processing overload

problem after problem with V12. overloading happens way too often, stuttering and audio dropout has become a much bigger issue and to top it off , cubase wont even shut down properly anymore, its hit & miss as to whether or not to ctrl, alt & delete and shut it down in task manager, this is supposed to be a professional DAW :man_shrugging: :man_shrugging: :man_shrugging: :frowning_face:

I should add that my system has been optimised for audio performance, there is nothing else I can do to ‘tweak’ my systems performance (its Windows 11 , 12 core processor, 64GB RAM)

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Cubase 12 is really bad with processing overloads. The audio drop is crazy and then update it to 12.0.5…it became even worse! I can’t even do anything. I have never had such issue with Cubase for the past 15 years.

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I put the USB cable back in and the symptoms seemed to be alleviated. but the problem is not solved.
SampleTank 4 Crash Cubase Pro 12

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Same problem of processing overload on cubase 12.0.10 on a brand new i7 with 16go ram. Anyone found a solution ?

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Could you let us know a little more?

Is it a machine bought from a store, or did you build it? If it’s from a store, uninstall any applications which you don’t really need.

Make sure you select the Steinberg power scheme.

Are you using a USB interface or Thunderbolt? I’ve heard TB interfaces can cause issues, especially if using something like an adapter. My previous one was like that, using a TB2 to TB3 adapter and I believe it caused some overload spikes.
USB interfaces seems stable for most and reduced my spikes.

Not sure what the Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver is showing, in terms of you knowing that it’s SampleTank4 that is causing the crashes. When you say ‘crash’ do you mean Cubase freezes, closes etc? Or that you get sudden overloads with audio pops/drop-outs etc?

On a separate point: I have stopped using SampleTank4 and all IK Multimedia products for now, due to the amount of crashes it caused me and wasted time trying to resolve constant issues, even with the help of IK support. It’s just so unstable (although more stable on PC than my Mac systems).

Hello all - I am using Cubase 10 and have the stuttering and freezing going on with a spitfire
product - I thought it was a spitfire problem but perhaps it’s somehow related to a cubase-related problem. I have uninstalled, reinstalled the spitfire product, still have the same issue, but only with the spitfire product, everything else works fine. Any suggestions as to how to eradicate this ? Many thanks :slight_smile:

Hi, and welcome. If you are only having problem with Spitfire, it may well be an issue related to Spitfire. Have you contacted the developers for advice.

There can be a number of reasons for Cubase processing overloads. Could you provide your computer specs, audio interface (including whether it’s USB, Thunderbolt etc)? Are you on Mac or PC? There are some tweaks you can do to BIOS, as well settings in the OS, such as Steinberg power management etc. However, those tweaks didn’t help me and Cubase actually runs more stable without messing about with BIOS, at least for me anyway on the PC.
On my Mac, I still get the occasional processing overload spikes, but much rarely.

For my PC it was a change of audio interface. The extremely fast low latency Thunderbolt interface was giving me overload spikes. I changed to a USB-C interface, as well as an older USB 2 interface, and my spikes were much less! I can live with the added ms of latency if it means less processing spikes.

Of course there is Cubase settings too. Are you using ASIO-Guard. What are you Buffer settings and Sample Rate?

I’m having the same issue good computer, everything working normal until I add a virtual instrument and I need many of those to keep my sessions going, it’s not like I’m getting glitches or anything but seeing the red light there is just annoying every time I load any plugin of effect. If anybody knows how to fix this, please :skull:

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Just upgraded from Cubase 8, with a Mackie onyx16/ firewire mixer - to Cubase 12, with a new Mackie Onyx 24 multi track USB mixer, new Dell PC running windows11 pro, 4.9 ghz core i7, 32gb RAM, 4400MHZ memory speed,hard drive rotation speed - 7200rpm, 1tb hdd, 512gb ssd. . with a dedicated graphics card. Went through each performance recommendations on this site (thank you) got rid of a lot of issues except for the processing overload and random drops, skips/stutter on playback. It’s driving me crazy, instead of writing the hits I’m obsessively trying to fix this. I have a session in 10 days and I need this resolved. No audio issues, latency, dropouts in Cubase 8. It was solid and dependable.

Me with my powerful Windows i9 13900K, 128GB RAM, Seagate Firecuda 530 2TB and 4TB for VST.

Still experiencing audio processing overload issues!!!

My interface is Antelope Orion Synergy Core connected via USB.

What happened to Cubase pro 12???

Even with 4 MIDI tracks and one vocal track, it keeps dropping during vocal take. It ruins the whole session including my mood.

When will Steinberg starts to be more serious in handling this irritating issue?

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Hey, nice PC specs. My overload spikes decreased a lot when I changed audio interface from Thunderbolt to regular USB. But you’ve mentioned that you’re connecting with USB. Might seem silly, but have you tried all USB ports on your PC?

Just an idea, but are you getting disk overload in using the 7200rpm hard drive? Maybe its speed compared to the other components, is creating some kind of bottleneck that, even if it’s not being picked up as a disk overload, might manifests as a glitch due to the relative slower speed of 7200. Unlikely, but perhaps.

Has anyone had any positive solutions lately?

I decided to move away from Cubase and towards Logic and using a Mac. This has caused me crashes with using Flex Pitch (which is a common experience apparently) as well as some VSTs crashing when running Logic in native mode (despite it being so long since silicon Macs arrives). So the ‘grass’ isn’t necessarily ‘greener’.

I’m considering going back to Cubase both on Mac and PC because of the issues mentioned. I tried Cubase Pro 12 on my Mac yesterday and I was getting some overload spikes. Not actually resulting in many glitches in audio and increasing the buffer helped a bit. But this MacBook is a M1 Max with 32GB RAM, and the project was small/medium loaded in terms of plugins and channel count. Activity Monitor showed that the load was around 10-20% on 128 and 64 buffer size.

Just wondering if things in PC land + Cubase are any better, as I don’t have a PC anymore but might build a new one. PC and Cubase might give me annoying red spikes, but as long as it’s manageable with increased buffers and such, that’s better than Logic suddenly disappearing when activating a crucial feature in my production flow.

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In case you didn’t know, the performance meter got a rework not long ago and as a result, is much more sensitive. If you are not experiencing any audio drop-outs, my recommended fix is to hide the performance meter and not think about it unless you encounter an actual problem.

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It’s just the anxiety as to whether a spike does glitch (sometimes it does) which makes me avoid thinking about using Cubase for any live sets or nervous whether a glitch happens during recording with tight deadlines etc. I managed to get things stable so it doesn’t glitch per hour, so I might just hide it like you said. Good to know.

This is 100% not a Cubase issue. This is a problem with some driver or piece of hardware or installed app on your system.

Things I would check if I had this problem:
Are you using clock control panels?
Temperature monitors?
Afterburner/Overdrive/Thagomizer apps from motherboard or graphics card vendors?
Do all of USB hubs have external power?
Are all of the USB cables of very high quality?
Are there settings in the BIOS for fan controls or management chips or software RAID or automatic updates that get in the way?

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I’ve not used Spitfire but have read that it’s very resource intensive. Perhaps it is Spitfire if it’s only happing with that.

I suppose that we just need to adjust our settings to achieve some kind of balance, even with powerful systems.

I’ve reduced the overload spikes a lot by: setting Asio Guard to High and selecting a larger buffer size, 256. I’m on an M1 Max, 32GB, 1TB MacBook Pro.

I haven’t noticed much latency from a higher buffer and can play the keyboard in real time along with the playback, without noticing it and we always have Constrain Delay to record with.

Also, don’t forget that some plugins are very intensive and drive the performance meter up a lot. Just 1 instance of a tape emulator by IK Multimedia, adds 25-30% of load (which is normal for that plugin).