I am on a Mac with Sierra and using Cubase 9.01. The frequency eq causes a cpu spike that can have an audible effect and it happens, strangely enough, shortly after sound stops going through it. I will describe three situations to illustrate. I was loop playing in all three and the loop ended in a part that was playing through frequency eq. In one, the loop started in silence. In another, it started in a place where there was sound but it was not going through frequency eq. In the last, the loop started in a place that was playing through frequency eq so that there was sound going through feq the whole time. In the first two, there was a spike on the performance meter and an audible glitch in both cases shortly after the loop back. When the loop was entirely within the part playing through feq, there was no spike and no glitch. With feq disabled there were no problems. Exactly the same thing was happening with Revalver IV from Peavey and they fixed it. I suspected the noise gate that could not be disabled but they said it was a “normalization error”.
I have this exact same problem. Windows 10 64 bit, 16GB ram, SSDs qud core processor…very powerful computer. The native FREQUENCY plugin hogs an incredible amount of CPU and causes spikes exactly as you describe, though, I also get them when audio begins through it as well. I have isolated it down to even single instances of FREQUENCY. For example, just one track with Freq plugin activated will spike the CPU when the track stops, less often when it begins. If I freeze the track it works fine, but obviously this isn’t feasible to mixing multitrack projects. Its a shame because I love the plugn otherwise, but this renders it unusable.
I’m running Cubase 9.0.30. Steinberg, help!!