Hey guys,
I was wondering if anyone else has heard of or seen this issue. I was working on a project last night and everything was fine until a certain point. I’m not certain what exactly triggered the issue but suddenly the CPU load meter inside of Cubase started hammering away at peak level.
At that point my audio would not play smoothly and the play cursor started skipping sections of audio. Quite honestly it was so annoying I simply exited the project, shut down my system and restarted thinking it would resolve the issue.
When I again loaded my project, the CPU meter was slammed to the peak jumping between Max and a few milliseconds shy of that.
Strangest part is that there was absolutely no activity at this point. I hadn’t even begun to play the project.
So I’m wondering what could cause the CPU meter to peak out with no audio playing??? 
Audio buffer set to 2048
ASIO Guard - High
Activate Multiprocessing On
Activate ASIO Guard On
64-bit (obviously)
I’ve even tried changing the levels of ASIO-Guard and other settings for the VST Audio System but no change. That meter is pegged and at this point I cannot even play my project.
Anyone else seen this behavior? How can it be corrected?
[UPDATE]
So I noted that if I turn ASIO-Guard Off the meter stops peaking but the when I play the project the audio skips and pops. So visually the CPU meter looks better but the playback issue is still a problem.
Spent days and hours on this project and now in its final stages Cubase is crapping out. 