Guys, this isnât an automation issue at all.
The polling rate of the band controls in Channel Strip, Frequency and StudioEQ is very slow compared to other third-party plugins, this can be verified by simply moving the control with the mouse, thereâs no automation needed.
Also this isnât just limited to the Freq controls, but also Q and Gain, so saying that it is quantized to the chromatic scale doesnât make any senseâŚ
I just want to add that the Buffer Size, Sample Rate and ASIO Guard donât play any role in this, the polling rate is hard coded that way, it is not influenced by the settings⌠This doesnât have to do with Linear or Circular Knob Mode eitherâŚ
The purpose of this is to reduce the CPU usage. When plugins are loaded, all their controls are fetched in real time, even when the playback in on Stop position, so having a polling rate of 50ms (20 times per second) instead of 10 ms (100 times per second) requires 5 times less CPU instructions, but since the values are refreshed less often this creates audible jumps.
Generally, equalizers are just set an forget, so you donât need such extreme polling rates. Perhaps Steinberg didnât expect users to make LPF sweeps with itâŚ
The resolution of the automation on the other hand, is 32 bit (or maybe 64) so it actually has billions of values, this high resolution is purely limited by the plugins/controls themselves. (I donât have the exact resolution, but anyways, since the automation is sample-accurate âreadyâ, it has to be higher than the sample rate itself, so for 192 kHz which is Cubase maximum SR, it must be at least 18 bit).
Additionally, the âsample-accurate automationâ added in Cubase 12 is only for the volume faders, it means that the polling rate of the faders has been increased so that every single sample can be affected individually by the volume change when using ramp curves.
Channel Strip :
Very slow polling rate (same as Frequency Linear Phase, but without the clicks)
Frequency :
First image (Minimum Phase) : Slow polling rate (faster than Linear Phase and quieter clicks)
Second image (Linear Phase) : Very slow polling rate (but with much louder clicks â these clicks are inherent to the Linear Phase nature or the filters)
PA bx_cleansweep Pro :
Much smoother (we can still see some stairs but not really noticeable to the ear)
Waves OneKnob Filter :
Extremely smooth (cannot be smoother than this)
First image has resonance set to None, second image set to Extreme.