Aaaaaggghhh, Cubase 7 is driving me mad! I love its new features, but I have spent so much time trying to get to the bottom of a couple of "quirks" that I haven't made much music with it yet.

I have a Q9550, 8GB RAM, and I'm using W7 64bit and the Focusrite Saffire ASIO driver. The main problem is that I get glitches and dropouts with VST synths with a buffer size of less than 1024. Is this normal? It means that my input and output latencies are around the 25ms mark. As I mentioned in another post I thought this was down to a lack of RAM when I was using the 32 bit bit version but I have now installed the 64 bit version and the problem is exactly the same.

The other problem is that from time to time (I'm afraid I can't be any more specific) Cubase freezes. When it does this I can play a track by using keyboard shortcuts but if I try to do anything else or click anywhere with the mouse it doesn't respond and makes a "bing" sound. I would normally associate this behaviour with having a dialogue box open or the program waiting for a response from me but this doesn't seem to be the case. The only way round it is by quitting Cubase through Task Manager.

Can anyone shed any light on these issues please?

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Le geek, c'est chic

ACore2quad won't cut it with Cubase 7 due to the FSB speed. i7 systems communicate directly between the ram and CPU removing that bottleneck.

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Success is round the corner. It's also round the bend.

Quote Honey Badger:

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Aaaaaggghhh, Cubase 7 is driving me mad! I love its new features, but I have spent so much time trying to get to the bottom of a couple of "quirks" that I haven't made much music with it yet.

I have a Q9550, 8GB RAM, and I'm using W7 64bit and the Focusrite Saffire ASIO driver. The main problem is that I get glitches and dropouts with VST synths with a buffer size of less than 1024. Is this normal? It means that my input and output latencies are around the 25ms mark. As I mentioned in another post I thought this was down to a lack of RAM when I was using the 32 bit bit version but I have now installed the 64 bit version and the problem is exactly the same.

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Which Saffire is it? Did it also do this on your previous Cubase revision?

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Hi Pete, it's a Saffire Pro 24 DSP. I didn't notice this problem with 6.5 and it is quite pronounced now, so am confident that it has either started or become worse with version 7.

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Le geek, c'est chic

Quote Honey Badger:

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Hi Pete, it's a Saffire Pro 24 DSP. I didn't notice this problem with 6.5 and it is quite pronounced now, so am confident that it has either started or become worse with version 7.

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Each new version of anything chucks out more data and you have just reached the tipping point of your system. There's a lot going on with just that new mixer.
If you want to hang onto that computer I'd consider sending Cubase back under the blanket of "not fit for described use" ie: not enough forward information for the user concerning ancillary equipment needs". Cubase works perfectly on my i7 computer and it was optimised from v6 for i7 computers and Windows 7.

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Success is round the corner. It's also round the bend.

Have you at any point done the FW legacy driver fix?

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/article.php?id=1030

I know it's odd that it's only happened after the update but as mentioned above the could be something extra going down the cable now that is knocking it over the edge.

Also what FW card are you using in the system or is it on board? If so what motherboard?

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Thanks Pete and Tex, unfortunately the Focusrite driver fix hasn't made any diffence and a new PC isn't an option at the moment so I guess I'll have to live with it. I've just fired up Cubase 6.5 again and the problem is there with the old version too though less pronounced - I guess I just didn't notice it before for some reason.

I've currently got a DP35DP - firewire is on the board.

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Le geek, c'est chic

That's a TI chip as well from what I can remember, so the shouldn't be an issue

Have you tried running DPC latency checker to look for any spikes? Got a wifi dongle in there?

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

OK, so here's a thing. Fired her up just now to run the DPC Latency Checker and there is absolutely no problem any more! I can even play piano through Kontakt with a buffer size of 32! Latency ticks along nicely at under 100us and with no peaks by the way.

I can only think that the Focusrite driver suggestion did work, but that I forgot to restart the system yesterday (though I thought I did) - I installed an update of MixControl at the same time too.

So thank you Pete. No need for a new PC after all, but when I do take the plunge it'll be a Scan

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Le geek, c'est chic

Good to hear, could have been either/or of those two things but all that matters is its working now.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog