# Cubase 5, VST's, and CPU overload question



## illimmigrant (Sep 16, 2011)

Hello all, every now and then I get a CPU overlead error when doing a mixdown of a track. While recording, the CPU meter in cubase is quite high, to the point where I would like ease it off a little bit to avoid having audio drop outs if it starts to get to that point.

I was wondering if the CPU meter depends on the amount of RAM the computer has vs the amount of stuff I have running, or if it has to do with the sound card, or the CPU speed.

I use Cubase 5, with S2.0 (in cached mode) and a few stillwell plugins. EQ's all are internal to Cubase and no other outside VST's.
I record through a POD X3 via USB.

Any ideas on how to improve the performance and lower the cpu meter?
I can't imagine how bad it would get if i started adding samples or maybe impulses.

thanks!


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## niffnoff (Sep 16, 2011)

To reduce some CPU a good way is Bouncing your drum tracks down into audio, use the Channel Batch Mixdown on your Superior Drummer 2.0 outputs. Makes life a hell of alot easier, I'd do the same for your VSTs if you aren't already.


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## Winspear (Sep 16, 2011)

^ Yeah
Can you post your specs? Just to be sure that there isn't something wrong. Of course it depends on the system how much it can handle. If you post your CPU and RAM we'll be able to judge if something is wrong or if you simply don't have the specs tha you feel you need


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## tvboy123 (Sep 16, 2011)

RAM should improve it  but you're in cubase...so you can freeze tracks in it. I remember I used to do that a lot, I forget what they call it in cubase, but it's the same as freezing tracks in logic. That'll save you some CPU power. Plugins suck up your computers resources quite quickly, so if you have quite a few tracks or plugins then that could be what's eating away at your CPU.

EDIT: oh it is called freeze lol:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztttUwoxis4
You could also try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1hDiEqN5Xs


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## niffnoff (Sep 16, 2011)

tvboy123 said:


> RAM should improve it  but you're in cubase...so you can freeze tracks in it. I remember I used to do that a lot, I forget what they call it in cubase, but it's the same as freezing tracks in logic. That'll save you some CPU power. Plugins suck up your computers resources quite quickly, so if you have quite a few tracks or plugins then that could be what's eating away at your CPU.
> 
> EDIT: oh it is called freeze lol:
> 
> You could also try this:




holy shit at that second video. I didn't even know and I've used it for years....


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## illimmigrant (Sep 16, 2011)

Hey, guys, thanks a bunch for the help. I'll be trying out the tips over the weekend.
As far as freezing tracks go, do you need to unfreeze them in order for the effects to translate onto the mix down? 
@etherealEntity, I am running on a MAC laptop with 2.66 Ghz cpu Intel core duo and 4GB of memory (1067 Mhz DDR3) on OSX lion 10.7.1.


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## Winspear (Sep 17, 2011)

You don't need to unfreeze for the effects to be mixed down - only to change the effects should you change your mind 

Hmmm...That does seem a bit excessive then. I'd imagine you should be able to push quite a bit more than that with your system. Is your CPU running hyperthreaded? Should be able to run quite a lot more than one drum vst and a few plugins if it is


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## newamerikangospel (Sep 17, 2011)

Yeah, look at your DAW settings. If its an older system/engine, it might have to be told to utilize your cores.


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## exclamation-mark (Sep 18, 2011)

I have yet to run into any cpu limiting problems on cubase 5, with pretty much exactly the same specs as you. The only difference is I'm running windows 7.

Taking a look in task manager on my system, cubase uses something like 2.4 gigs of ram with all vst's running at full bore in a particular project. I literally have like 5 virtual instruments (SD2.0, Trilian + 3 synths) running at once, with probably 20-30 random vst's alongside. I haven't noticed anything wrong (yet) despite having an insane amount of crap running. 

You should check whether you are running into 100% ram usage on your task manager (I have no idea how cubase even determines cpu usage - it might be an aggregate of several things). This would cause cubase to cache things to the hard-drive, which I imagine it wouldn't like. Kill all unnecessary processes in the background, as they can eat valuable ram/cpu.

If all else fails... bounce everything to audio tracks or offline process effects like in that second video.


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## fleshwoodsteel (Sep 18, 2011)

You definitely want to up your RAM. OSX is pretty memory intensive if you haven't stripped down all of the visual effects, etc. Best to always ensure your DAW is the only thing running while recording and mixing down. Mac users don't (typically) have to deal with virus protection software or other memory hogs, but there are lots of little things that you can do to save RAM and CPU usage.


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