Cubase 8 32bit and RAM (will it see 8GB?)

I have 4 GB and started getting a few problems on my Windows 7 64 bit with Cubase 8.

I saw 3.9GB in use on system resources of my 4GB (I started getting graphic redraw issues of the mixer and plug in GUI’s) and just ordered 8GB but then started concerning if Cubase 8 will see this Ram. I worry it won’t now I have ordered it anyone know the deal here ? Thanks

I suspect it will still help as Cubase should see about 4GB and the OS is consuming some as well.

You made a good move upgrading your ram from 4 to 8 on your x64 system.

I think was still living in 2004 with 4GB !

Lol:p

In theory 32bit Cubase can utilise up to 4Gb so yes you should see a small improvement…but you still won’t be able to use the majority of your new ram unless you move to 64bit Cubase.

Thanks for responses, some further rather general information at this stage as I hold out that my 8GB Corsair memory that is on its way is going to see these problems off. I will get that delivered Tuesday next week. Today I installed an ATI PCIe graphics card I had spare. I thought it might free up some RAM as I recalled that many dedicated graphics cards have 512MB/ 1GB etc. of RAM on board so assumed that the i7 GPU would be gobbling up some system RAM. (It has been working fine, no drop outs no graphic issues, a smooth running machine)

Unfortunately the project I am working on is having exactly the same issues after trying this ATI card so I have reverted to my on board GPU which for my first track earlier in the year was working absolutely fine. So I think I can rule the graphics card out or as in this case the on board INTEL graphics. (i7 2600)

I try opening some virtual instrument GUI from the inspector button and I get an empty white plug in GUI screen. (also occurring with the Cubase mixer window = scary) Of course no GUI’s mean no music making.

I am getting some “Hard errors per sec” when I check the memory section resource monitor. It seems that Cubase 8 was using around 2.7GB (as far as I can recall from last night when this project is loaded) which I was rather surprised about as I am making music using purely soft synths. None of which in this project are streaming from disk or playing samples - the exception being some wave table synths, I have 6 delays running, some eqs and Reverence. I was surprised to see such a large amount of memory in use. As I gather I am using soft synths that are quite CPU intensive. It seems to have started happening as the project has grown in size/track count and duplicated track with different processing etc.

When the GUI’s open white I get a serious error message. (multiple synth GUI’s from different developers go white/ blank when opened)

Photos of error messages:

Serious error:

https://www.anony.ws/image/JpDB

C++ Visual runtime error:

https://www.anony.ws/image/JpDG

For now fingers crossed the new 8GB of memory will resolve this issue.

8GB did not solve the issue. I presume Cubase 8 - 32 bit sees memory amount X and irrelevant as to how much the Windows 7 64 bit OS sees and uses it means you are hovering around a maximum mathematical usage around 3.0GB.
My projects in Cubase 8 start having problems around 2.7GB usage. The full memory usage of the PC being around 3.9GB as per resource monitor.

I am finding that all of my soft synths GUI’s are ending up as white empty GUI panes along with the Cubase mixer. Sometimes when I click parts of the GUI it re-appears but it is super flaky and gets very unstable.

Am I barking up the right tree here ? I did see someone mention that as soon as projects seem to get rather large or even slightly large odd things happen with GUI’s. So not sure if a project around the Cubase 8 32 bit 2.8gb mark would start having troubles.

Anyway I rebuilt the project, bouncing parts and deleting instances of synths (some which are beyond HUGE memory hogs) one taking 255MB and it is just a V.A. so I was very very surprised about that. Once I started the cull of the soft synths GUI’s came back and I stopped getting the above C++ run time crashes. All synth GUI’s seem affected so it appeared global and not specific to one synth.

If anyone has any further insight or suggestions I would be very helpful. I have got in touch with the offending synth developer and asked why there VA takes 200-255MB per instance. It is way more than any other synths I use and a limitation for a 32 bit Cubase on 64 bit OS.

You are definitely barking up the right tree. Cubase cannot access more memory which resuts in white plugin guis etc.

If you really don’t want to use 64bit Cubase, I think you could still bridge 32bit to 32 using Jbridge and open up access to more memorythis way (overcoming single program limit)

NB. It’s many years since I had to deal with 32bit so I wouldn’t like to guarantee this info is completely accurate. :confused:

Thanks for the response. I have no logical reason why I am on 32 bit, that I recall right now ! At the time I put the DAW together which was about 4 years ago and just did the occasional very lightweight tune with the Mrs. so it was fine. Now I am on the bleeding edge again with the music and newer more demanding soft synths it is taking its toll.

I may have suspected there was no 64 bit driver for my old, second hand Event Layla 3G PCI card (which I butchered and put did a bit of SMD soldering work putting LM4562 op amps in the output stages, my favourite op amp for audio) Or maybe I feared some older soft synths I like not working. That is the most likely reason. In the mastering studio I am on Nuendo 4.3 (2009 I think it flashes up when it boots) and it works absolutely fine and is rock solid for what I need it for (still have an i7 in it but that machine has a mere 3GB in it)

I think I will try and get along as is with a view for an upgrade. Next call I guess is can I get 64 bit drivers for the Layla. In fact I think PCI is only 32 bit only. (That would explain it or can I have 32 bit sound card driver and run 64 bit Cubase?) I used to be 100pct on it with the PC configs but years fly by and you have to do a lot of research when you get back into it at a more demanding level.

The soundcard driver must be the same as the o/s rather than Cubase and as that’s already 64bit you are already running Layla 64bit drivers.

a 32 bit binary number can represent 2 to the power 32 = 4,294,967,296 bytes. Divide by 1024 into KB and then again into MB and then again into GB and you get the result = 4GB.

My understanding of running 32 bit on a 64 bit os is that it defaults to 2GB limit however you can build it with a flag set allowing for most of the 4GB to be used, so it depends if Cubase 32 bit was built using that flag - I would hope so

Hello,

Empty GUI means graphics card is running out of memory. Not every plugin is coded to minimise RAM resources. Just close the GUI’S of the VSTI’s and other plugins to clean up some RAM of your graphics card.

Cheers,

Chris

Exactly. 32-bit pointers can only address 4GB of memory.

A 32-bit application is limited to 2GB RAM usage on Windows 32-bit. The sole exception being ‘large address space aware applications’. Cubase x86 is not LASA, if I’m not mistaken.
However, a few older 32-bit plug-ins cannot make use of any memory block past 2GB, use of these in Cubase will result in white screens and eventually crashes when such limit is reached (even if used in Cubase 32-bit on a 64-bit OS).

About x86 - x64 memory limitations: Memory Limits for Windows and Windows Server Releases - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn

About x86 applications on x64 OS:

Thanks for responses.

Fabio just for clarities sake…this is not 32 bit Cubase on a 32 Bit OS. It is 32 bit Cubase on 64 bit OS.

“Cubase x86 is not LASA, if I’m not mistaken.” So it sees only 2GB ? If you could find out for sure that would be good to know. It does not appear to make sense though. If so why is this 32 bit Cubase project showing as 2.7 - 2.9 GB… mem usage in resource manager, it is still 2.1 GB now since I have culled the project soft synths and made them audio parts.

“The soundcard driver must be the same as the o/s rather than Cubase and as that’s already 64bit you are already running Layla 64bit drivers.” Thanks for confirming Grim. Seems counter intuitive though given PCI bus operates as 32 bit, but it must be the case.

I have an ASUS silent 5450 (1GB) here which I might try, but I did try a PCIe video card in there a few days ago .I had spare (ATI4550) and it did not make hardly any difference to the memory usage or the loss of GUIs.

Upgrade your cubase to 64 bit, m8…

Yes, 32bit applications usually access up to 2gb in 32bit hosts… Dunno if that has improved on a x64 host…

Either way, go all out 64 bit for best results… (If you have special 32 bit plugs, bridge them)

Tc:)

Shame to have to do that when you have an otherwise stable system. Then you bring in the ambiguity of every soft synth and plug in (loads of them) having bugs and/or Cubase V8.5 64bit having new bugs. Just when I thought I had a nicely running system with 32 bit 8 latest.

I will have to see where I can go with this, maybe new, probably creativity killing workflows are initially preferable. Ultimately it needs to go 64 bit throughout as you say. The chances of a hiccup free migration to 64 bit are unlikely in my own update experiences with computers. Something almost always rains on the parade.

I will finish this track and see how things go.

Fabio I would very much like to know if 32 bit Cubase is LASA as it makes no sense the Cubase project is seeing up to 2.9GB in Windows 7 resource manager unless that is not accurate.

This has been both interesting and annoying. That is one thing that never seems to change in the world of music PC’s.

Make it easy on yourself and take a morning to install Cubase 64bit. Install the plugins you have as 64bit and any that don’t have 64bit use jbridge for them. It will take maybe half a day for sorting all plugins (or if you already have the 64 bit vst’s installed only 10 minutes).
One last solution to stay on 32 bit Cubase is to find out which plugin(s) use so much ram and use Jbridge to bridge them. They then will run in their own process and will have their own ram space. I worked that way for years with cubase 4 32bit on XP64 and could use all 8gb of ram I had.

I will ask for a confirmation, but in case you have missed the announcement, Cubase 8.5 will be the last Cubase version offered in both 32- and 64-bit.

[Edit: However LASA only applies to 32-bit programs running on 32-bit systems. In your case, you are limited to 4GB, not 2GB. So, it’s down to rendering to audio or using jBridge]

Never that easy. This situation came about progressively… not wanting to lose 32 bit plugins, driver concerns, the hardware/software you have today, your goals. Some maybe born of ignorance, I hold my hands up, less time to know the full details when you want to make a track. You know… what are we doing I.T. engineering or making music ? It has always been a walk between the two in my experience. Probably less so now than in years gone past.

It opens a can of worms, it always did and does… doesn’t it? I have a small 64GB SSD with 8GB left (The machine was built 4-5 years back and was not in high usage). Not a great size. It implies a new drive is soon required (I don’t know if 64bit plug ins and I use plenty, means more C drive usage ?) It has a bare minimum of space as it is. And I often have to shuffle data about to keep it clean and free to the tune of 8GB.

The machine works, it is stable. The issue is purely 32 bit memory address space.

I want to make music now. The I.T. can wait, I am at a stage where the main concern is making music being creative and I will have to workaround. This machine is for fun, something where I can get lost in the pleasure of music making. My day job involves listening all day and then making music at night or weekends has not been on the cards for 5-6 years or more. Time is ripe for creativity.

What I know now and has been said shouts… “New Music PC build with 64bit throughout” in forthcoming years.

I want to make music now, not be engulfed in I.T. and for what ? The unreachable dream of massive performance that is never realized. I am old enough to have been there and done it and it never happens quite as you expect.

I will run this PC till it dies and make some great tunes but in a way that works for how it is set up. It is still going to be hours extra to work around and not days and months compared with studio hire in the 80’s and 90’s, even compared to programming an archaic AKAI S3000 :laughing: . I think sometimes we lose ourselves in the future and do not realize what we have today.

Making music to me right now is more important than the chore of computers, that can be fun for certain but only when the time is right and for me that is not now.

This in no way diminishes the knowledge and help that has been provided to me, many thanks for all input.

Creativity First, remember.

Info on that J Bridge way of working would be very useful I suspect. Only 2-3 soft synths seems to use mass memory.

When I de-constructed this project to a usable state it involved, bouncing parts with effects and saving the synthesis patches I had designed, dumping the softsynth free MIDI tracks/parts at the bottom of the project I had made. If I can avoid that for €15 it would be stellar. Does it run in Cubase inserts somehow and then you insert the synths into J Bridge ?