I had a similar problem a while back. I started having problems at 96/32 when I got to about 65 tracks. Printing vsti instruments to audio will make your problem worse, not better. Your asio meter shows how hard the computer is working to generate audio (e.g., converting vstis to sound, using plug-ins to process sound, etc.) while the disk cache meter shows how much data is streaming between Cubase and your HDDs through the serial ATA ports (Sata). The limit is based on the type of drive and the serial ata port configuration on your motherboard. HDDs have a limit as to how much data they can read or write at one time, and SATA ports come in different speeds as well. The actual speed will be the lower of either your HDDs or your motherboard sata ports. Sata 1 was about 1.5gb/s, sata 2 around 3gb/s and the new sata 3 is about 6gb/s. So even if you have HDDS that offer sata 3 speed, if your motherboard only supports sata 2, your limit is 3gb/s. More audio tracks at higher sample rates tax the bandwidth of the sata ports and the read/write speeds of the drive. If you switch to Sata 3 (and especially to SSDs on Sata 3) you will greatly increase your system’s ability to run more channels, up to the limit of your cpu.
If your asio meter is peaking out, you print vstis to audio or freeze tracks to fix the problem. If your disc cache is peaking, and you’ve adjusted the preload to optimal and you still have the problem, you have no choice but to reduce the number of tracks or the sample rate. I suggest you do some creative bouncing (e.g., submixing 8 BG Vox tracks to one stereo pair).
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