Sudden Audio Dropout, only fixed by unplugging headphones

Cubase
1

I’ve owned Cubase Artist 6 for about a year and half. When first started using it I had no problems. However, I have been experiencing a bug on and off for the past 8 months. In the middle of normal operation, all Audio tracks and VST tracks will stop producing sound. MIDI tracks seem unaffected and will keep sending signals. This bug is sometimes preceded by the program itself visually freezing. I mostly use Cubase at home for composing and I almost always listen with my headphones plugged directly into my laptop. Sometimes the problem fixes itself and audio will return after 10 to 45 second. However, the only guaranteed way to fix the problem is to unplug my headphones and plug them in again. In either case, when the audio comes back all VST instruments simultaneously produce sound for each midi note that was triggered during the silence. This is usually a big boom that causes a lot of clipping. This error also occurs when just using the computer’s speakers.
It seems like some days this will happen quite frequently, almost once every two minutes, making Cubase basically unusable. Other days it won’t happen at all. It does not seem to correspond to the number of audio or midi tracks I have, the number of plugins or effects I am running, or the size of the project. It does occur more frequently if another application is producing audio. Also the bug often occurs the moment I initialize a new VST instrument.
I didn’t have this error during the first few months that I used Cubase Artist 6 on my computer. The first time I noticed this error does not correspond to any hardware or software changes. So far I have tried changing the buffer size and disabling multi-core processing on my computer, but neither has improved the situation.
I am currently running Cubase Artist 6.0.5 build 357.
Hardware information:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Thank you!

2

I am guessing you have a USB headphone? Otherwise this wouldn’t make any sense.
What ASIO driver are you using in Device Setup?

3

I am just using my computer’s built-in driver. Also, I’m only using my standard 8th inch output jack for audio. Thanks for the reply

4

This sounds like a problem with the audio driver on the machine. If you have or know anyone with a proper audio interface, I recommend trying it and seeing if the problem persists.
HTH
J.L.

5

Oh it’s a macbook, I missed that earlier. That headphone output is also simultaneously a mic input. It has some autosensing, and plugging and unplugging stuff takes a while to establish a new connection as it has to sense what’s connected first. My friend had a similar problem with his setup, where using the headphone output would sometimes lose connection which makes the driver switch. Replugging it in fixes it as it resenses the headphone. (this was with Logic btw, so it’s not a Cubase problem, it’s a macbook problem.)

Anyway, I would recommend you get a proper audio interface to work with. Doesn’t have to be expensive, but something with a stable driver and without fancy stuff will do fine :slight_smile: