There is another option: Steinberg can split the audio engine into more than one process. Each Windows process can access 32 threads under MMCS. It wouldn’t take many processes to cope with any realistic number of cores. Two or three processes would handle a i9-7960, with hyper-threading turned on. This isn’t trivial - or Steinberg would have done it already - but it is possible. Vienna Ensemble Pro manages to make it work, and will crush as many cores as you have if you have the load that requires them.
You can get the same error caused by a single instance in VEP. You just wouldn’t normally use it like Cubendo.
I would much prefer that Steinberg improves their audio engine than Windows increases the thread count. We are not going to get faster and faster processors, but ones with more and more cores. If Steinberg sorts out how to make the audio engine work across more processes, then the program will be able to scale well into the future. Those of us with large orchestral templates have many tracks with little/no dependency. There has to be a way to figure out which things are isolated and process them in a separate process. Not easy. Not trivial, but possible, and the result will be a program that can (like video edit software), fully use whatever hardware users decide to afford. That would be my wish. Real time isn’t easy on a general purpose CPU, but Merging, Vienna, and others have figured it out. I have no doubt that Steinberg has the resources, expertise and need to do this very well. Cubase could end up one of the more scalable platforms on the market
I had audio spikes on my (ancient) system. They’ve gone now as a result of disabling C!E support on my ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 motherboard in BIOS. Worth a try if you have this (or equivalent) on your systems.
niversen: very good writeup. I think Cubase is moving carefully in that direction and has the headroom available in its basic architecture to do so. OTOH, Ableton is so fenced in by a dated vision going back to their beginnings that they can not even support VST3 without ripping out the entire foundations of their design, and that will not happen soon.
Maincat: What does C!E do? I’d like to see if I have something like that on my Gigabyte X58 bios.
C1E can put the CPU in to a sleep mode (it’s an AMD feature, I don’t know what an Intel MB calls it). Hence disabling C1E enables the CPU to be powered up at all times, leading to no more audio spikes on my system.
I just started using Jbridge for the exact same reason to bridge 64 bit plugins…it seems to solve the running out or resources to add more plugins to a session.
I ditched Windows 10 and went back to Windows 7, which already made things way smoother for Cubase 9.5 and lots of CPU-hungry plugins in big sessions (I use lots of Acustica plugins, UAD, slate, Soundtoys, etc). Then I did JBridge in Windows 7, and now I’m amazed by how solid my system is. I now feel that I can just keep adding and adding plugins and was wondering if I would ever hit a ceiling or crash 
. It’s only crashed once in sessions that have much more going on than what I was able to do in Windows 10. My system is finally working like I’ve been trying to get it to in the past year.
Guys i have a question is this extension http://www.intervalzero.com working with Cubase?
Looks very interesting!
Looks very dubious. Probably has never been tested with whatever that does.
I called the company and spoke with a guy there - great guy. Cool software extension (called RTX) to windows that opens up thread counts and allows zero-latency. Bascially, it carves out specified cores for specfiic tasks and then windows doesn’t even know those cores are there. Apparently Avid started using it when they got rid of dsps in their live mixing boards, allowing a scalable mix engine which can scale up and down cores. The bad news is that software needs to be specifically coded to use the technology, so Steinberg and/or plugin manufacturers would have to re-code for it.
Hi don’t know if i’m concerned but i have cpu spike too, i have a i7-7700 (4 cores and 8 threads). i’m under win 10 fall creator et i use cubase 9.5.
i just see the release of a new driver, hoping it will solve the issue. just noticed too the presence of a beta driver. i don’t know if i must test it or if i’m concerned. it’s quite annoying especially on a old project, who is impossible to work on it for now. i found temporary solution, but hope someone will fix this at a point or another.
What is still unclear to me here is if we are talking about physical cores or logical cores. 10 physical means 20 logical. The article seems to confuse the two? So are you in trouble with an 8 core CPU? (8 physical 16 logical cores?)
Otherwise it makes more sense to just buy the fastest 6-core (12 logical) CPU as 14 is the maximum that Cubase uses under Win10? I also find it weird that it states that previous versions of windows did not have this limitation? Does that cont for both 10 Pro and Home? I hear nothing from MS this being existent or being on a roadmap to be adressed.
Buying a €1.500 Core i9, only to cripple performance and get yourself into Spikeyland isn’t very promissing.
The article does not confuse the two, it refers to “CPU with more than 14 logical cores*”, at the bottom of the article you find:
*logical = combining physical cores with Hyper-threading/SMT (simultaneous multi-threading) technology to two logical cores as used on current Intel/AMD processor generations
related WIki: Hyper-threading - Wikipedia
14 includes physical cores plus virtual, if HT is available.
The Windows versions not affected are Win 7 and 8/8.1 - the limitation exists in Win 10 since its release.
Yes, so a 6core like the 6800k (12 virtual cores) is ok, but an 8 core (lke 5820) CPU (16 virtual cores), needs the driver to park 2 cores and is an issue under the 14 virtual core Win10 restriction?
Correct, a 6800K is OK with both HT disabled and enabled, a 5820 is OK with HT disabled, but with HT enabled it won’t park two cores: the two additional processing threads will run with the same priority as UI threads.
There is some ambiguity in the word ‘thread’ itself - the term is indeed confusing, as it can be used for both “Thread (computing)” and “Thread (computer architecture)”.
Ok, I wanted to drop some serious money for a monster x299 system to upgrade my x99 6800k, but seems better to wait untill this is resolved then. My system now works spike free on the Steinberg power scheme.
In the same boat, want to upgrade my 3770k with a 7820k, but money could be better spend on a 8700k as it looks now.
I’m going x299 regardless, want to keep my quad memory, maybe I wait till the next cycle to see if this is fixed for Windows.
I’m not hitting a ceilng yet and can render static content in place if needed, but even more headroom is always nice.
i bought a 7820x and havent yet see anything bad. no spikes or anything like that yet. Though i havent yet put alot of pressure on my pc either. have win 10 pro ltsb but i guess there is the same limitation in this release as the ordinary win 10 pro as Fabio tells us above here in the thread. I Think i read sometime Before about MS would make win 10 better for us who using pc for DAW when they released “windows 10 for workstations” but maybe it was just for gaming. Its very strange that MS have this limitations when they release a newer OS and there is no limits on the older OS. And dont even done something about it yet. MS Flagship win 10 limits us DAW users to not buy the best computers cus if we do our studios get worse