I’m using Cubase 14 Pro on Windows 10 Pro & there are a couple of things I can’t figure out if I missed a setting or if that’s just the way things work. Does anyone have suggestions on the following:
Every time I start Cubase & create a new song, the first thing I have to do is reconnect “Audio Outputs” or I have no sound. I do have several ASIO choices for sound devices, but I mostly use one of them & that device stays in place (I don’t have to select a new device), it just starts off with “Audio Outputs Disconnected” each time. Although it’s just a matter of a couple of mouse clicks to change. When I get focused on an idea & it’s already taken 5 minutes for Cubase to get to where I can add a few instruments & get going, I start playing & I have no sound. I never get used to it & none of the other DAWs I use work that way, so do I just have to put a “Post it” note on my monitor to remind me, or is there a setting that I missed that is making it start “Disconnected”. If so, where is that setting?
When I start Cubase, it takes 5 minutes or more to load. I do have several hundred VST & VST3 plugins. I know that 2 or 3 thousand plugins can add to startup time. Does anyone have advice on getting them to load more quickly (beside getting rid of a bunch)? I do have quite a few of the DAWs that are available. Many of them are much faster to read, load & get to where it’s possible to get to work. There are a few that take about the same length of time or maybe even longer. Since Steinberg invented the VST technology that we all use & I’m still learning how to use Cubase, is that just the way it works & we’re all in the same boat? Does everyone have to wait for 4 or 5 minutes for everything in Cubase to start or are there settings that I missed that will make it start faster?
I greatly appreciate any input I can get on these two items (or anything else).
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
For #1: Build a new project with all your desired settings and your basic tracks. Then ‘Save as Template’. Use the template when starting a new project. It saves quite a bit of setup time.
For #2: I don’t have any other suggestions …
I’ve been getting rid of things that aren’t used much or are redundant. Attempting to streamline my setup. 2,000 plugins seems like a lot.
#2 The number of plugins only affects start up times when they are scanned.
Cubase on my machine takes around 10 seconds to get to the hub. A project takes between 1 and 2 minutes. And that’s when the number of plugins slows things down - Cubase has to load each one, along with whatever settings there are for each one.
I mostly use sample libraries, these always take longer to load.
#1 sounds to me like Cubase isn’t shutting down cleanly, as it really should remember your settings once you’ve set them up. I’m assuming you have the relevant devices powered up prior to starting Cubase. If not, that would potentially cause this, too.
On #2, disk speed can come into play. At one point I was having an issue of this sort (I have thousands of plugins), and it could take many minutes (I think quite a few more than five, but I don’t remember exactly at this point), and, of course plugins are located on your system disk, which, in my case was an aging hard disk. It turned out, the disk was also degrading (it eventually failed altogether). Once I replaced it with an SSD, it was like night and day. I’d suggest getting CrystalDiskInfo (it is free) to test your disks to at least figure out if the disk may be failing, thus contributing to the problem.
Also on #2, there is a setting in Windows security that allows you to add exclusions from Microsoft Defender Antivirus scans. I would suggest adding a Process exclusion for cubase14.exe. What this means is that Defender won’t scan files Cubase 14 loads as they are loaded (e.g. in scanning or loading plugins) in the running Cubase process. The files would still be scanned when they are installed and on any general disk scans, just not as Cubase loads them. This could potentially help when you have a bunch of plugins that Cubase needs to scan.
Thank you. That’s a great idea. I forgot that Cubase has a way to “Save as Template”. Sadly, I just looked at the top few items in the “File” column & made it all the way down to “Save, Save As…, & Save New Version” & didn’t see it. I’m dyslexic so the remainder of the column sort of blurrs together. You made me go back & look. Sure enough, there it is 3rd from the bottom. That will help immensely. Thank you!
Thank you for your reply. Cubase does lock up from time to time, but that is maybe one time in 30 or so. The vast majority of the time it shuts down cleanly. I will keep a closer watch on that to be sure. I do run “sfc /scannow” to ensure that the Windows system files are in good shape, but that doesn’t do anything for the drive itself or all the other files on it.
I do have all SSD, with the exception of one HDD that I use for storing downloaded files to be installed for things like “Native Access”. NI needs a temporary place to download files & install all of Komplete “Komponents” & when IK Multimedia made users install all of their products with “Product Manager” , it requires a large area to download, install & store about a million .ZIP files. I never use that drive to install to or run anything from. It’s more of an “archive drive”.
I do have an older version of " CrystalDiskInfo" (V9.4.4) on that system & it says the drives are all
“Good” & the temperature of the C: drive is 27 °C (right now, when I’m not on that system, but Cubase is up, running, plugins are loaded, but only 1 instrument with HALion 7 & 2 additional MIDI tracks are active. I was playing keys & stumbling around in HALion before I checked here.
About 6 months ago I learned that it’s OK to run ChkDsk on an SSD (I had always heard that it was harmful to an SSD). I don’t do it often, but I live in Florida & we have hurricanes & even though everything in my studio is on a UPS, there are times when I don’t make it in time to shut everything down gracefully. When that happens, I run ChkDsk even though Windows says the discs don’t need it. On more than one occasion I have run it anyway & it found & fixed a few things.
I will take your advice on setting Windows Security. I am sure that Windows will sit quietly for hours waiting for me to fire up a DAW to work on something or play. THEN it decides to start an Antivirus Scan or download updates. It never fails. I play & things seem really sluggish & then I’ll check the logs & see in black & white, “Starting Windows Updates”. I’m sure it does that on purpose too.
Anyway, thank you for your reply. I’ll look into what you have suggested more closely. I greatly appreciate your time & thoughts on this. You have been very helpful.
Yes. That is a good point & I do understand that there is a difference. That’s why I specificly said, “when I create a new song”. Cubase does save my “Audio Output” setting when I save a song & when I open that song it shows “Audio Outputs Connected”. I probably should have made that clearer.
I tend to write more than most people care to read, so I’m always writing, reading, deleting rewiting…" when I post making sure I’m clear & concise. Beleive it or not, THIS is my short version of this post. It also seems like, even though I’ve read my post through 20 times before I sent it, 10 seconds after I hit the button, I think, “Oh, I forgot to ask this or say that” or I see a typo. By then it’s too late.
As for your first reply, that exactly what I needed to know. Your machine takes 10 seconds; mine takes 5 minutes. What type of CPU etc does yours have? I have two Windows 10 systems I built them both myself. One has an AMD CPU & the other has an Intel CPU. The one with the Intel CPU is about 10 years old, but it’s an ASUS board, 3.4GHz Intel core I7 (6 core) , 64GB of DDR3 RAM & a 1TB SSD boot drive. The other system is about 5 years old, with a 3.2GHz Ryzen 7 2700 Eight-Core CPU, Gigabyte board, 64GB of DDR4 RAM & a 4TB NVMe boot drive. They both take about the same amount of time to start Cubase & are ready to either start up something I’ve already been working on or a new empty one to add tracks to. The AMD system is a bit faster to load but it’s not even close to your 10 second startup.
You said you mostly use sample libraries. Do you use any other sample player than HALion? or are they all HALion? I do use a few other sample players, Kontakt, Independence Pro, EMU Emulator X3, OK. I use more than I said. I guess I use lots of others, Sample Tank 4, Syntronic 2, & others.
Thank you for your replies & help. I’m sure you’re busy, but if you can still spare a few minutes, I would like to hear some specs on the system that you use to run Cubase. I don’t get out much so I don’t know what others use for Cubase. My problem may be that I’m using older hardware that’s just not capable of doing better. Plus, there’s alway the possibility that I’ve missed something or have too much stuff installed. Maybe I am the problem. Hmmm…
I have a 3 year-old i9 12900 with 64 gigabytes of RAM. The C: drive is an SSD (465 gigabytes), all my sample libraries are on a single M-drive (894 gigabytes), my projects are on 2 partitions of a fast regular HDD (6 terabyte WD Black, 2.44 terabytes and 1.95 terabytes).
My previous system was an i7 6740 with 32 gigabytes of RAM, with much the same drives. In fact, the new PC came without drives - I just used the old ones, except for the SSD C: drive.
And, to my surprise, programs didn’t load much faster. Cubase at about 15 seconds, maybe, projects much the same as now.
This is my experience. The more sample libraries I use, the longer a project takes to load - the instruments have to load all those samples. I also set the instruments to load everything into RAM, rather than read from disk as and when.
An empty project is instantaneous, once I’ve clicked through the New Project dialogues.
I use a few, including:
Guitars from MusicLab, Shreddage guitars and bass guitars (Kontakt), brass from EastWest, along with MOJO (Kontakt), EastWest choirs, The Ladies from RealiSound (Kontakt).
FWIW, I just timed my Cubase Pro 14.0.10 startup (1st time after booting my system, so plugins would not be cached in memory yet – it would start faster a second time), and it took somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes (I wasn’t using a stopwatch or equivalent, just noting the time showing in Windows – 9:00 AM at the start and 9:01 AM at the finish). This is just to get to the Hub (when I’m working on a project, I’m more likely to double click on a file in File Manager to open Cubase and the project in one go). Keep in mind I have literally thousands of plugins (if you want to get an idea, check out Equipment and Software • Rick Paul). It wouldn’t surprise me if Cubase 14 is starting more quickly than Cubase 13 and earlier in that it doesn’t also have to scan the VST2 plugins (many of which are redundant with the VST3 versions that I only keep around for compatibility with older projects, mostly in SONAR).
My computer’s specs are Intel i7 5820K (6 cores) CPU with 16 GB RAM. Most of my disks are Samsung 870 EVO, with the only hard disk I have not used by Cubase. Motherboard is an ASUS X-99 Deluxe – I built the original system late in 2014, so it is pretty nearly exactly 10 years old, though the SSDs were used to replace hard disks when they either failed or were clearly failing. I don’t know that it matters for the situation here, but, FWIW, graphics card is now a GeForce GTX 1050.
I’m curious what specifically you do when you “create a new song”. For me, I just typically use the Create Empty button in the Hub, specify the folder I want to use (usually creating a new one as part of that), then select the folder, and Cubase brings the project up instantly, with all my audio configuration choices intact. Short of your system’s never quite managing to save your standard audio configuration (e.g. if Cubase didn’t shut down properly when setting it up), the only thing I can think of on this front is if your standard audio configuration in Cubase is not what is tied into some template you are using to create a new song. (I can imagine this might happen if you were using a template from a third party, or if you changed audio interfaces since configuring Cubase, or some such thing.)
What I might suggest on this is going into Cubase without starting a project (or opening an existing one), so you are starting just from the Hub. Now go into Studio Setup, and make sure you are picking the ASIO driver for the interface you want to be using for your projects. For example, here is my screen:
Next, go to the tab for that audio interface (MOTU Audio ASIO in my case, and select the various inputs and outputs you want to be available to Cubase. The relevant portions for my screen look as follows:
I’m sure it goes without saying, but you need to click the Apply button if you need to make changes.
Next up is going into Studio/Audio Connections to configure things to your liking. I use Control Room, and, of course, my interface is likely different from yours (not to mention differences in how I use mine from how others might use the same interface), but FWIW, here are the relevant screens from my configuration:
I don’t use any of the Group/Effect or External effects/instruments tabs. I should note that I sometimes change this configuration for special purposes, for example adding inputs when doing cassette conversions or practicing with an external keyboard with sounds (my studio controllers are MIDI only).
Now, most importantly, after setting everything you need here, Quit Cubase and make sure there were no hangs or crashes on exit.
After doing that, you can go back into Cubase, maybe verify the setup you just made is still intact, and try again to start a new song, preferably using the CreateEmpty button as a first test to make sure you get what you expect that way. Then if you’re using some other method to start a new song, you can try that again to see if things are okay now or if the issue still exists. In the latter case, I’m guessing whatever template you used was configured for another setup, so you’d need to resave the template after making the configuration adjustments, then used that updated template next time.
BTW, after closing Cubase, I timed a Cubase start again, and it was about 26 seconds. Plugins would have been cached in memory that second time, thus the much faster speed.
