Cubase tips for CPU overload

24May20

Using Cubase 10.5 for a large project, I was sometimes annoyed by dropouts in audio during mixing/playback, and by the maddening “Audio drop out detected” message during recording.

This is because of CPU overload. Real-time playback can be an issue because your mix, plugins, midi, etc. take a lot of processing power. If your export of a 3-minute song takes 3 minutes, you can imagine that it’s hard for Cubase to do in real time.

You can monitor CPU usage in Windows by clicking CRTL-SHIFT-ESC and then selecting CPU.

There are several categories of solutions, as you can see in many posts on-line.

1. This is rarely mentioned in other posts, but the first thing to do is to remove tracks (even muted) that you are not using. Right-click and Remove Selected Track. I had a bunch of unused takes, previous versions of midi drums, etc. Removing them dropped CPU usage from 75% to 40% on one project.

2. Increase the ASIO buffer size in your audio device control panel. I increased it from 1024 to 4096, which reduced CPU from 90% to 80% on one project. Studio Setup/VST Audio System/device/control panel.

3. In Studio Setup/VST Audio System, set Audio Priority = High, ASIO Guard = On, Steinberg audio power scheme = On. Experiment with these.

4. Last resort – Freeze midi channels or other channels that are taking lots of CPU. Check the manual for details. If you are not modifying the channels while mixing, they don’t need to be computed in real time.

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