A couple of months later, how is the laptop holding up?
Did you get the Vivobook?
And what are you doing on it - VST instruments or recording or mixing?
Buffer size?
Hi Pete,
So, does this mean that even in-built, or native audio devices will be able to use ASIO in a consistent and reliable way, that is, for basic stereo playback (or recording)?
Cheers
Weāre looking at options for on -board audio. There are a number of chips and configurations to support. I donāt have a timeline for this.
Immediate focus is USB Audio Class 2.
Pete
Microsoft
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yes, I got the Vivobook (ASUS M5506WA-MA012W,Ryzen AI9 HX370, W15.6" 3K OLED, 32GB, 1TB SSD)
I use it for composing, mixing and mastering with high buffer size (no recording), many VSTi, no large sample libraries instruments. (EDM)
So far it has held up well for me.
see also: Cubase 13 und 14 pro & ASUS Vivobook - #10 by MarcoE
I see around 15-20% better performance compared to my 6 years old i9-9900K.
I expected much more as on paper it has more power then the Snapdragons and benchmarks from forum members show much more performance for the Snapdragons. I have high hopes for this highly integrated platform if the VST vendors play along.
from my last 2 months away from home (I just returnedā¦):
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Thanks.
Yeah I guess I would have expected more performance over the 9900K as well. 6 years is a long time and it has more cores and more threads, though of course the i9 probably got a bit more power to work with.
Iād look into Snapdragons if only iLok and Pro Tools were proven to work on them. Iāll look into the benchmarks here though just in case something shows up soon.
Actually, another follow-up question:
Could you give me a hint of just how large and heavy your project is and what the resulting load is on that laptop? Iām still thinking about getting an HX370 to ātie me overā for now unless I can find something better for not too much money.
How should I determine the size of the project?
See some screenshots below. Maybe you can get a hint from them (itās a smaller project that Iāve just started):
Audio Performance Monitor - see my open apps in parallel
85 channels in project view:
12 audio (lots of audio warp)
20 Instrument (incl. multi out)
6 midi tracks
1 drum rack
15 groups
3 efx tracks
Audio Setup, 44.1kHz, Asio Guard = High:
VST Instruments (this song is mainly driven by the audio, supporting VSTs):
Plugins:
CPU, RAM:
I have my entire sound library on an external portable SSD (Samsung T7, 2TB). Loading time is ok for me.
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Thanks. I really appreciate it Marco.
Judging from those images Iām thinking that CPU will probably be fine for me. My interface buffer is usually much higher than yours so thereās that as well.
Hello Pete,
The reason playback stops, in my experience is because of low system resources coupled with high system load, in terms of what the OS is doing, since even though the system is under load, Windows never fails to start a process in the background, be it the Disk Defragmenter, Antivirus Scanner, or else Installation of OS modules, or some other Host or System process; the whole situation is vastly opaque from where I sit.
Steinberg introduced Power Management settings in the DAW, some time ago and I think there also needs to be a similar situation created for the DAW (and other resource intensive applications) on Windows, since while Microsoft may be ahead with respect to many things mentioned throughout this thread, asking people to continually upgrade their machines just so the OS can do things, in the background whilst the DAW is running is not very intelligent in my view.
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Those background processes, with the exception of real-time virus scanning, only happen when the system is idle. (And although you may be using a spinning rust drive, thereās no such thing as disk defrag on an SSD 
)
If youāre using Defender, I recommend adding the Cubase executable and/or your Cubase project folders to the real-time scanning exclusion list so you donāt run into that.
I also recommend your Cubase project folders not be in a folder that is managed by OneDrive or any other file replication service.
In any case, I havenāt run into the problems youāre describing with playback stopping or stuttering on Windows (x64 or Arm64) when saving a file. Not sure if others here do.
Pete
Hi Pete,
Thank you for responding.
I have an SSHD, so for me the defragmenter running while the DAW is idle, e.g., after loading of a project; it happens from time to time. As for Antivirus, I have excluded all of the folders, and processes related to the DAW but of course the AV scanner has a mind of itsā own, and not only does it switch back on at any time, after being explicitly turned off, it also starts up when it perceives the system as being idle as does the Windows Installer.
I understand the scope of this topic; however, I also believe that there needs to be, a new application mode created specifically for high resource usage applications, such as Cubase and Nuendo, as well as others including Davinci Resolve and Adobe, and 3D applications, running on Windows, and this can only come from the OS Maker, in collaboration with big names, who produce software that runs on Windows.
Regards,
Garth
I donāt think a special mode is necessary, though.
Iām typing this while doing an image calibration of astrophotography images. It has my CPU pegged at 100% continuously and is using 40% of the GPU through CUDA processing. Shell and the browser here are still responsive. No lag. I can even take and post screenshots
Itās also doing a ton of disk IO for the source images as well as all the processing scripts and its temp files and cache.
I know thatās not 100% analogous with audio workloads, but Windows gets a lot of grief for things that itās not actually doing wrong.
Edit: And to show this is a continuous thing:
Edit2: Decided to listen to some music while it continues processing (you can see the dip in CPU usage when it changed which integration task it was doing)
Pete
Microsoft
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Impressive, raw processing but a DAW, and I note I am talking primarily about VST Instruments, running on Windows, which is far more dynamic in itsā nature in terms of processing and transportation of data throughout a system, and as I am sure you are aware, this kind of situation lends itself to Windows and associated applications thinking there is scope for them to operate, when in reality, the DAW could kick-in with resource requirements at any time, notwithstanding the programmed nature of a performance.
I can see why there may be opposition to there being an application mode available in the OS, that adjusts to the nature of 3rd party applications and services, thus limiting what can run while a DAW or other resource intensive program is running because Windows by itā nature is dynamic, which is what makes it work so well in challenging situations but the servicing that is required under the hood is quite a lot, I think for non-IT people to want to be concerned with.