Yes I discovered that early on. I am indeed in Rosetta. Many plugs don’t even show up in M1 mode.
In Rosetta specifically to have access to most plugins.
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Yes C12 native is a double whammy because plugins have to be M1 and VST3.
I use BlueCat patchwork to open native VST2 or Intel AU plugins in C12 native mode. Its not perfect but it helps.
I have about 1200 plugins and most of mine are now M1 and either VST2 or VST3. So it is getting there.
I just use it in native mode with Bluecat Patchwork for DSP UAD plugins or SSL. But mostly i try to use the native plugins I have.
Any downside to using Bluecat?
Some plugins not will not open.
It let me open Output - Movement and use it but when i reopened the project it cause it to crash, same with Sound Toys decapitator. Sound Toys has M1 and VST3 public beta now so that resolved that one.
All i can say is it works most of the time fine, had a couple of bad plug-in experiences with it. But in general it works great.
I own the Vienna synchro Strings, and from what I see, when one preset is playing, all the mic layers from the session are playing, meaning even there Celli mics will stay opened and play while violin 1 preset is playing, which makes way more layers to process than East west banks. That might be the reason why there are differences in processing power between the 2 banks.
Also, banks programming is becoming a real issue these days with heavier and heavier banks, and sometimes poor optimised presets for efficiency…
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The Enable Record on Selected Audio/MIDI Track option has nothing to do with an “ultra low latency record mode”, I’ve never heard of this before.
The only thing it does is applying Audio Pre-Record Seconds, meaning that all record enabled Audio tracks will record the input signal in the background in order to keep the last X seconds when you hit Record. But this is done in the RAM, and the stress on CPU is indiscernible.
I think what you describe is the ASIO-Guard that is simply not compatible with real time dependent signals, that is, Instruments that are monitored, either by the monitor button or when it is record enabled, in the case Auto Monitoring While Record-Enabled option is selected (which is by default). There’s no hidden “ultra low latency” mode whatsoever, that’s the very first time I hear that. 
ASIO-Guard only serves to reduce the strain on the CPU, so when it is disabled you just see your real CPU performance… We are all so used to this feature that we think this is the “normal” operating performance, but if ASIO-Guard is turned off completely in the settings, most big projects won’t even play anymore. A lot of people overestimate their CPU capabilities just because there’s many features that help it perform better.
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It has to do with Monitor, not with record enable… that’s just a simple fact.
In his post Chriss blames it on the record-arm but it isn’t just that. If you don’t arm the track but enable Monitor instead, the result is the same, it’s because of the Auto Monitoring While Record-Enabled setting. Period.
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@Louis_R can you read ? I have to ask this because in Chriss’s post it talks about the record enable setting in preferences causing this issue.
I only mentioned the exact same setting because one of the head programmers from Steinberg who posted said that could be a possible explanation.
Why don’t you read t before commenting.
No, you mentioned auto-arm, not auto-monitor.
I do, but you don’t seem to do.
Now Chriss has said that, everyone will think the issue has to do with Record Enable specifically, while that’s not the case.
@Louis_R sorry, got out of hand there. Bad Monday not helped by a forum.
You do [not] need to accept my apology but it is heartfelt. Im not very good with the whole forum thing at times. Thrash out when i should just ignore or move on.
Its my personality that is at fault.
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Hello there! Now we are heading 2023… and with lots of update from various developers, how do you find your mac studio? because I am thinking of getting a used mac studio base model (max) with 1tb SSD (32gb ram) from my good old mac mini late 2018 3.2 i7 intel, 64gb ram, 2tb ssd hehe…
Do you like it so far, or still underwhelming…? (sorry, for bumping, very hard to get more reviews about this haha… especially cubase 12 users…)
Running nicely, no complaints!
There were some initial difficulties when C12 was fresh out but now with the recent 12.0.52 everything is actually pretty smooth - even on Ventura, which is not officially supported yet actually but I have no complains other than the occasional crash - which happens on any system at any given time haha.
Strindberg sends his regards.
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I see I see, I can tell your tone has dramatically changed and it sounds very convincing! I just want it for my home studio, solely for my own work so, yeah. I am also very interested in getting the base model with 1tb upgrade. (I know it is inferior than your ultra model though)
Curious what your workload normally looks like in a project?
I’m still using my 2018 (or 2020 rather) Mini here. Only has 16GB of RAM and the 500GB SSD but so far haven’t really felt the need to replace it yet (though Im sure Intel’s days are numbered now), but my projects are mainly 24-30 tracks, mainly audio from my hardware (my MPC is my ‘main’ sequencer) but can get about the same with a Cubase made project with about 20 sampler tracks, a few with TAL Sampler, 3-4 VST synths, etc… Haven’t hit any CPU walls here yet.
Yeah the more I got working with it and figured out stuff in discussions with devs and users, the more you understand the inner workings of why a render is suddenly slower and sometimes it is faster.
The reason my VSL plugin score was rendering so slowly is because the Vienna Synchron player plugin is poorly optimized for M1 systems and is rendering more inefficiently than the older VSL plugin - don’t ask me why.
Since I have gradually stepped over using Kontakt and EW libraries though, I see no big performance issues.
One of the biggest issues was also that M1 native rollout amongst developers was still going slower than anticipated. But most of my plugins are now native and I am almost about to try and create a session in non-Rosetta mode of cubase. But even Rosetta-mode is fast enough for me.
What sounds kind of tempting is the fact that Apple’s Logic supports “mixed” loading of plugins. You can run plugins that are not M1 native in Rosetta mode alongside plugins that are native. This means that you can use your processing power more efficiently - as opposed to Steinberg’s solution to not activate non-M1 native plugins at all when you open it up in native mode. At some point I’ll probably buy Logic and use it alongside Cubase…
Looks to me like you’re doing light scoring/music production which doesn’t even need a fully spec’ed Ultra. Your workload looks like almost a quarter of what I’m doing. A score I just finished had a full orchestra with around 100 OPUS instances to each two microphone positions which are activated. This takes not even half of my RAM and ressources as the performance meter is around 30-40% in idle. This includes all extra IR reverb send effects I have loaded as well.
After applying a couple of Neutron 4 inserts to several orchestra groups and adding “Ozone 10” to the master channel, rendering 6 minutes of music takes around 5-6 minutes give or take.
This used to be only 40-50 instances max on my older 3930K Hackintosh with 32GB of RAM and it would regularly spasm out when in idle. 
Would you have a similar performance on a PC with similar CPU power and RAM? Yes, totally. Will it be as power efficient and take only little desk space and feel like it’s 2022? No.
Oh yeah nothing even remotely close to scoring haha. Pretty much just recording my own stuff or band stuff, so I treat it pretty much like a 24-32 track console setup (I do use a 24 channel SoundCraft into my 24 inputs to the DAW). I have tons of software instruments but rarely ‘write’ in Cubase, so all of my stuff for the most part is my MPC triggering the rest of my synths, I just sync the MPC over MIDI Clock and track each instrument into Cubase when its done. The fun part is after that, when it comes to editing, adding effects, but so far no trouble here. I have a feeling my Mac will outlive my needs, but Apple will make me swap it out quicker than it needs to be.
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Are you having any luck with answers on this? Because I have nearly the exact same issues-and I need answers troo. That beachball spinning is a serious waste of time. Tag-and thanks for making the post!
Well if you follow the posts written in this thread by other users and also including my follow-ups, you will see that it has significally improved over the past year.
Current status:
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Cubase 12.0.70 is out stability is great! (Still crashes in some occasions but that is mostly due to faulty plugins)
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A lot of major vendors have now released M1 compatible versions of their plugins, making running Cubase in Native mode finally possible
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Performance in Native mode can be 10-20% better than running Cubase in Rosetta mode, with faster rendering times
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You are going to have to say goodbye to some older plugins that are not being updated with VST3/M1 Native compatibility
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Performance entirely relies on how optimized plugins are and how well they are written by the developers (I suppose porting to a new platform is the noment where sloppyness shows your vulnerabilities)
1.5 years in - I love my setup and do not regret my purchase. I’ve even heard of colleagues who use just a simple M1 Mac Mini to run mid-sized projects on it. Contrary to what Apple suggests you, like the new M3 macs - an entry level M1 Mac can already be all you need. Just look at your workflow and how the old CPU stacks up in performance to the new CPU.
Did I mention, I have bought Logic 
- Every time I encounter a plugin-related crash in Cubase, I test the same scenario in Logic and it doesn’t crash. However, Apple has their own issues at the moment, with hanging UI and plugin startup issues. Nobody is perfect.
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Cubase 13 is out since friday and I’ve already started using it - no big issues here except for a weird glitch that causes to move VST windows from the top left screen. Nothing big. The rest is as it was and I love the new features 
