Upgraded to Mac 12-core, have same ASIO/CPU in Cubase

Copied across from the Nuendo Forum:

FWW, did some tests with a VI-only project: with and without auxs and groups. Can’t say I found any appreciable performance differences (at least, as identified by the Steinberg performance meters or the Apple Activity Monitor). Cubase forum seems to indicate otherwise, but has’t been my experience. I did notice however that Cubase 8.5 seems to do a little better with overall CPU load than Neundo 7 for the same project. Possibly newer code.

Otherwise, the ‘threading metering’ is a little odd: all 12 cores seem equally engaged (vs, different cores showing different loads, some with none etc say like Pro Tools), and, when viewing the 24 ‘threads’ the second thread of each CPU shows as doing bugger-all. Re. the CPU readout on Apple activity monitor, this would seem to show that there’s till a lot of Ram and CPU left idle in the background. One solution that works fine is to rewire slave another DAW as host for VIs etc: Ableton Live or Reaper for example. That certainly puts some serious VI grunt into the system.

Anyways, overall I see as just an interesting sideline really. Nuendo in general is very pleasing to work with overall in my experience. BTW, the Rewire implementation is the best I’ve used.

Hahahaha…welcome to LaLaLand Brother!

Man I wish I could be there to look at your sessions. I also have a hunch about the Apollo but would need to try my own test. I’ve always found Steinberg’s ASIO meter to really hit everything including drive I/o and audio interface activity. I really thing the issue lies elsewhere.

Has anyone noticed that Stiny does not show up here, or on my Thread or on GS or any Topic
or Forum that has to do with this particular issue. Imagine how many technical questions
people here asked and yet no word nothing, not even a HI nor SCREW YOU GUYS WHO CARES.

Just to give some more perspective….

As an example of a real world situation, I’ve attached a picture of core loading on the session I’m working on right now. The 12 cores are fairly evenly loaded in this example -all at about 35-65%, with the ASIO meter at about 75%. (This is a session with 160 tracks including 16 Groups and 12 FX Tracks).

Going back a few years, there are lots of tests on DAWBench.com showing Cubase to be competitive with other DAWs on CPU efficiency and often coming out the winner. Maybe just in the last few years, other DAWs have advanced in this department and we now have to wait for Cubase to make an advance and be back on top! I guess it’s a constant arms race and don’t forget, Pro Tools had a revised audio engine quite recently so one might expect it to be ahead in the game right now.

I know this is bad timing as you have just bought a new Mac but if you ONLY want to be concerned with plugin counts, DAWBench tests consistently suggested Cubase can run a lot more plugins on Windows. Again, that is going back a few years and obviously there are many other reasons why one might prefer Mac (and I do think it’s a nicer OS myself which is why I’m typing this on a MacBook!).

I don’t think it’s realistic to expect them to come on this thread and officially say “Yes, our engine is not as good as our rivals, we’re working on that.”

No i did not mean that…i meant something normal as any developer, to ask question,
to point out things, to do some tests, to send some projects out and stuff…

I posted 3 images below from what i did with Latency Monitor test…this stupid dxkrnl.sys thing and one more next to it always shows up on the test. So you know, my Intel Speed Step is disabled, i don’t know why LM mentions it. Now, The
whole time my computer is able to perform, that is what LM tells me, the pops happen only when i stop playback or start touching things on the computer…someone who knows computers better please take a look at the images.

Thanks



Their is a Jbridge version for mac (also a demo) which runs the plugins outside of cubase. I use it on windows for running a few leftover 32bit plugins in CB64. Every plugin has it’s own thread and it spreads the load perfectly on windows. It would be easy to do a grouping vs non grouping test using one heavy jbridged plugin and see if it helps. On windows it does

Interesting, related ‘interview’ on the Sternberg site, ‘Let’s Talk about Cubase’ at http://www.steinberg.net/en/artists/stories/2016/cubase_story.html “Georg Conrads, Technical Lead Audio Engine, Christian Dettner, Product Planning Manager, and Clyde Sendke, Director for Product Planning, to talk about its creative tools, the much lauded audio engine and more”.

  1. ‘Georg: At the moment, Cubase and Nuendo share their source code for the most part’.

  2. There are many reasons why Pro Tools has become the industry standard, but two of the main reasons seemed to be the “guaranteed processing capacity” and “I/O latency for professional use” that came with the use of the dedicated DSP card.

  3. My main point is that I always find it strange that manufacturers of native processing DAW software do not seem to be making any serious efforts to resolve issues related to latency. In that regard, they still rely on direct monitoring of the audio interface. In terms of processing power, computers have become more than fast enough, and there is always the option of selecting Universal Audio’s UAD if processing power is still insufficient. If only issues related to latency can be overcome, native processing DAW could become a system that could take on Pro Tools|HDX…

  4. Clyde: This is a very interesting question indeed. The first point I would like to highlight is that as of Cubase Pro 8, we have introduced ASIO-Guard 2 that minimizes input and output latency to a minimum 32 samples. Minimizing latency down to this level was simply not possible with previous versions.I do need to clarify one point here, and that is about not taking issues related to latency seriously. Overcoming this problem is one of the topics that we have focused on the most over the past few years. Unfortunately I am unable to provide any more details today. Please wait to see what the future has in store for Cubase and Nuendo.

FWIW, I find this somewhat misdirected: ASIO guard is about input latency and as they indicate, most now use inout monitoring and an audio interfaces that increasingly allow much control of that process, e.g.: RME, UAD etc with 'print to tape FX if required etc etc. Chasing the necessity to lower input monitoring latency through the DAW would seem well off topic these days & monitoring off-source is old school (to vs from tape), worked well then, works well now. I’d get over that one and concentrate on the mix, routing, output and CPU overheads associated with pretending that a DAW is a studio.

Back to the point of this thread: less about ASIO & input buffer then; more focus on multithreading and mix down power and clearly this is where Cubase /Neuendo lag against ProTools, Logic, Reaper and the rest.

Well, this thread has left me completely unsure of which Mac Pro I want to buy! Looks like you decided on a 3.7, 6-core machine, eh Headlands? Are you happy with how that’s working out? Why would you not just hold on to the 12-core and reasonably gamble that Cubase might improve over the coming year? Do I understand correctly that you felt performance was actually suffering with the additional cores?

I’m on a 8-core trashcan mac and I’m not having performance issues. Generally have large track counts and a lot of processing.

The realtime processing video that is pinned on this forum I thought was really informative.

Thanks for the input, Manike. So, working well, but can you say that you are benefiting from the additional cores? Going to check out the vid you mentioned…

There was a big difference when I upgraded from a 2.8Ghz Quad core Mac pro to the 8 Core trashcan - beyond that I don’t know.

As per a Steinberg tech support rep told me once. It makes no difference if you have a bigger faster CPU. Only RAM makes a big difference. That was in 2005. My activity monitor displays 3-4% when using Cubase 8.5 with a 24 track project.

Yeah agreed thats simply not true. Remember, it’s only since we moved to 64bit Cubase could fully make use of extra RAM.

What does your project consist of? Have you narrowed it to some offending plugins perhaps? Are you using any bridged plugins?

Also if you’re vst and sample heavy might I suggest using the trash can as a slave than a master?

Just for fun/test, I inserted 200 VST instruments/midi loops with fx and Cubase pro 8.5 VST Performance was at 75%.
With 100 VST instruments, at 50%, an excellent performance in my book. Steinberg delivered on their promises.

Hmm.
I am currently on a quad core and intending to upgrade though now i have reservations.
Steinberg has made big improvements and its engine is certainly quite good at cpu consumption,maybe even at the top with Reaper,though i havent tested anything with more than 4 cores. Funny thing is in the end of 2016 we can expect major breakthroughs in cpu development,as both Pentium and AMD will reveal new line of cpus.
AMD claims to have made a 32 core cpu for a single socket,engineers at CERN have already tested it,supposedly it`s a beast.

I totally understand your position and frustrations.
Like ive said i havent tested with more than 4 cores so you have a better perspective than i do.
Still i hope Steinberg fixes some obvious multi cpu support issues with Cubendo.