CUBASE Pro12 clipped and partial playback - any ideas

Hi all, my Cubase Pro 12 has suddenly started giving me selective playback of only some tracks and those that do play all the sounds are clipped and playing back in staccato. It does this for existing pieces and any new pieces. It records fine but the playback doesn’t work. I’ve got plenty of memory on both the PC and the external had drive where I save my projects. Any ideas? Grateful for any clear and jargon free instructions - I’m more of musician than PC guy! Thanks

Hi and welcome to the forum,

Try to increase the Buffer Size of your Audio Device, please.

Thanks I’ve increased it from 192 to 512, and also tried 256, but the problem persists

Hi,

Could you try to test your system by using LatencyMon utility?

Have you tried copying a project from that external hard drive to your internal disk and then loading it? Maybe there is something fishy with the external drive (would be weird, but worth a try).
Also, have you made sure to exclude Cubase from the windows antivirus scanner? Or, for a test, just disable real time protection in windows settings?
Can it also be some rogue plugin? Have you tried a new, empty project, record an audio event and play it back, without any plugins, and see whether that works?

Thanks but none of that works - it has virus scanned regularly before with no problem for cubase, I’ve tried copying a cubase file from external hard drive to min PC hard drive and problem persists and I have no plug ins - just PC with cubase on plugged into focus rite 18i20. all of this worked perfectly but no doesnt… What I need is a phone number and to talk to an actual cubase product person who I can talk to to work through the problem. The support phone number listed for UK support 49 40 40 110125 doesn’t work. this is poor customer support - does anyone have an up to date working phone number I can get through to technical support person please

I just encountered the same issue with my Cubase as well. Only happens during playback. Tried reinstalling, activating in safe mode, but no luck yet. Please let us know if you’ve found what caused the issue.

Hi and welcome to the forum,

What Audio Device do you use? What ASIO Driver do you use?

Try to increase your Audio Device’s Buffer Size.

Hi Martin,

I’m currently using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i, the ASIO driver is set to Focusrite USB ASIO. I tried increasing the buffer size as well but it did not fix the issue.

what does the Cubase performance meter show? If the values there are not constantly in the red, it is most likely not a performance problem of your system.
Test systematically: create an empty project with nothing in it, only add one audio track and record something, then play back. Does it work? Check the performance meter.
Doesn’t hurt to start Cubase in safe mode, just for a test: