I feel like I spend more time troubleshooting and fixing crashes or Drivers, or some technical issue than I spend using the software for what it’s made for. I run Windows 10, AMD Ryzen5 3600x, 64G of RAM, 1.5TB or storage… I can’t get Cubase to act right for more than a week… This morning, it was running fine, I boot up Cubase this evening and it crashes my computer. Makes no sense.
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Sounds like it’s probably not a Cubase issue. If you haven’t taken notes yet then it would be good to do that now so you can follow just what you have done before it crashes.
Usual suspects are hardware drivers, plugins, and broken hardware…
Nuendo is pretty solid here. Very rare I get a crash or hang. System in sig.
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Are you using the most updated version of Cubase and do you have up-to-date drivers for your soundcard? Are you using your computer for things other than your DAW like gaming or work? You don’t mention a soundcard or other peripherals. These are part of the picture too. Is your soundcard powered during boot up or do you turn it on after boot up the computer? Are all the connections to the computer solid – slightly pulled out connections can cause intermittement problems. Graphics drivers can be a culprit. There are also ways to optimise Windows 10 for DAW use if you haven’t gone through these steps it can help:
https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/pc-optimization-guide-for-windows-10/
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Admittedly, I only have a couple hundred hours into the software and I’m no scholar, it may be user error. Thank you for sharing the link. However, I decided to download the trial of BitWig and test it, while have issues with Cubase, and BitWig didn’t experience any issues.
I just went through a week of troubleshooting, resetting the machine, updating BIOS, ChipSet drivers, graphics card driver(2080Super, no gaming only DAW), removing all bloat drivers and software, and everything was running well. Just last night, things decided to go haywire… We are working again this morning. I am using a Sterling H224 Audio Interface. I have a LaunchKey 49 connected through USB and BCR2000 connected via DIN MIDI through the interface. I did add a different computer monitor yesterday… Maybe that was the issue… But is Cubase really that sensitive?
Just a note that you have to be careful when removing drivers and software. Some things seem unnecessary but can be expected by the system. Of course if I add something I end up not needing I’ll remove it, like maybe some media software or whatever - something with no “hooks” into other software. Hopefully you checked that thoroughly before removing stuff.
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Do you use the same system for other things like gaming, etc? I found that having dedicated system just for music is most stable. And also a lot of strange third party plugins can cause instability all depends on vendor.
There is info here about analyzing the crashes that you can look into:
https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-to-analyse-cubase-crash-dumps-on-windows/784142
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I was using an AMD 3900xt and having nothing but problems. Strange errors, OS related issues, driver issues. All those issues stopped when I switched to Intel. It sucks but that’s probably what you’re going to experience overall with cubase and any number of other daws.
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I had a session open last night… Went to open a session this AM… Freezing and crashing again. This is getting ridiculous haha
Thank you for this information, it will help a lot. I don’t think I SHOULD have to go through all of this tho… I mean, it’s a $500 software… I don’t think I should have to spend my time doing all of this, especially when other DAWs seem to run just fine Via there trial versions on my PC… I’d switch DAWs but I already paid these guys haha
Just to let you know, the grass isn’t greener on the other side.
Just look into the respective forums and you’ll read similar things.
It most probably is not Cubase itself, but a combination of plugins and/or drivers.
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There’s an almost unlimited amount of combinations of hardware and software so users are sometimes going to get stuck with systems that won’t work.
When you’re testing trial versions of other DAWs in order to have an apples-to-apples (fair and productive) comparison you would need them all to be set up as closet to the same as possible, which is quite difficult. In other words, did you play as many tracks, with as many channels, with the same amount of processing using the same plugins, playing back the same tracks?
As soon as even just one thing is different that thing could be all the difference. For example using a plugin in Cubase but not the others, and that plugin isn’t working properly.
First reply.
I have to ask are you using just Cubase and the integrated hardware? No third party software VST, plug ins etc? When you have the reboot issues have you stripped away all the hardware and just left the audio interface? Then rebooted? Even try removing that and reassign the audio at start up.
I am an Intel user so I am week on AMD products but I know that there are issues with certain processors and the way that the cores are managed. My Intel suffers from this! I have to shut down the upper cores when doing large projects.
I also agree with the responses of those who mentioned that all other DAWs have issues and are not trouble free.
ISSUE RESOLVED: I feel kind of dumb but also, WTF… Lol I’ve come to learn my audio interface is USB 2.0… Because it has a USB-C connection i assumed it was 3.0, not 2.0??
Upon one of the restarts, I had notice a prompt about the audio driver missing and it mention USB 2.0… I made sure the audio interface was connected to a USB 2.0 port on the motherboard and we are booting fine now. Thank you guys for the support.
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I’ve been using this software (Cubase) for many years. I’m sorry to inform you - it’s pretty much bullet proof. Prerequisite to a good experience is a stable platform. Get an Intel and a clean install. You’ll find it’s rock solid. Trust me… Ha!
Since this issue, I have spent countless hours troubleshooting things in Cubase, still no consistency… Sometime I open it and everything is fine, other times, it won’t even recognize the audio interface, freezes, crashes, etc… Other DAWs are working fine…
Part of me likes the challenge and the other part of me really rather spend the time creating something… Is everyone that uses Cubase spending an hour to set up the program every time they open it? Maybe This is normal and I am ignorant?
If Hans Zimmer can use it to score Christopher Nolan movies then Cubase most likely isn’t the problem. On that level people have zero tolerance for what you’re experiencing.
I still don’t think it’s Cubase, and if it’s inconsistent and weird then I would suspect something like poor hardware drivers or malfunctioning hardware… or possibly a software conflict. I think that’s where you need to look for a problem.
Thank you Mattaias… I will be “putting it on the shelf” for a while… I have actually been able to create something in a different DAW… However, after going through all of this, it makes the other DAW kind of feel like cheating… Maybe Cubase REALLY does not like this cheap Sterling interface from GC… …Will have to test that… May I ask which interface you use?