How do I eliminate Cubase output latency?

Cubase
1

Hello. I’m Korean, so I’m using a translator.
Please excuse any awkward translations.

Normally, there’s no output latency.
However, after working for a few hours, output latency suddenly appears.

Optimizations like buffer size have already been completed,
but once output latency appears in a project, it persists, no matter what I do.

I’ve tried various solutions, including reopening the project, rebooting the computer, and reloading the virtual instrument, but nothing has worked.

There’s no input latency at all, only output latency.

Regardless of the project’s size, any project I’ve worked on for a certain amount of time experiences output latency.

Even a project with only two tracks, MR and piano, experiences output latency.

When I create a new project, there’s no output latency for several hours.

What’s the solution?

I couldn’t find a solution in the Korean community, so I’m posting here.

2
  1. Can you post more information about the interface you are using?
  2. Are you monitoring with headphones or speakers?
  3. What version Cubase are you using?
  4. What operating system is your computer?
5

I’m truly sorry. I found the cause.
It was because I applied Pro-L2 to the ‘stereo mix’.

But I have a question.

I have an Intel i7-13700K CPU and 64GB of RAM.
When running a heavy project, the CPU utilization is around 55%.
With this level of performance, how can there be output delay?

The latency shown in the Cubase ‘studio setup’ is only 4/5ms.

Or, are there any Limiter-type plugins that cause output delay?
I just applied a few plugins (EQ and Compressor) and there was no latency…

6

Hi and welcome to the forum,

Do you use any plug-ins on the Stereo Out or any of the Monitor buses by any chance?

Is any of your installed plug-in in the Demo/Trial mode by any chance?

7

Hi,

All Limiters introduce a latency. You can enable the LIVE mode at some limiters. Then they don’t introduce any latency.

9

Wow… I really didn’t know.
Then all the latency I’ve felt so far must have been caused by the Limiter.

  1. Then, by any chance, does the Limiter used in mastering plugins like OZONE also have latency?

  2. Besides Limiters, what other plugins include latency?

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Oh, and could you recommend a Limiter Plug-in that supports live mode?

11

Hi,

I know, the built-in Compressor plug-in has the LIVE mode. Therefore I was under the impression, the built-in Limiter has it too. Unfortunately this is not the case. So the only way would be to use the Compressor and set the Ratio to the maximum (8:1).

12

As far as I know all of them. But the amount varies greatly. Some produce a delay of only a couple of samples, which you won’t ever notice. Others require hundreds or even thousands of samples.
There is an option in Cubase to show you the latency caused by plugins. Go to the Mix Console where you can set up which racks should be displayed. Latency is one of them.

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13

It is generally any plugins that have to “look ahead” (a common thing in limiters and some compressors) of the sample they are processing to processing it, as well as plugins that can’t quite process the samples coming in immediately (for whatever reason).

There’s an easy way to tell when plugins are adding latency in Cubase. There is an optional field you can include in the MixConsole channels to display the plugin latency in the channels. It will be the sum of latency of all plugins in the channel’s inserts, but you could always disable all plugins but one in a channel to see what is added for a specific plugin. If the field is blank, that means the plugins inserted in that channel aren’t adding latency.

Sometimes different settings in the same plugin may make a difference as to whether a plugin does or doesn’t add latency, or if it adds more or less latency. For example, if a compressor or limiter has a “lookahead” switch, enabling that switch will pretty much always introduce latency (or additional latency if the plugin already has latency without the switch enabled).

I’m not sure what other plugin vendors may do on this front, but I do know that Waves often has plugins that have both a “normal” version and a “live” version, where the “live” version specifically has the word “live” in the plugin’s name. These are cases where the “live” version does not introduce latency but the normal version of the plugin does. Beyond that scenario, though, documentation for individual plugins may discuss latency considerations if use of certain controls within the plugin change the amount of latency introduced.

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