HELP - Real-time CPU peaking without much going on!!

Cubase
1

I’m trying to run a song I started in Logic, and transferred via midi export into Cubase & manually re-setup the whole mix with the few plugins I was using (mainly reverbs and delay), routing etc in Cubase. What would playback perfectly fine in Logic is causing real-time CPU peaking in Cubase!! The scary part - I’ve had WAY bigger sessions in Logic (I just started this song!!) and Cubase is already having performance issues. There is NO WAY I’m going to be able to add my usual multiple guitar tracks with Amplitube, etc in this song if its already peaking!!

What I also find weird is while the song is playing and peaking like crazy starting at bar 45, in activity monitor, not a single one of my 16 cores (8 real 8 hyperthread) goes above 50% during playback! How can this be?

I’ve taken screenshots of both the CPU Performance in Logic and Cubase at the same point in the song (Bar 45).

Cubase Performance.png
Cubase Performance.png1585×1091 319 KB

Cubase Performance Close.png
Cubase Performance Close.png745×411 63.7 KB

Logic Pro Performance.png
Logic Pro Performance.png1498×961 255 KB

I really hope its just user error or some setting I’m missing. I’m running a 8-core mac pro 2.93 (hyperthreads to 16) w/ 24GB ram running os 10.8.4 and Cubase 7.0.4. In Cubase my buffer is 512, which is actually higher than the 256 buffer I was running in Logic. I even tried upping it to 1026 and still got pops (though not as many) but since I’m using virtual instruments, this is not a solution as latency is just too much. I have tried having both AISO guard on and off, but it didn’t seem to make a difference at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I cant image Cubase is really that much worse at CPU than Logic pro, right?

2

well if you looked ,the answer was right in front of your eyes

3

Thank you for pointing that out to me! I missed it (obviously) and oddly enough it didn’t come up in a search.

Anyway, I tried the text file and nothing has changed - still peaks at that point in the song (around bar 45). Turns out that text doc is for random CPU spikes and NOT a way to get improved performance. :frowning:

I literally only have 19 tracks going at that point - 2 audio and 17 midi tracks triggering VI’s (not even 17 VST instances, as I’m running everything in a single VST instance of Vienna Ensemble Pro!) THATS IT!! I’ve run 50+ track songs no sweat in logic! I’m not even using heavy mix plugins yet as I’m still writing and not mixing!! What is going on here?!

edit: FIXED - I’m an idiot and had my VE pro set to a buffer of 0 instead of its usual 2 (which is how I have it set it logic). CPU load dropped down to around 50% at that section which is close enough to Logic’s performance that I’m now happy! Posting so hopefully others can learn from my idiocy. :slight_smile:

4