I’m on a 2019 16 core Mac pro w/128GB ram. OWC Accelsior 8 TB NVMe sample
drive, 8 TB Samsung SSD Raid 0 Project drive. Nuendo 11.0.10 MacOS 10.15.6, UAD Apollo x8 and
Apollo Twin X, also a UAD Satellite Octo (currently disconnected due to issues with my Apollo chain losing connection causing the dreaded error -38). I switched from a 2010 Mac Pro and did all fresh
installs - no migration assistance. I truly thought this system would be smoking but I constantly get the spinning beach ball - unprompted by anything - and upgrading to 11.0.10 availed nothing to cure my problems. I’ve been composing for a very long time and have always used either Cubase or Nuendo and truly thought this time that my very high-end Mac Pro would be able to handle any type of project I could throw at it. Instead I have very long load times (I know I have a large setup/template but there those who have much larger setups than me) also…very long quit times which not all that infrequently end in crashes followed by a must needs force quit, in addition to really long export audio times. I also cannot launch Spectral Layers inside Nuendo (works fine in stand alone) I am thankful that I am able to limp along and still meet my many deadlines but was surely hoping that all that money I spent would have resulted in some high-octane performance. I can’t imagine I’m the only one experiencing this and it’s not like I’m using any esoteric equipment or software. I know the feeling when a system works as purported and I long for the day my setup truly works. I’m not pointing all the fingers at Nuendo as I know the myriad of possibilities of problems where software meets hardware coupled with all the different manufacturers, drivers, cards, SSDs, NMVe, etc. I guess I’m just hoping someone will chime in and say ‘this is what I did and it worked’. It’s also so very difficult to test when the deadlines are ever-present.
On my system, it seems to work fine. Maybe update to 10.15.7 ?
Macbook Pro 2019 8 Core Intel i9 2.3GHz 16GM RAM
Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB (dual screen)
Mac OSX Catalina 10.15.7
Nuendo 11.0.10.321
Dante Virtual Driver 4.1.1.3
Focusrite RedNet 2 audio interface
Avid Artist Mix (x2) Avid Artist Control mix surfaces.
UAD2 Satellite Quad Firewire 800 plug in processor
LaCie 4 TB USB3 audio drive
My only idea is a video driver issue, which others have reported.
I have exactly the same problem, drives me nuts & sometimes this goes on for so long that I have to force-shutdown the computer. Seeing as this new forum has no capacity for adding sigs, basic spec is:
2019 MacPo 7,1 macOS BigSur 11.2.3. 16 core, 192GB, Vega II duo, RAIDs etc.
Apollo X8, UAD-2 Octo PCie, Antelope Pure 2, RME ADI-8 AE.
Nuendo 11.0.10.321, Absolute 4 etc.
This used to also happen on a Dell Windows workstation & I’d assumed may have been win related, but no. Steinberg’s only post on this appears to be passing the buck to macOS & suggests that BigSur is the fix. Wrong. There are also some other posts about disabling GPU acceleration, but that also seems a bit lame; ditto some referring to the Vega II - not possible, also doing film production here.
I have variously tired clean installs, removing 3rd party plugins etc. (no auto save, media bay scanning, etc etc as well.) None of which seems to make any difference. Mid-album project just now, have reverted to Pro Tools. As you indicate, this issue does not happen with any other DAW OR NLE including Logic, Live, Pro Tools, Luna, Wavelab, FCPX or Resolve Studio.
I really wish that they would get on and fix this & especially for a supposedly ‘pro’ expensive application. I would submit a formal tech support request, but this too seems impossible these days - goes nowhere & I get referred back to local country support who are largely clueless except for sales. Instead, this need to be taken up directly with the software programming team.
Update: tried to let AU local country support know & that webform doesn’t work either. Hopeless.
“macOS BigSur 11.2.3”
Not sure if Nuendo supports this officially yet…
I have a similar system, but am on Mac OSX 10.5.7, Catalina. Seems very stable here.
Macbook Pro 2019 Intel 2.3GHz 8 core, 16GB RAM, Focusrite RedNet 2 (Dante) interface, UAD Quad satellite (FW800 with adapters), Nuendo 11.0.10.321
A dear friend of mine who’s very tech savvy suggested that I disable the auto-save which I had set for 15min intervals. I’m an habitual saver so I tried it and i have not had a beach ball since then. (a couple days now) Also, and this goes against some manufacture suggestions, I set Kontakt 6 to 16 cores in the enable multi-processor drop down (inside Kontakt). My system seems much more stable as it’s not usually crashing upon quit now where before that used to be common. I have an Apollo Octo satellite
that I have removed from my chain (previously connected to my Apollo x8 and Twin X) that was giving me error -38 crashes and and UAD is willing to exchange it for the pci version. Do you get error -38 with your pci version? Well I hope these suggestions help as deadlines are hard enough without all the technical issues - especially after spending so much for the Mac Pro!
Glad it is working better. For my production stuff, I simply do not yet need a big mac tower. Still have the one I got back in 2008, with a different DAW, in case I need more processing… LOL.
I have extensive long Nuendo 11.0.11 startup times on 10.14.6 on a MacPro too. Luckily this version is very stable when it is running. But these problems continues since version 10.x. Maybe it is some plug ins causing this, but I don’t know which one. I cannot check around 1200 plug ins, especially when these are working fine otherwise. Therefore I have no clue what is going on - I have the dreaded beach ball for a long time until I can finally do some work.
With my second N 11 installation on a Win 10 workstation there are no such problems. Startup is very fast, despite also having many hundreds of plug ins installed.
I’m very satisfied with Nuendo as a DAW, but load times on my Mac are a real problem here.
@Matt_McGuire Since you have an intel-based Mac, you could consider setting up a Bootcamp (Windows) partition and install Nuendo 11 in Windows OS. I imagine that all your relevant hardware and software have Windows versions (drivers, etc): you could see if there’s any significant difference in performance. And, also for “fun”, you could try to run you Nuendo sessions on the Mac Pro in macOS, but with the internal sound card only, with all external hardware disconnected.
Thanks, but this refers to M1. Pretty sure Big Sur Intel is now fine with everything (except this beachball thing),
Same issue with Boot camp, I already have Win10 for workstations installed there. Overall, performs better on Big Sur.
As I mentioned in my original post - all background functions like auto-save, media bay scanning, auto disable VST 3 plugs when no clips etc are turned off. This is the first thing I did - given I have been through this before a couple of years ago with Nuendo in Windows. And from that perspective, is not recent N11 or Big Sur issue.
No probs with load time, or load in general. Nuendo runs very, very well - except, it unexpectedly gives the beach ball at irregular intervals. If Nuendo is playing, it continues to play, but all commands, control surface etc do not work. Nor can I switch to finder etc. Everything is locked until the beach ball stops. Sometimes this lasts say, 10 secs, other times maybe a couple of minutes. On rare occasions I have had to force shut down the computer.
Update:
Am fairly sure now that this is a Steinberg GPU driver problem, or more specifically: their ‘enable graphics acceleration’ preference which appears to be a macOS Metal driver and in particular, when running with AMD Vega IIs (ie, mine is also a film production workstation). This seems to tie up with my earlier experience with Windows & where Steinberg also had GPU acceleration built in, ‘high DPI’ they called it there but this too had the same problems with some high end Nvidia cards.
In any case, if I disable the graphics acceleration preference, the problem ‘seems’ to go away. Need to have it up and running long to be sure. And for now, can’t say I notice and graphics performance difference for now.
Would seem that the Steinberg GPU drivers are still buggy, they need to get it together, well overdue and certainly within workflow expectations that some pro facilities do run high end machines & without Apple’s awful /overpriced entry model cards. This is a pro video editing workstation with Vega II duo & there is no way that should need to compromise a DAW - and it clearly does not in the case of: Pro Tools Ultimate, Logix Pro X, Presonus Studio, Ableton Live, etc. Seems to be exclusively a Steinberg problem (eg, note all the recent graphics updates for Absolute 4 components).
You can actually enter your system details on the new forum:
Click on your picture (top right), then click the Head-and-Shoulders icon. Then select ‘Preferences’. Then click on the drop-down that has ‘Account’ in it. Then select ‘Profile’. You can enter the details there and users can see the details if they click on your image icon (if they know this!).
It is not as user friendly as the old forum and is far less useful as most people don’t realise it is there. I notice that most users here now have not set this up.
I’ve been an audio engineer nearly 25 years (oh my!), and learned to be 1 major update behind, all the time. I cannot sit and be the “bleeding edge” for several companies who rely on customers as guinea pigs. 
This goes especially for computer operating systems.
Thanks for this, appreciated (still not as immediately useful as having the computer config listed as sig on the past).
Agreed, this is a useful approach for many users. However, that does not apply so much here with many systems (both macOS & Windows) in use or under testing /config for larger scale image deployment /roll-out in labs, studios, multi-media facilities using CCC & Ghost. We tend to stay a little behind for the reasons you mention, but then there is always a tipping point where we have to move forward for various good reasons including software versioning, drivers, support, hardware levels etc. And, customer support.
eg: the 2019 macpro was quite poor with Catalina and various earlier versions of drivers from different vendors. This has now been fairly much attended to & the Big Sur systems along with other updates over the last twelve months have largely been exemplary. The 2019 mac pro runs at its best now with Big Sur architecture. Conversely, we’re very much staying away from the M1s until that is far more mature.
To my original points:
i) Neundo and Cubase GPU drivers have been a problem for a while now in my view: originally on ‘HDPi’ settings for Windows & Nvidia from a few years ago now (so much for ‘staying one behind’), and now apparently rearing its head again in Nuendo & Cubase Metal drivers for macOS, aka ‘enable GPU acceleration’ prefs. Appears directly related to Vega II GPUs. Disabling this preference on this particular test macOS workstation with Nuendo seems to have resolved the problem: no spinning beachballs /lock-ups & even more puzzlingly: no apparent drop in graphics performance. Possibly the whole thing is a placebo [?] although at one earlier point, this did interact with FabFilter plugs.
And,
ii) What’s with Steinberg’s removal of the ability to directly raise a support ticket against one’s account? IMO, this is very poor form and appears to be obsfucation: the various paths go around in circles, sometimes leading nowhere & back to the home page, mostly leading to various lengthy FAQs that have no relationship to the problem; or finally, passing the buck to local country distributor which in this case (AU), also has a dodgy webform that does not appear to work, nor have I received any response to these queries.
Are all your sessions preforming like this? or one in particular? Seems like you have a huge SSD so I doubt that its at close to full capacity as I’ve seen this cause slow load times etc. Everything pulling loading from the SSD? Also end quit issue’s are usually related to plugins or corrupted sessions. There is a possibility that your Template is corrupted (as this has happened to me) especially if you have been migrating from older versions of Nuendo or Cubase. As much as its a cumbersome process it does make sense to redo templates from time to time. Anyhow just trying to throw some new ideas your way that may or may not help.
All of my typical projects perform like this. When I switched over from my old system I did all new installs manually with no migration assistance. I’m now hoping that when I finally update to Big Sur that this will no longer be an issue. I have a large template but nothing extraordinary. After a while one starts to become numb to all the crashes and problems unless of course you lose a cue or worse. I don’t think it is too much to ask that my system should perform as intended…it’s hard enough just to write good music (hopefully). Thx for your suggestions!
I certainly can understand your frustration, and sorry to know that this is happening. I know this isn’t going to help you’re current situation, however I do run into the occasional issues that I find is usually traced back to my system being the common dominator most of the time (whether that is an hard drive issue, OS update issue, or graphic card issue or third party plugins etc, and ultimately have enjoyed rather a productive stable work environment overall luckily with Nuendo. Though my experiences with it has been primarily on PCs. I do hope you can find some solutions.
@Matt_McGuire: do you have a VEGA graphics card in your Mac Pro? If so, please update to Nuendo 11.0.20, we implemented a workaround for an OSX Vega graphics drivers bug that can cause intermittent UI freezes (spinning beach balls).
Have a nice day,
Erich