Hmmm. Yikes. Was that before that big “forum cleanup” that happened a while ago?
There are lots of performance-related discussions on here. It’s hard to imagine Steinberg deliberately quashing such dialog.
Post it again, maybe?
Btw, I posted some performance-related thoughts yesterday on this thread, with a link to an interesting video. It really demonstrates pre-ASIO Guard and also simulates hyper-threading / multi-core issues by using Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 on the same machine.
It also hints at what ASIO Guard could be. Right now, ASIO Guard may not have as much muscle as with something like VEP on the same machine, at the same time. This is an area I’d like to benchmark. That is, ASIO Guard vs Cubase+VEP running on the same machine.
In theory, ASIO Guard should be able to lift an equivalent workload.
My fear is that ASIO Guard is the “answer” to “drop-outs,” but perhaps coming from a less competitive and ambitious design philosophy. Instead of attempting to squeeze every last bit of CPU (as VEP appears to), that it’s just to “improve” drop-outs in certain cases.
I realize it’s all a balancing act with potential tradeoffs, but a Cubase that truly competes with a Cubase+VEP (on same machine) combo, or, say, Reaper, is something I’m sure many of us would welcome.
I think focusing on ASIO Guard is the approach to take, as non-ASIO Gaurd is unlikely to see any performance improvement.
I also think that the benchmarks that should matter the most are high-buffer, high-latency ones. There are so many gottchas at so many layers of the signal path, at low latency (e.g., even ASIO vs Core Audio), that removing that from the conversation should help focus on the real problem areas.
I’m also thinking that VEP + Cubase might be the solution, for me (running on slave computers).
It’s funny, with VEP and slave machines, my biggest gripes with Cubase would all be solved – disappear – in one fell swoop:
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the 6 freezable-insert limit
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the long load times for projects with large numbers of plugins
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the performance issues
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the lack of batch freeze/unfreeze
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the lack of Studio One’s “rearrange frozen tracks” feature
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the lack of Bounce In Place … nope, that would still be hugely welcomed.
And maybe that’s a fair point, a professional solution needs more than a single part; it needs a full, robust system. Perhaps it’s unfair to expect Cubase to do it all … Naahh. 