Cubasis 3 for iOS Performance Issues - Read This First!

Dear all,

With the release of Cubasis 3 we have received many forum posts from users, who complaint about the performance of the app.
Thanks to the help of our users we’ve been able to resolve many user-reported problems in the previous Cubasis 3. maintenance updates.

Please note that the overall performance of Cubasis depends on various factors, such as the processor, available RAM and free hard disk space of your iPad, as well as the sample rate setting, hardware latency setting, and the number of tracks, instruments and effects used in your project.

Alongside, using third party instrument and effect apps in or next to Cubasis, can have significant impact on the iOS devices’ performance and easily lead to serious performance problems and/or crashes of the app, depending on the number and performance demand of the apps used.

A few observations:
• Older devices obviously reach their capacities substantially faster than current models
• CPU-demanding 3rd party instrument and/or effect apps significantly increase the system load and decrease the responsiveness
• Running multiple audio apps in parallel or connecting apps via Audio Unit, Inter-App Audio and/or Audiobus increase the system load drastically
• Lower hardware latency values can aggravate the problem, while higher values can help to reduce the system load

Important:
If you encounter problems, we recommend to open the “System Info” (last tab in the inspector), and start the project playback.
If you encounter CPU or DSP spikes, read on to learn how to easily get around these issues.

Cubasis offers many options and possibilities to avoid performance problems:
• Reduce the number of 3rd party instruments and/or effect plug-ins used in the project
• When using Micrologue, reduce its polyphony. If an AU instrument has a polyphony or performance setting, try to tweak it for maximum performance
• Use Track Freeze to render CPU/DSP demanding 3rd party instrument and/or effect plug-in tracks into audio tracks
• Where possible, insert third party effect plug-ins as send effects, to use a single plug-in for various tracks at once
• Choose a higher Latency Hardware value in the setup
• Please check if enabling Background Audio solves issues when using 3rd party apps with Cubasis
• Please check if launching 3rd party apps first, before loading them with Cubasis helps to improve the situation
• Make sure there are several GB (ideally more than 20%) of free disk space available. Disk performance is reduced if the disk space is close to full
• Quit all audio and non-audio apps by double tapping the home button and swiping them up
• Reboot your iPhone and iPad devices from time to time*
• Find a good balance of instruments and sounds that does not stress the CPU too much

Please note that these limitations are inherent to iOS, and common to other comparable DAWs as well, and most of the time unrelated to Cubasis.

We hope these steps are helpful to keep the performance of your iPad powerful, while putting your focus on making great music with Cubasis!

Best,
Lars

*Older devices: Holding down the home and power button for about 10 seconds until the Apple logo appears. Newer devices: Hold the power button and "Slide to power off”, then wait and press the power button again for a few seconds to restart the iOS device.

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