After working on ProTools and Logic for a long time, I switched to Cubase when 10.5 was released.
In general I love the software, the workflow and the tools. I would love to make Cubase my main DAW.
But I have problems with the performance of the software. Even with relatively small sessions, the audio performance is peaking regularly, the software has hick ups or is not running at all.
I transferred several sessions from other DAW into Cubase, but am not able to get all the tracks running (even with extensive use of the freeze mode) that were without any problems in Logic or ProTools before.
My question: is this a problem of my setup (iMac Pro 18core) and I need to tweak it more for Cubase?
Or is this a general problem of Cubase (10.5) and I should not waste any more time to try to get the sessions running (and switch back to ProTools)?
Also have you looked at optimizing you Audio interface & Cubase configurations? page 1149 Optimizing Audio Performance in Cubase_Pro_10_5_Operation_Manual_en.pdf
In my experience, performance has been very bad since updating to MacOS Catalina and Cubase Pro 10.5. And yes, even on 10.5.12.
When I was using Cubase 10.0 and Mojave, performance was so much better. I never had to render or freeze any VSTi.
I’m on a 27" iMac with the i7 processor. So it’s been extremely frustrating but I have just accepted it for what it is until it is fixed. And I hope that it is fixed soon because I am sick of resorting to using the highest buffer size. Not to mention my fans go absolutely crazy loud trying to cool the processor.
I’ve noticed on my laptop running Catalina that I need to change the buffer size on loading a project regardless of whether I’m raising or lowering the buffer. - or I get glitches.
I’ve not looked into it because I dont generally use the laptop for cubase use and generally just using the Mac core audio.
As Martin says, there has been issues for Mac users in recent updates so make sure you’re on 10.5.12
I’ve had instances in the past where i’ve imported audio and Cubase has placed them into ‘musical’ mode - where it’s trying to apply a timestretch to each audio region - double check this hasn’t happened as it will place unwanted load on the CPU.
What kind of session size are you classing as ‘small’ also? And is this with plugins engaged or just raw audio files?
I used Pro Tools for over a decade and in the last year have gradually switched over to Cubase Pro. Other than the initial updates, which had problems crashing with many plug ins I use, there has been plenty of power here with me. Be aware that if on Mojave, simply upgrading to the latest Cubase version is not all I needed to do. I have automatic updates turned off for my Mac System software and was unaware there was an update BEFORE Catalina. Once I updated, all problems went away and it has been smooth sailing. My system is 10.14.6