Normally, I’m not much on Feature Request threads other than general curiosity about getting a read on features others consider to be important for workflow. But after recently opening an older Cubase 6 Project file, I bumped into a situation that led me write this… um….feature request post.
If you are offended by feature request posts, please move on to the next thread. Nothing to see here.
A few days ago, I opened a Cubase 6 Project that I had worked on in October. I hit Play and discovered a huge hit on CPU that wasn’t there in October.
I couldn’t figure out what the cause was by simply looking at Cubase’s CPU Performance meter, other than there was a huge hit going on. Yes, I could have gone through a step by step removal/deactivation of plug-ins to find the culprit….but I decided to try another method for a more detailed look.
I opened an exact duplicate of the Cubase sequence, using all the same plugins, in Presonus’s StudioOne-2*. Once running, I opened Studio One’s CPU Performance Monitor. It took all of 2 seconds to observe that a recent update of a reverb plugin call Fusion Field was causing the CPU hit. I hadn’t used that plugin in a Cubase Project since I upgraded it, and stupidly, I failed to test it after upgrading. Mea culpa.
I replaced the reverb plugin with the last known working version and relaunched StudioOne again. Huge difference.
See for yourselves in this side by side example of the two plugin versions. On the left is the older one; right is the revision. Check out the level of information shown.
http://c3410583.r83.cf0.rackcdn.com/FusionFieldStudioOneCPUtests.m4v
While this post may come off as a classic Cubase vs “the other guys” thing, I assure you, it is not the intention. What this post is about is illustrating the detailed information Presonus packed into their CPU Performance metering…and how immediate it is capable of identifying troublesome plugins. My apologies to the developer of Fusion Field for becoming the test subject here…but it was dramatic enough to point out the quality of the Presonus tool.
If there ever was a feature request I’d actually beg Steinberg to consider….it is this: make a CPU Performance window as good or better than what’s in Studio One. It is a real time saver when it comes to tracking down naughty plugins.
*I had done this to exchange the song with a friend who only has StudioOne.