Hey guys, I’m not sure when this issue started, perhaps after updating to macOS Tahoe 26.2. I’m on a M4 Max with 64GB RAM.
I’m on N14.0.41 and this is the 2nd project I’m noticing extremely sluggish or laggy GUI whenever I open up a plugin. This is a post session, with an AAF loaded, 20-40min films, roughly 80-100 tracks.
It’s difficult to adjust any parameters and the meters lag as well. It goes away the minute I close the plugin and I can continue editing. Unisum, Cinematic Rooms, Pro-L, Pro-C, Clear etc. all trigger the lag. Pro-Q seems to be fine. Not entirely sure what it depends on.
Anyone else with similar issues?
For me, Stratus and Symphony make Nuendo GUI really mad…
Clear, DXrevive, Chameleon, Altiverb take ages to open. Especially annoying if they are on a DOP and you clip the event by mistake with the dop window open… there go 15 seconds just for clicking an event.
Interesting! Are you on macOS Tahoe by any chance?
Im a Cubase user. The Symphony and Stratus or any EA plugin works well in both platforms. Win11 and Mac Sonoma (in my case)
Just a side note:
Some plugin developers scan all hard drives for licenses before starting. If network drives are missing, a Synology NAS is switched off, or a USB stick or security stick is plugged in, it can take a long time for the plugins to start.
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For me, instantiating any Waves plug-in after I’ve logged onto my work VPN can take up to 30 seconds to appear. Super-annoying, though so far, Waves are the only ones that do this. This problem has persisted for me all through Windows 10 and now 11 as well. As mentioned, it must be a license scan going on and my work VPN is ‘unfamiliar’, or something to that effect (who knows). I’ve just learned to live with it.
I think my issue might be due to updating to macOS Tahoe. Plugins were opening/closing smoothly on Sonoma, I believe. During the Christmas break, I made the brilliant decision of updating the OS. 
Upon further testing, on an empty session with just 1 WAV file. From the plugins I tested, Pro-C3, Pro-L2, Accentize plugins, Cinematic Rooms all open and close without any issue.
However, loading Acon Dialogue Extract, Clear, Unisum, Pro-R2, some UAD plugins (others work fine) etc all cause the GUI to lag and stutter. Audio seems to be totally fine. I played around with buffer size and it doesn’t seem to change anything.
Strangely, while writing this post, I continued to test and now everything opens correctly. 
Great, now I can’t consistently reproduce the issue.
Ok, upon further testing, this is definitely a Nuendo 14 problem and seems to be getting worse. Today morning, a simple stem mastering session with no plugins loaded is so sluggish, I can’t even use it anymore.
From iStat monitoring, I can see that GPU FPS has dropped to 20Hz. I run my display at 120Hz. This issue could be tied to macOS’s variable refresh rate (although I have disabled it in display settings).
Ableton, Bitwig, Logic all seem to run fine. Heck, I can even load the session in Nuendo 13 and it runs fine. On the other programs, even if FPS is at 20, when I launch, it goes back closer to 120 and there is no GUI lag.
Can Steinberg please look into this?
EDIT: Ok, spoke too soon. N13 is showing some lag as well. macOS Tahoe is probably the culprit.