Realtime Audio CPU Peak!

Hello All,

I have been getting real time cpu peaks and as a result audio drop outs running virtual instruments for a while now. It doesn’t seem to be one in particular. I am on a fairly powerful system (Late 2013 Mac Pro Trash Can OS X Sierra 10.12.4 / 12core / 64GB Ram with 1st gen UAD Apollo Quad via TBolt 2 / Caldigit T4 raid via TBolt 2) and still it will intermittenly peak with only a few VSTS. I even get this sometimes with the buffers kicked all the way up (2048). I was previously on a 2008 Mac Pro 8 core and never had the real the time peaks and drop outs I get now. I believe this is a Cubase issue and not system issue because when the CPU peaks the system doesn’t budge.

I have done the following so far.

-Completely removed and re installed Cubase 9.
-Completely removed and re installed / reset my Apollo sound card.
-Created a new profile and tested.
-Made sure I had all the recent OS updates.
-Cleared out all caches (System / User / Dyld).
-Checked all drives for errors.

I created a similar project in Pro Tools (sorry…i only use it to open others projects) and the CPU usage was much less and much less jumpy.

I know there have been may issues with the last couple updates (IE Mac Graphics) but I was curious if anyone has experienced this and if so has any suggestions? This is very concerning and has almost caused me to miss some deadlines. I have put in a ticket but am still waiting to hear back.

Same here, extremely high CPU load and peaks recently with all negative consequences – dropouts, sometimes crashes, all on projects I could previously work on without problems. I suspect MacOS 10.12.4 - while I haven’t documented it, the issues seem to coincide with the release of that OS update as I had Cubase 9.0.10 since it came out, and now it continues to be an issue with 9.0.20 that I just installed.

My setup is slightly different (MacPro, Mid 2010, Antelope Orion 32).

Can anyone at Steinberg comment this? Thank you.

Bought a brand new MacBook Pro (2,6Ghz i7 quad core, 16GB memory) last week and I have the same problem. The CPU overload is massive. The macbook is running flawless and I do not experience that many issues yet in Cubase, however I have had some break-up in some of the VST’s which were caused by this CPU overload.

I noticed another thread on this, with also no answers at all from Steinberg. That is quite worrying that a big player like Steinberg is not able to react on these topics…

See my screenshot as well. Hope Steinberg picks it up.

An update: I have returned my MacBook Pro and replaced it for an iMac (not solely for the reason of the high CPU load, but it was part of my unhappiness with the Mac). However, the new iMac shows same very high CPU usage when running Cubase. I have actually reinstalled it after the first time and started with not having anything else then just Cubase Elements 9 on the iMac. Still above 100% CPU usage when running a project (and tried different projects). One of the projects running on an iMac of my brother shows 25% CPU usage at his iMac (with even lesser specs) and still towards 100% on mine… I’m lost and there is no answer (also not on my ticket to Steinberg) on this from Steinberg. Very frustrating. What am I doing wrong???

Are you using ASIO Guard? The reason I ask is my system works great but if I turn on ASIO GUARD 2 everything goes crazy in regards to the CPU. In theory ASIO GUard 2 is great but on my system it is not a good situation.

I noticed this also, and reverted to 9.0. However it’s come up again.

How many of you are NOT using UAD plugins when this is happening? I was just testing the UAD '55 Fender Tweed plugin, one instance, one track in the session, and it completely overloaded the realtime CPU. I’ve put in a ticket with UAD, but I’m not sure where the issue lies. It seems that Cubase on OSX is a complete CPU hog compared to windows. I’m on a 2010 Mac Pro tower, upgraded to 12 core 3.33 GHz with 64MB of ram installed. It should be able to handle one track. It does not happen with other UAD plugins to that degree, but UAD could be part of the equation here.


Same problem in Cubase 9.03. Instant overload.

And the same test in LPX…

Update: Trashing my Cubase 9 preferences folder fixed the issue for me. UA support suggested it. I had completely forgot to try that…

Update again, after a brief period, the CPU peak is back. Same as the previous screenshots. Ugh. :frowning:

I have a late 2013 iMac dual-booted with Windows. I don’t use OSX much. I run Cubase from W10. However, I just took the computer into the local Apple store because it was stalling when I tried to boot into OSX (it is still running El Capitan). The technician who solved my problem is also an audio engineer and when I told him I was running Cubase in Windows and had Logic 9 Express on an older Macbook Pro, he told me not to update from El Capitan if I was considering doing audio under OSX. He was not happy with the results in Sierra and was in the process of rolling back to El Capitan himself.