never occurred with the Legacy driver. The efficiency was roughly the same on that machine, but many have confirmed Matthias’ take in that regard as well. In Win 8 and 10 issues may be more severe, also depending on the mainboard chipset (I had a P55 system working fine with W8 and Legacy driver, no dice with the H97 - that could also be due to the FW adapter I was using, didn’t have the time to dig too much into that).
Mmm … well I’ve been using Cubase since Version 1.0 on the Atari STFM … I still have it upstairs in my loft, I might head up there, plug it back in to my old Roland U220 so I can make music again.
Cubase 8.5.20 Pro update (actually everything after Windows 10 with Cubase 8.5 etc) is plagued with audio spikes, peaks, audio dropouts etc etc.
I have tried EVERY conceivable configuration (that I can conceive of course!) of my computer (it’s a monster with all the RAM, harddrive space, superfast this and that attached to it as you can imagine) … I’m using the UR22 which has been fine in the past … but I’ve tried all of the suggestions (thanks for posting btw)… disabled internal soundcards, disable windows defender, disable asio guard, different buffer settings, ASIO4ALL, Yamaha Steinberg ASIO, LatencyMon tests with subsequent switching on and off of drivers and diddlywhatsits, ASIO secret agent special edition for the Commodore 64, I’ve tried disabling all the services that Windows doesn’t need etc etc … my opinion is that Cubase 8.5 / 8.5.15 / 8.5.20 … is broken.
Steinberg, could you please have a look at the latest version of Cubase 8.5 running on Windows 10 and see if you can fix it please … I have a new song I’d like to try out, it’s called ‘Show Me The Way To Go Home, I’m Tired And I Want To Go To Bed’ … should be a hit.
Cheers!
Computer Configuration:
Motherboard (some Killer thing from Gigabyte) aobut 12 i7 cores and one core from Fukushima (mmm … Steinberg.net doesn’t like me using the word for the place where the melted nuclear reactors are in Japan … so you’re gonna be reading dodo folks … that’s weird!)
Harddrives - Yes - about 40 of them scattered all over the place
RAM - 24 Gigabytes but I reckon I need 24 Petabytes to keep Cubase happy
Operating System - Yes, but I wouldn’t call it an ‘Operating’ System … but OK, it’s a system … certainly not as good as TOS (The Operating System) running on my Atari STFM and STe compters up in the loft
Sound Card - yes, but it should really be called a ‘Randomly No Sound Card’
Fans - yep, I’ve got lots of fans.
Catchya.
I feel your pain bro
… Thanks man, it’s a shame, I was really enjoying working with Halion 5 and all the cool new stuff, and I don’t mind the ‘lightness’ of Windows 10 either, a few buggy things going on but all in all, it’s a GREAT operating system (I do a lot of video work in Vegas Pro 13, beta-tested that since its inception, and various other Sony apps, awesome), but then to not even be able to play back a track that was working fine in the previous versions of Cubase without dropouts etc … what is that all about? Oh well, here’s hoping for Version 8.6 or … hey, let’s just jump from Version 8.something … to Version 10 … that’ll make sense.
Cheers.
Cubase is such a great program. This needs to be fixed!
Hi,
I also have real time peak spikes and audio drop outs big issue.
I have been trying to solve this problem since 4 months.
I already found some bottlenecks indeed, but this is also a Cubase problem.
I hope Steinberg support will take this seriously in consideration:
Please,
Regards,
Thomas
Audio card
RME babyface Pro USB
Computer
ASUS X99 Deluxe USB 3.1
i7 5960X
16GB DDR4
SYSTEM Disk SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 NVMe
2xCRUCIAL MX200
2xWestern Digital Caviar Black in RAID1
Zotac NVIDIA GT710
3 Displays
WINDOWS 10 Pro 64bit
…
Interesting. How Does Cubase perform, otherwise, without “multiprocessing”?