You are not the only one with performance issues.
Cubase 8 on windows 10 perfect.
Cubase 8.5 on windows 10 and I’m getting lots of peaks too 100%, interrupting my sound.
It’s defintely cubase. I have ran Ableton and Fruityloops with the exact same vst’s open and they are not even 20% of 100% performance.
For me both Cubase 8 and Cubase 8.5 have severe performance issues. I upgraded from Cubase 5 which was extremely fast and snappy no matter what project I threw at it. The same projects run much worse in 8. I upgraded to 8.5 in hopes it would be better but there was no change so I got a refund. There is something seriously wrong with the performance monitor and how Cubase is using the system resources; when Cubase is nearly maxed out on the verge of overload, Windows reports only 20% or less CPU usage and the computer is still fast and snappy outside of Cubase while Cubase is running to the max. So it is not using anywhere near the full potential of the available CPU power. Cubase 8 is a performance failure in my opinion and it did not live up to Steinberg’s promise of improved performance over previous versions.
My system is a Core i7 with 12Gb of Ram, Steinberg UR22 audio interface and Windows 7.
It’s the way the system is set up. It takes a bit of time and patience to tweak and tune the hardware and software drivers etc.
Using two separate asio drivers here, one Yamaha USB audio codec/asio with small powered montors for doodling at night/on my own to save booting the whole system. When things get serious, switch over to the sonic core DSP card which gives substantial performance increase.
Just been doodling, using the Yamaha USB audio codec, layering big pads with multi percussion and arps using demanding kontakt/play/halion 5/nexus/Bestservice engine libraries with synth master and waves codex, currently on 26 tracks, haven’t started with melodies or housekeeping on it yet.
The tracks are going through to 8 groups with the usual dusting of inserts and fx sends across the project, hers a pic of the performance meter. That performance will improve somewhat when the whole system with the sonic core asio drivers are loaded.
Thai is an self build (October 2014) i7 4790k, Z87 chipset, 16gig ram and onboard graphics driving two 21" displays, (far better than the nVidia card/drivers that were dumped)
Other than the usual Steinberg bugs and broken bits, C8.5 is rock solid and performs like a dream running all the vsti’s and fx in real time. Can easily get up to 45 tracks without any bouncing down to audio.
Try the Win 7 one, they are bios, app and general hardware tweaks. Never used 8 or 8.1 and Windows 10 runs fine on dual boot, just don’t like it personally. There’s enough bloat ware in cubase let alone win 10 which is just a hybrid of the two with a new lick of paint in any case.
good that it works for you, but I am dissapointed. 
I really dont want to, but thinking about going back to Reaper which was rock solid on my system. Please Steinberg do something.
Lots of users seem to be happy with win 10 but maybe it’s just not mature enough yet for the multitude of hardware configurations that are on the market. Don’t give up though even though it’s really frustrating! it’s general knowledge that apps like reaper and sonar can out perform cubase and that’s an issue that No doubt Steinberg are looking seriously at. Even so, cubase is streets ahead in concept and design.
There seems no logical explanation for some users performance issues on fantastic spec machines, some off the shelf systems seem to work out of the box and others don’t, like wise with self builds. It’s pretty reasonable to say that the majority of new systems on the market are aimed at serious gamers and DAW use was not considered when they were set up but that’s no big deal. It really is a matter of delving into the machine and setting up and tweaking, even the slightest change can give huge performance gains, just be sure to make an image or system restore point so you can get back to where you started from if there’s any marked decrease.
General settings like write caching on the drives, enabling multi processor support, disabling core parking etc etc are the same for any Windows system, likewise with bios tweaks, most modern bios setup apps can now save favourites. With win 10 it’s just the control panel, menus and where to get at the settings are a bit different in win 10 but the functions are the same. A system will only do what it’s told do do.
Have you tried rolling back to an earlier nVidia driver? There were substantial problems with some releases here and which many users on here experienced and resolved by getting earlier release drivers. Also make sure that just the basic card drivers are installed, taking out any 3D components and other nVidia stuff that’s just not relevant to DAW use.
It’s also worth checking motherboard and chipset drivers out on Intel’s site, there were some recent issues here that were traced back to updated Asus setup files which loaded all sorts of fancy “Asus exclusive” features which messed everything up, those issues were rectified by rolling back the drivers with standard Intel ones…
I dxid the win 7 opti and the one from Steinberg, but still having issues with performance in Cubase. Will it affect my vst performance, if i buy another 16 gb RAM? I dont know what else to do…
16 gig ram is quite adequate.nThe best place to start would be the motherboard bios and work through the system from there. Steinbergs optimisation page was a bit long in the tooth, sweetwaters is by far the best as that’s how they set up the systems they build and sell, the last thing they would want is to be flooded by customers with hardware performance issues.
It’s also worth asking what vsti’s are you using as well, it’s a disaster for many if, for instance, kontakt libraries are installed on the system disk, best to have separate disks for system, sound libraries and composition, like wise enabling multi core support in some plugins can be problematic for some people, for example, kontakt, unless it’s used standalone that is and just a few instances of Serum with a few NI Replika can easily bring a system to its knees.
So start at the beginning, what motherboard and bios, also what sound card are you using?
can anyone tell me if adding more RAM would improve vst performance?
I’m reading on other DAW forums that Windows 10 is causing a headache for a lot of people. I’m using same programs, including Cubase on a fully updated Win7 Pro, and not seeing a lot of the issues other people are. Based on past experience, I usually wait a year or two before I update an OS to the current model, but may wait even more this time since Win7 support lasts until 2020.
More ram definitely improves the handling of vsti instruments, especially if you’re loading samples. When I had four gigs of ram, Omnisphere and Kontakt both took longer to load. I upgraded to 16 gigs, and Omnisphere loading is instantaneous, while Kontakt libraries are either quicker to load, or the same.
Testing the same template in Cubase, and three other daws, Cubase is the slowest when it comes to loading sample libraries. But, it’s the most stable for me once I’m working with it, so worth it in my opinion.
I build a fresh install of Windows 10 on a machine that was under-spec’d and I had problems with play-back stopping a very few seconds. I then build a fresh install of Windows 7 on the same machine and had EXACTLY the same problem!
Windows 10 was not the problem - Cubase 8.5 consumes more resources than any previous version.
I then built a fresh install of Windows 10 on a new PC, (Intel i7-6700, 32GB Ram) and everything ran fine.
The problems that people are reporting are because Cubase 8.5 requires more resources.
My suggestion for minimum spec would be, (although I have not tested them)
If anything than Win10 is a performance boost, but the drivers have to be up to date. I have had severe spikes that first went away after a driver update for the 6 extra usb3 connections realized through a VIA chip on my motherboard. One thing is for sure, keep away from the more expensive motherboards that offer additional connections. I am very satisfied with the vst performance in 8.5 but not so much the vsti , there seems to be something that is not quite right.
7 and 8 work fine on my win 10 box with albeit not the newest cpu (Q6600) and 8 GB ram.
8.5 abruptly spikes into %100 ASIO every 20 seconds or so with 1 VST instrument (NI FM8) being played.
I haven’t toyed with ASIO guard yet but 8.5 does have this issue.
TMBN is has nothing to do with the BIOS, OS tweaks, and other voodoo - 7 and 8, as I’ve mentioned before, run just fine.
I think there’s some major dependency issues across the software libraries in the OS, Cubase, VST, etc. I have two OS’s on my machine - one has everyday Windows 10 - Virus checker, OneDrive, Office Apps; the other is pure DAW Windows 10 - Cubase 8.5, and associated VSTi, nothing else.
DAW Windows 10 has been exhibiting spiking issues as described in the previous post by shugz with both NI and Steinberg (Halion Sonic 20 VSTi), This is after a clean install of 8.0.10 all the way to 8.0.35. I did an upgrade to 8.5 and the same issue occurs.
I’m currently preparing for a clean install again of 8.5 and Win10 for the DAW side and on a whim installed Cubase 8.5 (full installer) onto the Everyday Windows 10 - and the spiking issue doesn’t exist. Indeed I loaded up 67 VST Instrument track of Halion Sonic armed them all and played a chord adding notes until CPU usage hit 98% or so - still no spikes or issues with overload it just sat their for 5 minutes no problem (with all the background apps like OneDrive, Skype etc doing their things - was rather a horrid racket though!).
Clearly my hardware isn’t an issue, nor is having a streamlined OS simplifying the problem. I’ve been trying to figure out if there is a preferred install order for things but so far it all seems rather hit and miss whether or not you get a stable, non-spiky setup.
And for those that are wondering, yes LatencyMon and DPC checker thingy both given both OS’s a very clean bill of health (as confirmed in my “EveryDay” Win10 OS).
When I’ve got the clean DAW Win10 and Cubase 8.5 reinstalled I intend on checking every driver and program version I can find to see if the two systems are indeed identical. They should be as I use the same install folders for both OS, but who knows what the magic of auto updates might be doing behind my back. If I find any clarity on this I’ll do a post. Fingers crossed it will all come good again.
I had ASIO spikes last week on one project, where I tried out the Waves Trueverb plugin on all my verby tracks and sends… this made me not finish the song and I even had one crash where the backup file was corrupted… The next project, running only Steibergs reverb plugins runs like a charm again…
Just mentioning this as another venue to check…
I’m having performance issue too since upgrading to Artist 8.5 using Windows 10. Tried all 3 ASIO Guards, multi-core is selected but project freezes constantly. If I load the same project in Artist 7.5 no issues at all, runs smooth, no crashes. ASIO bar is the same in both versions but for whatever reason freezes\crashes in 8.5. I think I may need to see if I can get my money back and stick with 7.5.
I said I’d post again with the result of a complete reinstall and comparison check between the two OS’s on my system.
On the bright side - the real time performance problem is now with in the bounds of usable. The odd spikes that were causing prohibitive problems are now gone. What remains appears to be the performance overhead of Cubase 8.5 which seems to be higher than the previous good state I had with Cubase 8.0 before the dreaded spikes appeared.
To get this state:
So far so good then.
I installed Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate at this point and Kontakt in particular which previously was spiking prohibitively making its use for midi recording pointless. It now works though I not a substantially higher real time performance meter than previously. I’m putting this down to Cubase 8.5 changeover and/or updates to Kontakt.
For the moment then I’m a happy camper. I hope this info might be helpful to others.
I do have one remaining problem in that loading an Cubase 8.0.35 project into Cubase 8.5 produces no sound until you click on a fader and/or turn off automation for some instrument tracks. As soon as you turn on automation or remove the mouse from the fader sound is no longer routed. I’ll log a support issue with steinberg shortly as its more than a little confusing.
Hi-
What I can’t figure out from these posts is whether these performance problems being reported are as rare as hens’ teeth, or likely to happen.
I really would like to have access to some C8.5 features, but am petrified that my smooth Cubase experience in 7.5 will turn into a nightmare. I get the feeling I’m not nearly as technically advanced as you guys, and even if I were I absolutely don’t want to spend hours/days trouble-shooting and tweaking just to get Cubase to work.
I’ve looked around but didn’t see any Cubase employee/mod response or even acknowledgement to the problem, can someone point me there please if they know where?
Thanks -
Hi, I do not experience that much stability problems the last 2 years (my current setup is 2 years old).
With different older systems I experienced problems like people describe (dropouts).
If you have a laptop or second PC then you could install 8.5 (trial first I recon) and swap your dongle. This way you keep your old setup 100% intact and can start testing 8.5.
But one fact is sure, the list of bugs in 8.5 are big but work-able.
