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This thing is addictive. I can see a sound designer or synth nerd getting lost in this for hours at a time.
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But… I’m not.
And I’m finding the whole screen experience very ‘laggy’. Especially the ruler, which I’m used to using to rubber band zoom in and out as in WL and Cubase. It’s gotta be INSTANTANEOUS. And it’s not. It sometimes takes almost a second to ‘think’. -
I’m just gonna suggest that the UI needs to ‘conform’ more to the Cubase/WL experience. (Actually I wish Cubase would conform more to the WL experience.) Now that there’s this growing ‘family’ of editing tools, they should all look and work -consistently-.
Hi, could you make a video of the laggy zoom (here or in PM) and share the details of your computer (including your graphic card) ? SL is designed around asynchronous DirectX/OpenGL rendering with dynamic LOD specifically to avoid any laggy zoom/panning, so I’m a bit surprised that you experience that.
The ruler UI on my system is very laggy as well. It’s pretty seriously off.
I’ll try to post a video of it soon.
First off… I REALLY appreciate that you seem so responsive. It’s why most of us love Philippe and have -intense- brand loyalty to WL and I certainly hope you keep that up. The Cubase and Nuendo guys stopped talking to us peons 15 years ago.
Second: my DAW is an i7-4770k and I’m using the internal HDMI port to drive a TV. It’s never been ‘fast’, but it’s never caused me grief with Cubase or Wavelab.
QUESTION: Is there an in-built app in Windows 10 that will let me take a ‘movie’ as you suggest? Would LiceCap work?
—JC
You’re welcome ! Fun fact : although I’m new to the Steinberg family, I’ve known Philippe for some time. We sort of have similar backgrounds 
Seems there’s a built-in app in Win10 to record the screen: How to Record Your Computer Screen in Windows 10 - YouTube (Win+G to pop it up)
It would also help if you could provide some log files from %LOCALAPPDATA%\Steinberg\SpectraLayers Pro\logs (you can type this address in the file explorer, or in Win+R). Please send me a copy in PM or to contact [at] divideframe.com.
+1
The Cubase and Nuendo guys stopped talking to us peons 15 years ago
… 
TOTAL SHOWSTOPPER (When used as ARA in Cubase 10 Windows)
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Open SL for an audio event.
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Do -whatever-. Appears to work fine.
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Close SL window
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Double ciick on same audio event (to re-open SL.
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SL window opens totally white BLANK. Moviing the mouse changes the cursor (as if the various UI elements were being activated). But nothing works (because it;'s all white.)
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Worst of all… when you attempt to ‘X’ out of the window it simply moves SL to the bottom window of Cubase. And then if you try to remove the SL exension from the event? That does nothing. So effectively, there’s no ‘undo’. Yer stuck with whatever you did in SL for that event,
100% repeatable.
Can’t use in Cubase until this is fixed.
The lower zone is where it’s supposed to be shown & used in the first place; I guess you changed Cubase’s Edit > Preferences > Editors > Double-click opens Editor in the Lower-zone to Double-click opens Editor in a Window ? But even though yes it’s going to redock at some point in the Editor area of the lower-zone, that’s how it was designed in Cubase.
On the display issue, it might be related to your video card driver : according to the specs of the CPU you mentionned in your previous post (i7-4770k), this would then be an Intel HD 4600 (4th gen Intel CPU) then. I notice that Intel never released an official driver for the 4th gen Intel CPUs compatible with Windows 10, the latest they have is a beta driver from 2016 (you seem to be using Win10 on all your computers according to your signature, and the latest official driver Intel provides for the 4th gen is Win8.1).
This could explain both the slow scrolling/zooming you reported earlier, and the DirectX11/OpenGL3.3 display not properly recovering when the display is hidden/shown. One of my computer has a 4th gen Intel graphics processing unit as well (i5-4200U, HD 4400), but still running on Win8.1 for driver compatibility reasons.
You can try installing the beta driver from Intel though, and see how it goes.
If it still doesn’t work, you can then try switching SL to OpenGL (Edit > Preferences > Display > Rendering API). This need a full restart of SL/Cubase.
Lastly, if none of the driver/rendering API workarounds works, you can get a cheap GeForce GT 710 that’ll do the trick, providing you both modern drivers for Win10 and better graphic performances than the HD4600.
On removing the extension, not sure why it does not work - but it’s entirely controlled by Cubase here.
Deleted (a little off-topic)
Me too.
HI Robin,
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I installed the Beta video drivers and that solved the rubber band zoom issue on the ruler. But it did NOT help the blank GUI inside Cubase.
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So I changed the Display Preference from DirectX to OpenGL and that -did- fix the blank GUI issue. Are there any downsides to that option? IOW: would I still benefit from a new video card? I’m reluctant to change ANYTHING on a DAW if I have a stable system.
Thanks for the prompt and detailed replies.
—JC
Hi JC, given you installed the proper graphic adapter drivers (which you did, even though it’s a beta one), you should not have any downside using OpenGL. In some ARA hosts (such as Studio One) the display may flicker for a brief moment when switching from one region to another when using OpenGL, but it’s not happening in Cubase/Nuendo AFAIK.
If at some point you need better graphic performance or better graphic drivers switching to a GeForce GT 710 is pretty straightforward and should not affect the stability of your system, but given the conclusion of your post it seems that it’s not needed.
As an aside, given the shift to a more visual approach to audio (some iZotope plugins also come to mind), I think some thought will have to be given to graphics performance when looking at specs for new PCs for audio. I’ve steered away from powerful graphics cards because IMHO their drivers are optimised for gaming, with little thought given to audio priority. Still happy with the on-bard Intel 520 graphics here for the moment, though that may have to change!
Along similar lines, I wonder how much interest there is in enabling DAW code and especially plug-ins to use the GPUs. Many of us have vastly more raw compute power on our GPUs than CPUs. Some video editor programs use GPUs aggressively.
Thanks Robin. Despite the glitches, your responsiveness has made me a LOT more confident with the product. I look forward to the next minor update (and, frankly, some more useful docs but that’s another story… )
Cheers!
Sorry to be a nag, but would THIS THING do the trick? I ask because I found one for $20. I don’t want to put any money into the DAW until I need to replace the entire rig.
I wouldn’t recommend it : it’s very outdated (only support DX10), and very slow (even when it was released back in 2007, it was already a slow GPU). Not worth the $20.
I’d still recommend either an used Geforce 720 GT (32$) or a Radeon HD 7xxx (such as this used Radeon HD 7570 for 26$). Or basically, any GPU that support DirectX12 minimum, and no older than 2012.
You da man.
I appreciate the help. I have been completely in the dark as to what level of video to go for with Cubase. My understanding was that higher graphics were irrelevant for Cubase or WL. Having this detail is -very- useful in knowing what I really need to be thinking about.
One final question: So do the newer CPUs support the latest DX level or is it always the better bet to get a cheap external card such as those you recommended?
—JC
It’s a bit less relevant for Cubase and WL which (AFAIK) don’t take that much advantage from GPUs. However Nuendo has video decoding capabilities, for instance.
Yes, newer CPUs have better graphic support (they all support DX12 now). Both Intel and AMD provide decent graphic capabilities with their CPUs nowadays (2016 and newer are safe in term of graphic capabilities).
Got it. Just trying to figure out whether to put $40 into a card or save for the next DAW. I’m cheap like that.