Stuttering in the same place on playback

Cubase
1

I am working on a short film cue (45 seconds) and the playback is stuttering in two places just before tempo changes (it sounds like a CD skipping and happens on the same places every time). The CPU is not overloaded (90% idle according to Activity Monitor) and it is only a short cue with very few active tracks(<20 from Spitfire Audio, 1 in Kontakt, no other plugins/FX sends activated yet).

I updated to Cubase 13 last week and until now had no issues with much more complex projects. I am on a Mac, Sonoma 14.7.

One of the changes is ramped and the other is not.

Changing the buffer size in Core Audio doesn’t make any difference.

The only solution I have found so far is to delete my single Kontakt track and render it in place, but that is quite inconvenient and I can’t understand why it should make a difference when that track is not even active during the stutters!
Can anyone suggest what I can do to get a smooth playback without deleting tracks?

Screenshot 2024-09-25 at 12.09.12
Screenshot 2024-09-25 at 12.09.122864×134 11.9 KB

2

I had some issues with ramped tempo changes a while back (immediately after upgrading to 12 or 13… I don’t recall which) and switched to step exclusively. But then, I opened an older project with ramped changes and had no issues. I can now use either without any issues.
So, I have no ‘fix’, but I feel your pain. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Also, I nice feature would be - enter changes as ‘ramp’ and Cubase converts to ‘step’ with the selected resolution. Only if Steinberg concludes there’s an actual issue using ‘ramp’.

3

Most plugins don’t free the CPU and/or RAM if they’re not processing or outputting anything, because they’ve to be ready to ramp everything back up at any moment, so they use a conservative amount of both just for that.

Instead of rendering-in-place, have you tried simply freezing the track? This should be more convenient when you’re still working on it.