Yesssssss! After almost a day, working on many different projects it worked without a crash…
I tried this with partial success:
the audio peaks are gone but the measurement numerics at the head of the listen editor
are gone, too.
I have a multiple boot win7/8 system which has been rock solid for at least a year. Don’t think I ever had a crash.
I added another partition with Windows 10 recently and experience the “Peaky” performance issue right away.
I have never had this before. So I dug around a bit and found this thread. I applied this regedit,
rebooted and problem has vanished!
So you’re putting a new (32bit) D word ‘GraphicsAcceleration’ in:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH\Steinberg Cubase 8 64bit]
“GraphicsAcceleration”=dword:00000000
Well worth giving a try for those having issues. I also believe disabling C-States in bios may be important!
Buzz
On my PC, with C8, I found that if I close the project using the X in the top right and then wait before doing anything else - including clicking again to fully close C8 - then I don’t get the on-exit crash.
If I don’t wait a moment after the first X click to close the project, then it tends to crash. I have found too that if I use the File…Close menu route, it tends to crash.
I have used this way to avoid the exit-crashes consistently. Whether that’s down to Cubase or a VST/VSTi, I have no idea, but it has worked for me.
It’s a problem, though, still. You would expect to close the door without it falling off the hinges.
why the install for Cubase doesnt do this registry hack for us i dont understand!
i hope you are incorporating this regedit into the new C8 update installer Steinberg!
I gave it a try.
CuBase 8.0.20.486 64bit, Windows 7 64bit.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, all cores active, locked, and stable at 3.6ghz
ASRock A770DE+ Motherboard @ 8gig DDR2 dual channel RAM running at 800mhz but with super tight timings.
Stock FSB, PCIe, and PCI, timing.
XFX/ATI R9 270 running at stock speed.
A couple of Cheap PCIe to SATA3/USB3 cards (lost track of what type/brand they are).
M-Audio Delta 1010 PCI audio
Tascam 1200 USB2 Audio
Samsung 830 and 840 SSD
PNY (Forgot the model numbers) SSD
WD Raptor Class SATA2 Drives
For me this registry hack rendered CuBase totally unusable.
It loaded up my project fine, but when I hit play, it just sat there and did nothing. I’d click a menu or button, and it’d take 30 seconds or so before it would react! It was so sluggish I ultimately gave up on closing out CuBase, and used the Task Manager to kill the process. Rebooted, tried it again…same results 
Upon reversing the Hack, it went back to normal. In general CuBase 8 works well for me. Other DAWs, Scoring Packages, and Live VST hosts I’ve tried have similar performance on this machine.
Note, for the most part my rig works pretty well. I did experience some problems with some plugins ‘dropping out/glitching’, and tracked it down to two PNY Brand SSD drives I was trying to stream the plugin samples from. I’d tried the same drive on various SATA2 and SATA3 hosts/ports, etc. When I moved everything OFF of the PNY SSD drives, 99.9% of my VST glitches went away!
I ignore the ‘VST Performance Monitor’. That’s just telling me that ASIO Guard is working to correct latency for whatever track I have ‘armed’ for recording. This meter seems to be confusing/upsetting people who aren’t realizing any ‘real problems’. So what if the meter shows the ASIO Guard buffer is filling up (spiking)? That’s what it’s there for! To give the system a moment to recalculate and make corrections for the latency on your ‘armed’ track(s). I don’t think it’s even relative to CPU use, or any other system resources.
Note, if you do NOT have any tracks armed for recording, this meter tends to sit pretty idle.
Note, if you disable ASIO Guard, you’ll probably need bigger ASIO Buffers (For me I start at around 512kb on this really old/slow rig, and add on as I need it…while I could probably get by with 128k or smaller…I just go ahead and start with some headroom). Make use of live-monitoring if your audio device supports it. You’ll need to make the ASIO Buffers larger as the project grows in scope and complexity, and while you may see fewer ‘spikes’, you’ll see larger average Monitor activity. You’ll also miss out on some latency correction features for whatever track(s) you have armed for recording (the idea is to give the tracks that are being recorded priority so your live playing doesn’t seem to be half a second ahead of the sound you hear).
I’ve learned that any VST glitches I get that I can actually hear, so far has to do with my really old, budget build piece of junk PC. I’ve also learned that part of my problem was trying to force newer/faster protocols on such an ancient motherboard, memory, and processor. I.E. I get more stable DAW and VST performance with older AV optimized SATA2 drives right off the motherboard than I do with my shiny new SATA3 SSD drives!
In the case of those PNY drives…they were giving massive short bursts of data, saturating the bus, and for whatever reason didn’t give another burst in time to keep the stream running steadily. One of the more obvious hints was that more than one plugin kept reporting ‘disk loss’ counters upon their attempts to ‘stream’ samples. I found the drives to be problematic on my system if used for system/page files well. In my particular system, they can be really fast drives for large bursts of data where timing/latency or streaming isn’t critical, but they absolutely SUCK at any sort of streaming or rapid read/writes to a single file (when trying to use one as home to OS page files…the system would often lock up for short periods of maybe half a second before resuming).
In contrast, the Samsung drives have been fine.
Now I only have one plugin that sometimes glitches if I load something like a 20 velocity layer piano! In this case I can usually get rid of any glitches by making sure no tracks are armed for recording, and letting the track play all the way through at least once (subsequent replays find more in RAM, and are asked to ‘stream’ from disk less at this point). Again, I’m pretty sure this has to do with my ancient system, and the hodge-podge of SATA controllers and other mess I have crammed into slots over the past decade or so. These days I simply do my composite with a lighter patch, and wait until the last mixing stages to load up the heavy version. If it glitches while I’m doing my mix-down (use the automation lanes…tracks do not have to be armed for recording that way) I just ignore it, as I know it won’t be there when I use instant render.
At the end of the day…I’ve tried a few different DAWs and scoring packages…and they all suffer with similar issues on this particular PC. I learned months ago not to stress over the CuBase ‘VST Performance Monitor’. Ignore it…unless you ‘hear a problem’…just let ASIO guard do its job.
So this issue will be reflected on next update (8.0.30), right?
I hope the update would be released soon.
tried it. Cubase still hangs on exit about a third of the time.
Interesting, I’m hardly getting any crashes on exit now I’m on W10. I’ve only see it happen a couple of times in the last couple of weeks since upgrading.
In the 2 weeks since i last posted i’ve updated my GPU drivers to the latest version, had another iLok update and have also updated eLC and i’ve only had ONE hang on exit in the past week… my money’s on the GPU driver in my own case…
I can confirm this also worked for me.
I used it on Fabfilter, Waves, izotpe & wavefactory trackspacer so far.
i watched it and it keept dropping my asio meter… I have a good %10 under redline now & very stable on the project i was testing.
I tested it on 3 macs & good reulsts.
I had the same issues on my mac pro 12 core 3.33ghz laptop 15’ retina & my hakintosh 4790k…
all fixed & no crash on exit… very snappy.
where is the destionastion folder for iZotope,Waves ? cant find Waves & iZotope folder to put GraphicsAcceleration 0
BTW maybe it help to someone
i5 4670
16gb ram
Intel HD graphics 4600
So this is weird.
Just had had massive cpu spike on my mac & it would not play any audio on project that was fine all day.
interestingly cubase was showing a 400% usage on my video card haha… I suggest everyone get the monitor app for mac.
So i did the graphic acceleration hack to cubase & restarted, my cubase project instantly opened & now is working again,
the cpu usage has also dropped on cubase…
Im happy it is working but im so confused… lets hope cubase can sort out all these bugs.
but happy days she is working 
Cubase 8.03 fixes this issue… for me… it was safe to revert to gpu again… again, for me… 
- maybe also for you;)
(P.s. cubase 8.03 seems to be straining my cpu more than the previous version - for me, hopefully not for you; )
Yeah so far 8.0.30 seems to have solved the issue for me as well, which I was occasionally getting, especially if I opened a project then quickly closed it.
Still got the real time bounce issue and occasional zero progress bar bounce issues, but it’s not the end of the world, just a bit annoying.
Using win10 here, on i7 and integrated GPU, and had occasional peaks and performance meter was jumping up/down quite a bit even if project was paused. Above registry hack worked for me to some degree, but occasional peaks remained. After updating to 8.0.30 some occasional peaks still remained. After digging around I noticed that this problem could be related to GPU drivers.
Windows 10 update didn’t show any new drivers for GPU. So I checked for update for my HD4600 GPU driver directly on Intel’s site. It seems win10 just skipped several GPU updates, and kept older version. Surprisingly, after updating HD4600 with latest driver all is fine now, performance meter is almost not moving when playback is stopped, and is quite steady while playback is running. No more occasional peaking in red, even at lowest 32 samples buffer.
EDIT: One month after above update, although situation is much improved, I still get occasional peaking in red and audio glitches. I’m out if options, just waiting that it gets fixed hopefully as soon as possible.
Using win7 here, on i5 and integrated GPU 4600
have same problem, i download lastest drivers from intel site, and it didnt solve my problem.
I think problem is integrated GPU
The hack has drastically improved by Cubase 8 setup - thank you!
I have tried absolutely every fix suggested for the real time peak meter issue, without success. The graphics acceleration, auto record enabled feature are related. The majority of the work I do in Cubase begins in the score editor. In Cubase 8, bringing the score editor, or the piano roll editor to the front, will automatically record enable the midi track, which always causes the real time peaks and drop outs. Non of this behavior occurs if the project is being played back with just the project window in front. I used the following command (defaults write com.cubase.common GraphicsAcceleration 0) in Terminal, with no real change in behavior. Any ideas Steinberg? Cubase 8 is devolving before our eyes.
JM
I was having real-time peak issues. I reduced the number of peripherals I had connected to my system (Mac Book pro i7 core) with no improvement. I entered the Device setup where you can choose your ASIO and noticed the ASIO guard check box was not checked. I checked the box and WOW!!! I can run a lot more VST instruments and plugins without pops. I used the highest selection (low, normal, and high are available). Hope this helps!