I’m working with cubase for over 15 years, and I’m pretty experienced. I’m with cubase 14 at the moment (Windows 11, reasonably new computer). Recently with a project I’m working on I’m getting a problem I didn’t have before. All of the sudden, if I switch between tracks in the project window (i.e., left click on a different track), the entire audio pauses for few tens of seconds and resumes. The performance monitor doesn’t show dropouts. Not many plugins in use. Starting with “preferences disabled” didn’t solve the problem. Once it appears, I need to close cubase and reload again. Sometimes it happens 2 minutes after loading the project. Sometimes after few hours. I’m nowadays working on one project so I can’t tell if it’s specific to the project.
I kind of feel it happens more when I do midi recording (I mostly record audio). I think (and really not sure) that I need to do some windows operation (e.g., switch between windows - e.g., alt-tab to the file-explorer) to trigger that problem, but I am really not sure. When it starts, it doesn’t stop. I also think (again, not sure for 100%) that I need to play something via MIDI to make that happen (i.e., if I don’t play on my MIDI keyboard - i.e., don’t send MIDI events in, the problem doesn’t happen - I mainly say it because I recently recorded audio for hours without an issue)
I have 2 MIDI inputs (one from a rhodes Mk8 (electric piano) USB MIDI directly to the PC) and one from a DIN MIDI getting into my RME UFX+ that connects via USB3. I have 3 screens.
I updated RME drivers. My PC is mainly up-to-date.
Since my experience with Cubase is generally very good stability-wise, I’m not n expert in troubleshooting. So I would truly appreciate any ideas of how to approach this annoying issue.
UPDATE: just after sending this message, I went back to cubase and played with the midi. I then went to the internet explorer window (that I used to send this message) and pressed on the minimize-window icon. This caused a pause, and from that moment the problem started…
Here are few specific questions:
Is the symptom I’m describing familiar?
Is there any way to “refresh” the internal project file? (BTW it’s one I started a few years ago in much earlier cubase version) - for example - if I use the back-up and then load from back-up - would it “refresh” the project in a way that if something is corrupted in the project file it will disappear?
Loading in safe mode will disable all the plugins (don’t have too many of those in the project anyways) but it will also disable the MIDI track that I’m recording that kind of the use-case in which the problem begins
Should I attempt to debug it in Cubase 14 or should I just upgrade to Cubase 15? (I have the license - I’m just conservative in upgrades)
Are there any settings I should try? Should I kill my preferences folder? Should I load a profile I exported as a backup from few weeks ago?
Any chance there is some windows related stuff I should hunt after?
Any other strategy you would recommend to identify the problem?
Almost sounds like there could be a weird thing happening with Cubase’s rather sophisticated latency compensation mechanism? I assume you checked that Constrain Delay Compensation isn’t active? If it is, it triggers latency recalculations when changing tracks and pausing the audio stream while doing that.
If there’s something corrupted in the project file, maybe worth trying this approach?
start with
a new empty file
or a template that’s similar to the project in question
or a copy of a similar project file that doesn’t seem to suffer from this weirdness
delete unwanted tracks from this new project
and then use the import tracks from another project feature to grab all of the desired tracks from the malfunctioning project. (This feature is very powerful, but may take a little time to learn with a larger project with lots of routing.)
Unfortunately the “constrain delay compensation” is turned off (to be honest I never used it so I could have easily overlooked it) - so this is probably not the concrete reasons. However, it’s a very interesting thesis that some sophisticated delay compensation mechanism causes the syndrom (it is clearly the type of audio “glitches” that are typical to such acts). It may need to check if there are plugins in my project that might cause that. Thanks for the help regarding how to “repair” a project by importing its tracks.
Now after I sent the message I tried another direction - I disconnected my USB MIDI inputs (originally they were Rhodes Mk8 and Novataion Lunchpad 25) and connected used their DIN inputs into my RME UFX+. In fact I worked with the lunchpad DIN MIDI for a day and it didn’t solve the problem. After I sent the message I also moved the Rhodes Mk8 MIDI IN (from USB to DIN), so no USB MIDI input (or output) anymore (everything goes via the RME UFX+ which connects via USB3 but it’s not “USB MIDI” I guess). The reason I did it is because I suspected it might have to do with the new Microsoft MIDI 2. I also uninstalled two older MIDI drivers that I found in my PC, just in case (as Microsoft recently recommended).
Since then, I worked without any issues for couple of hours. EDIT: unfortunately, the day after, the problem is back again…
Does that make any sense at all?
Thanks,
Erez
(Side note: The Novation Lunchpad 25 “remote automation” caused me a lot of trouble in the past and is completely disabled for months - it’s not the issue)
Update - when it happens, various UI manipulations cause those “audio pauses” - for example, using the horizontal scroll bar of the mixer - when I draf it with the mouse, I can cause the audio to pause for even a whole second. Even the performance monitor (audio performance monitor window) - the vertical timeline that goes always to the right (in the “dropout section” of that window) simply pauses until I release the horizontal scroll bar of the mixConsole - and then resumes from the very same position… No dropouts are reported. I seems something that pauses activities of cubase “from a lower level” - I have no clue…
Update - it seems like setting the affinity (using Windows 11 task manager when cubase is running and when the problem actually happened) to avoid E-Cores solves the problem when it happens. I noticed that Cubase 14 changes later the affinity (not yet sure what are the conditions - but it could be pretty fast) back to “all CPUs”. This makes it tricky, although even if the affinity is “dialed back” by Cubase, the OS will most probably let its threads stay where they are, so it will take more time to the problem to be recreated. It’s all fresh for me, so my analysis is based on a few hours of work (I know OS internals though, so at least I feel comfort…). Is there any reliable information regarding how Cubase deals with E-cores and P-cores and with affinity in general?