Hi,
I’d like to report a visual issue I noticed in Cubase. When working with audio clips, the waveform appears to visually change in volume depending on the zoom level. At lower zoom levels, the waveform looks louder, but when I zoom in, it suddenly looks weaker — even though there’s no actual change in the audio itself.
Is this a known visual optimization problem? Or is there any setting that can be adjusted to fix this behavior?
I’d like to know if other users are experiencing this too.
**
I checked and unchecked → interpolate audio waveforms
Event volume curve →
on mouse over & always
** System Info:
Cubase [14.0.20 build 240]
macOS [14.7.2 sonoma, Intel CPU]
I think it’s more helpful and respectful to keep the discussion constructive rather than dismissing a user’s experience as “nonsense” without looking deeper into the issue.
Anyway, this behavior does not occur in Cubase 13, which suggests a change in waveform rendering was introduced in version 14. That’s why I brought it up — not to argue, but to provide potentially useful feedback.
If this is something Steinberg is unaware of, it’s worth highlighting. My intention here is to contribute constructively, not to start a debate.
What I’m describing here is not just a basic zoom scaling effect. In Cubase 14, the waveform of the same audio clip appears noticeably weaker or stronger depending on the zoom level. For users who rely on visual feedback — especially during gain staging — this can be misleading.
thank you.
First of all, try to ignore st10ss. He can be incredibly helpful if he so chooses. On other occassions, however, he puts people down. I don’t know why.
Your zooming display issue:
I haven’t noticed such huge changes before. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention.
Generally the waveform that we see is just a representation of the actual waveform. Cubase has to chose which samples to display as there are more samples than pixel. So the waveform can vary a bit depending on the zoom level. Once you zoom in enough Cubase will show each sample with its value.
However, these massive volume spikes appearing and then disappearing look unusual to me.
When you fully zoom in can you see whether there really are some samples with a high amplitude value or is Cubase just creating them out of nothing?
Thanks a lot for your thoughtful and respectful response Johnny — I really appreciate the tone and the effort to understand the issue.
To answer your question:
No, when I fully zoom in, there are no actual high-amplitude samples present. There’s no unusual audio content, and I don’t hear any spikes or distortion either. The issue seems to be purely visual — a rendering inconsistency that appears only when zooming in and out.
This behavior did not exist in Cubase 13, and everything displayed quite accurately regardless of zoom level. I started noticing the issue after moving to Cubase 14, especially when using the new event-based gain staging feature. That’s when the waveform started behaving strangely during zoom operations.
So yes, it looks like the waveform rendering algorithm may have changed with this new feature, and it’s possibly introducing some visual artifacts that don’t reflect the actual audio content.
Thanks again for your constructive input — it really helps to discuss these things with others who approach it with an open mind.
In the project folder of your project you will find a subfolder called Images. There you can delete the .peak file for the audio clip that is having the issue. This will force Cubase to create a new peak file for this clip. Maybe that will help.
I tried the suggestion, but unfortunately it didn’t resolve the issue.
Based on your comment just i started thinking about this; i suspect the problem might be related to how Cubase is caching the waveform render. It seems like the waveform is initially rendered based on the event’s original state, and when using the new event-based gain staging, the visual waveform doesn’t fully update — or only does so at certain zoom levels. It’s as if Cubase still holds the original waveform version in RAM and doesn’t fully re-render it after gain adjustments.
Thank you again Johnny, i hope we could find a solution.
You have provided short film clips to show the issue. Maybe you can show the volume envelope on these audio events, if you think it has to do with that?
I’ll prepare a comparison between two audio events:
One with an event volume curve applied (using the new gain staging feature in Cubase 14 pro),
And another one in its original form, with no volume edits or pre-volume processing applied. Just i duplicated track and removed event volume curve
This should help clarify whether the visual issue is being caused by the gain curve itself, or if it’s a broader waveform rendering/caching problem.
Thank you
It should lead to the exact same result, since the clip volume curve is a non-destructive edit.
I don’t think this is a issue with the volume curve. The waveform view is always an approximation to the real level of the audio content.
You would need a much bigger display for an exact representation.
Unfortunately I don’t really know details about peak files and how the waveform is derived from the data within.
I would assume the waveform we see when not zoomed in to sample level is interpolated (a little bit like time stretching used to be 25 years ago).
On certain zoom levels maybe there are values being used to draw the interpolated waveform that cause the drawing algorithm to come up with extreme values.
I’ve seen the same… hope that they will fix it asap.
I’m working on 27" 4k monitors. Recently I received a new file from a client for their mix and on listening at it I clearly spotted a few clipping peaks (also shown by the meters) but no way to see them when editing the waveform and zooming it at the max resolution.
To fix it I I had to use an external editor.
Will try to clean the rendered image to see if this might be a solution.
The same?
So far I was under the impression we are talking about a graphical issue.
Now you say that there are peaks in the sound that are not shown on max zoom in Cubase. That is a whole different issue. You might wanna start a new topic for this.
Unfortunately, the issue still persists.
Even after trying different setups — including launching Cubase in Safe Mode (deactivated third party VST’s - cubase factory settings etc…) and using a completely clean project — the waveform rendering problem continues to appear under certain conditions. It’s inconsistent and seems to depend on things like zoom level and whether gain staging has been applied to the event.
Just wanted to give an update in case others are following or experiencing similar behavior.