Hi, 

 Asioguard is the first thing to switch off in Cubase 7.5 as well... Not much we can do there, I´m afraid. 

 Best,
Paul

Hi, 

Thanks for pointing that out. Busy times here right now, but we will investigate!

Best,
Paul

Paul,

I side with noiseboyuk's assessment. I also have issues with Cubase Pro 8 running on a 12-core Mac Pro (2013) Mac OS X 10.9 with plenty of CPU power and am getting severe CPU spikes, audio dropouts, and distorted audio across the complete audio buss as long as ASIO-Guard is enabled. 

In my template I have 1,000+ MIDI tracks connecting to 50+ VE Pro Rack Instruments that connect to three workstations. I have not tried to run with the ASIO-Guard lowest setting, as the other two settings caused such severe issues that I simply just disabled it.

Just another viewpoint. :-)

Jurgen

The issue with audio dropping out when switching tracks, is probably due to latency for VEPro varies with buffer size. VEPro reports its new latency to Cubase, which has to recalculate its latency compensation - causing a drop-out in the audio stream. It appears that Cubase does this instantly, while a latency change reported to for instance Logic Pro, will only take effect from the next stop/play cycle - which sounds more reasonable to me.

We are looking into this behavior and will try to improve the situation asap.

Originally Posted by: MS

The issue with audio dropping out when switching tracks, is probably due to latency for VEPro varies with buffer size. VEPro reports its new latency to Cubase, which has to recalculate its latency compensation - causing a drop-out in the audio stream. It appears that Cubase does this instantly, while a latency change reported to for instance Logic Pro, will only take effect from the next stop/play cycle - which sounds more reasonable to me.

We are looking into this behavior and will try to improve the situation asap.

You're not supposed to work on a Sunday Martin. 

Thanks for looking into it! - Best G.

Originally Posted by: johnstaf

This is mentioned in the Steinberg knowledge base. When you select a MIDI track and record enable it, the track is no longer in ASIO-Guard mode and the sound mutes as it switches over to real-time mode (and your normal latency.)

This seems to be in addition to what Martin describes.

I can't see a specfic reference to that in the Cubase 8 issues - https://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/cubase-8-version-history-and-issues-and-solutions.html .  The sound neither mutes on other plugins or VE Pro under very favourible conditions.

I do have a feeling though that some of this might be Steinberg's end, you do tend to get a CPU spike when switching tracks in general (though that hasn't caused me any audio problems save for VE Pro).  Though I can't pretend to understand the inner workings of these things, if asioguard's delay is 90ms, I guess a dream scenario is being able to seamlessly switch from prefetched audio to live latency audio somehow 90ms afer a track is enabled.  Might not be possible though.

I am getting the same experience with Cubase 8. Have tried ASIO guard at Normal and Low but it only works when totally switched off and then the latency is very noticeable. This seems to be restricted to VE Pro and not when you just load VI Pro. It would be much appreciated if it could be investigated as although Cubase 7.5 works with ASIO Guard switched off, clearly many people will upgrade to 8.

regards, woy

Originally Posted by: DG

Originally Posted by: woy

I am getting the same experience with Cubase 8. Have tried ASIO guard at Normal and Low but it only works when totally switched off and then the latency is very noticeable. This seems to be restricted to VE Pro and not when you just load VI Pro. It would be much appreciated if it could be investigated as although Cubase 7.5 works with ASIO Guard switched off, clearly many people will upgrade to 8.

regards, woy

It's related to all multi timbral instruments, and Steinberg recommends not to use them. Like that's going to happen....

DG

Ah. you're confused with asioguard 1:

http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/cubase/whats_new.html

A source for that quote would be useful DG - can't see it in the manual or Knowledgebase.

It is of course completely logical that multitimbral will increase the resource load.  The only relevant question is whether or not that's an issue in practice.  So for for me it has not been, using Kontakt, Omnisphere, Stylus on my i7 4930 @256 - all safely within limits.  Your asioguard vs soundcard settings will depend on a large number of factors.  But key is assessing what proportion of your overall CPU load you'll need to access live at any one time. If you have, say, 30 multitimbral instruments, logically you could reduce the realtime load to only 1/30th of what it was using asioguard (all other things being equal).  However, if you're on a modest system where you were struggling with only one multimbral instance, asioguard won't help you at all if you keep it that way - you'd be much better off spreading the load among monotimbral instruments as your quote suggests.  Most pro users will have powerful rigs and quality soundcards though, for them this advice should be fairly moot - hence perhaps why they are talking it up on the main what's new page on their website, specifically mentioning multi-timbral compatiblity.  Would be very strange to talk it up there and later say you shouldn't really use it.

Anyway, the only real issue so far for me has been VE Pro 5. Incidentally, I did hear that VE Pro 4 behaves much better with asioguard.  That would be interesting if so.

Originally Posted by: noiseboyuk

A source for that quote would be useful DG - can't see it in the manual or Knowledgebase.

It's in the Knowledgebase. Down the bottom under Cubase 8 ASIO Guard.

https://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/details-on-asio-guard-in-cubase-and-nuendo.html?tx_p77sbknowledgebase_pi1[keyword_search]=ASIO%20Guard

DG