# Cubase Multi-Core



## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 24, 2015)

I tried to find some answers online but only found an old post on the Steinberg web site talking about Multi-Core in Cubase 5. 

Is there any information about how many cores and threads Cubase can actually use as of version 7.5/8?

I am in the middle of building a new system for my studio. There is the usual dilemma that is doing the rounds these days....Dual Xeon or the 8-Core i7 Overclocked. 

I currently have an i7 6-core 3930K overclocked to 4.2 Ghz. It works really well but in some cases, I max out the CPU. 

Since, I am going to be doing surround, I will need a more powerful CPU. My system builder tells me that on paper the new 8-core will offer around 50% more juice over my existing system. 

However, I am thinking also about a dual 8 or 10 core system. But as we know, these have slower clock speeds. 

I could do a slave but I want to know first how many cores can Cubase take advantage of?


Tanuj.


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## Daryl (Jan 24, 2015)

Cubase can use as many cores as your computer has. It used to be limited to 32, but that limitation has now been lifted.

D


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## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 24, 2015)

Wow! That's great!

So, does that mean a new Xeon 16 or 20 core will outperform the new 8-core i7, even if it has a higher clock speed of 4.2 Ghz.

I am basically looking to maximise CPU performance for various plug ins, certain reverbs and synths with a good track count.

My fear is that even the new i7 may not be enough for surround work. The template will become a little more crazy!

On the other hand, I could build a slave, off loading some basic processing. But a single machine would be awesome 

Thanks Daryl!


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## rgames (Jan 24, 2015)

First off - you know the meter in Cubase is not a CPU meter, right? I often see people say "I'm maxing out my CPU" but they're referring to the Cubase meter (an ASIO meter, not a CPU meter) and their CPU usage is actually very low.

If you really are maxing out the CPU, I assume you mean one core is maxed out. (If you're maxing out all cores, I'd like to see the projects you're running!). If that's the case then the dual-Xeon setup is likely to be worse because the Xeons generally run at lower clock speeds and your single core problem will be even worse because it can't take advantage of the other cores and it's running at lower speed. FWIW, I've never seen single-core overloads in Cubase on a properly-configured machine.

If, on the other hand, you're maxing out ASIO usage (the meter in Cubase) then the dual-Xeon is also likely to be worse because it's built for CPU power, not the real-time performance you want in a DAW: once you add a second processor, you've added latency because of the overhead associated with coordinating RAM/disk/USB/whatever transfers. If you're doing CPU-intensive work like computational physics or video rendering then the benefits of more CPU power outweigh the added latency. But if you're doing real-time work (like in a DAW) then my guess is the dual-Xeon is actually worse. There have been a lot of posts on this forum that seem to support this logic.

So, bottom line, I have doubts that a dual-processor system is much use for a DAW and would not be surprised to find out that it's actually worse than a single-processor system. But I've never seen any hard evidence one way or the other, so you just need to find someone who has shown how hard you can push a dual-Xeon before you get clicks and pops then compare that performance to what you currently have.

Then please share, because I've been curious for a while and have never seen anybody share that information 

rgames


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## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 25, 2015)

Richard,
Thank you for your reply. I know you have conducted your own tests in the past and I have gone trough some of your posts. 

I know that the ASIO meter gives out a different reading. However, even while ASIO is going mental on some projects at 100% and giving massive clicks and pops until I basically have to bounce some of the stuff, during renders and under such circumstances, Windows does show a 90-95% CPU usage. 

So, it's not just the ASIO meter for sure. 

I have HT enabled and they all seem to be working equally. 

Perhaps, I will post some pictures of these kind of sessions I am talking about. They do get a bit ridiculous. I know a lot of people do not have such needs, but what can I say, on certain tracks it does go a little over board  

But, I also think it is easy to max out your CPU these days if you are running a deadly chain. 

For example, if you use VSL with multiple reverbs, about 20-30 instances of Diva (Not on Divine mode), let's say 5-6 instances of B2, various other sample libraries and a lot of MIDI and audio tracks, it will eventually bring your CPU to it's knees. 

RAM is not a big issue for me for now. The maximum I have ever loaded on my system is close to 40GB and I have 64GB installed. 

Now if you scale this to a 5.0 surround situation and you have a problem. Many of my favourite reverbs and plug ins are not surround which basically means, I will have to run several instances for this kind of work. 

If the new 8-core indeed does perform 50% better then it should be fine for what I am doing currently. However, I am worried about surround. 

Similarly, I will be looking to add another UAD-2 Octo card because simply none of the plugins are surround ready. 

And finally latency! These tracks I am talking about run at 1024 buffer. Which basically means, I have to lower it to record some passes then switch back to a higher buffer size. This method suits me well as I write directly into the MIDI editor after I have spent time on the piano. Not always, but I lean a lot towards this method. 

It basically frees me up from what my hands can do on the keyboard versus what I can imagine in my head and what I am hearing. I find it to be the closest compromise to writing on paper for someone like me who cannot read or write music. Direct MIDI input has allowed me to overcome many limitations that I would otherwise face because I am not a pianist and do not rely on muscle memory. It allows me to put down what I am hearing. 

Anyway, those are my thoughts and hence the dilemma! 



Tanuj.


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## dgburns (Jan 25, 2015)

yup,and that's why I run multiple slave pc's.


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## rgames (Jan 25, 2015)

From what you describe it sounds like a dual-processor machine might be better if you want just one machine. The trick, again, is that you need to figure out what balance of CPU performance and real-time performance gives you the best overall system performance. If you are maxing out all cores, the dual-processor system is likely better on CPU performance but worse on real-time performance. You need both, so where's the balance? Unfortunately I've not seen anything that gives a good answer for your situation.

However, I do agree that odds are high that multiple machines are likely better than one in both CPU performance and real-time performance.

rgames


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## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 25, 2015)

Richard, when you say real-time performance, do you mean latency?

If a Xeon set-up introduces more latency then it might be better for me to get the new i7 8-core for Cubase where most of the my FX chain will remain. I could then build another quad or six-core system as a slave with some basic processing on it. 

This way, I could get slightly more than the 50% additional power I get with the new processor compared to my 3930K.

It is however really weird that in today's day and age there is nothing better than an i7 processor for audio work that relies on real-time performance. 

There is just very little info on the Xeon's v/s the new i7's. Although, I have heard people moving to 12,16 and 20 core systems without any problems with upto 256 GB RAM. 

Only recently, Troles posted on Facebook about his new 20 core machine at 3.2 Ghz with 256 GB RAM. 

Tanuj.


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## Jason_D (Jan 25, 2015)

Xeon's are binned differently from the i7's, resulting in a CPU designed to run 24/7/365. i7's can not run buffered ram and are therefore limited to 64gb's. 



> the new 8-core will offer around 50% more juice over my existing system



It looks more like 20%. 

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-5960X-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3930K/2580vs1487



> For example, if you use VSL with multiple reverbs, about 20-30 instances of Diva (Not on Divine mode), let's say 5-6 instances of B2, various other sample libraries and a lot of MIDI and audio tracks, it will eventually bring your CPU to it's knees.



It might be a good idea to run your FX outside of your system. A UAD card or a Waves Soundgrid Server are a few solutions. After doing that you should see a performance increase (lower VST Performance meter).


From what I have seen, running a dual Xeon system provides an 80% increase in synthetic CPU benchmarks.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/multi_cpu.html


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## rgames (Jan 25, 2015)

Tanuj Tiku @ Sun Jan 25 said:


> Richard, when you say real-time performance, do you mean latency?


Essentially, yes, but not just sound card latency - the real-time performance of a DAW depends on all devices that have real-time elements, like the video card, network card, etc.

Here's an example: let's say you're going to race a Bugatti Veyron against a Toyota Prius on a drag strip. However, let's say the light for the Bugatti is delayed by 30 seconds compared to the one for the Prius, so once the Prius gets the go signal, the Bugatti just sits there for 30 seconds before starting to move. Well, the Toyota finishes the task in about twenty seconds but even though the Bugatti does it in half the time, it has a delayed start, so it actually completes the task in more time even though the Bugatti is a vastly more powerful car.

The delay on the Bugatti light is like a bad video card or network card or some other component: it locks up the CPU and keeps it from doing anything. That's why you can get pops and clicks with very low CPU usage: the CPU is mostly just sitting there doing nothing but it's trapped by some other element of the system and can't transfer the data to the sound card buffer. Because the buffer must be filled in real-time to maintain the continuity of the D-A conversion, you hear that lack of data as a pop or click.

A real-time component of a computer system is kind of like a train: each car is one one sound card buffer that needs to be filled with audio data, and it rolls past the CPU in continuous motion (i.e. it never stops). It never stops because the D-A conversion must happen continuously in order to maintain the continuous analog stream to the monitors. If the CPU misses even one car then you hear a pop, even if the CPU is powerful enough that it could, at a later time, fill hundreds more cars. The fact that it could not fill that *one* car at the required time produces a pop/click because that car has already passed the transfer point. That's the essence of a real-time requirement and is also the reason that CPU power is seldom the culprit in achieving low latency. Yes, more CPU power can help a bit, but the bigger help is in optimizing the components that are forcing the CPU to sit idle.

Again, that exact situation appears not to apply to you because you say you are maxing out all cores. However, the concept still applies: you need to make sure you have both CPU power AND responsive components so all that CPU power is not just sitting there delayed while the data train passes by (the problem that most people have). And, as I said above, a dual-processor system has more lights to wait for because it needs to coordinate the activities between two processors. A single-processor system has only to coordinate among the cores on the chip and it's designed to handle that coordination very well, so it likely has fewer instances where the CPU is locked up waiting for its light to turn green. That's why I'm skeptical that a dual-Xeon system is better than a single i7 system.

rgames


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## rgames (Jan 25, 2015)

And by the way, the reason that synthetic CPU benchmarks are mostly meaningless for DAW use is that they don't start the clock until the light changes to green (they don't account for real-time performance). All that idle time is not accounted for in CPU benchmarks but has a huge impact on DAW performance.


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## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 26, 2015)

Jason_D @ Mon Jan 26 said:


> Xeon's are binned differently from the i7's, resulting in a CPU designed to run 24/7/365. i7's can not run buffered ram and are therefore limited to 64gb's.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Jason, my PC will be overclocked to about 4.4 Ghz. My systems builder is very good at this. World ranking and all....In any case, I hope it will give that much otherwise, a slave is the only way forward!

Beyond a point, it becomes difficult for the CPU to manage all the calculations of reverbs, filters and these days some synths and reverbs have some crazy under-the-hood stuff going on. 

Tanuj.


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## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 26, 2015)

Also, my guy may be able to give a dual Xeon test machine for running some tests with my templates. 

If that happens, it will be easier for me to take a call.


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## rpaillot (Jan 26, 2015)

rgames @ Sun Jan 25 said:


> And by the way, the reason that synthetic CPU benchmarks are mostly meaningless for DAW use is that they don't start the clock until the light changes to green (they don't account for real-time performance). All that idle time is not accounted for in CPU benchmarks but has a huge impact on DAW performance.



I will even say that the more cores you have, the worst DAW performance will be.
Already said that in another topic, but I'm offline bouncing much faster on a 4 cores I7 than a 6 cores I7. 
Recently I got a I7 4 cores laptop which I tested, and same thing happened, faster bouncing.


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## snattack (Jan 26, 2015)

OK, time to kill off some myths here before someone makes a faulty purchase:



> I will even say that the more cores you have, the worst DAW performance will be.
> Already said that in another topic, but I'm offline bouncing much faster on a 4 cores I7 than a 6 cores I7.
> Recently I got a I7 4 cores laptop which I tested, and same thing happened, faster bouncing.



Simply not true. The more cores = the more power = faster realtime performance. Yes, it is true that there are several other factors that affect realtime performance, especially when running VEP, since it's dependent on the latency of the network card and other things.

ALL plugins uses CPU power. Reverbs, EQ, saturation, etc. ALL those plugins need CPU strenght. I have no idea why your setup turned out the way it did (older 6-core i7 vs new 4-core i7?) Of course A NEWER 4-core model can be faster than an OLD multi-core model, but that discussion isn't on the table here.



> It might be a good idea to run your FX outside of your system. A UAD card or a Waves Soundgrid Server are a few solutions. After doing that you should see a performance increase (lower VST Performance meter).



Of course UAD and DSP power will off-load the CPU, but the fact is that todays CPUs are very much more powerful than the SHARC's in UAD. You'd not be able to run nearly as many reverbs/fxs on the UAD cards (if you're not buying like the octo or whatever) as you would on your multi-core Intel CPU. Why waste money "just because"? if you're buying UAD for the sound of the plugins fine, but for convenience? No. 10 years ago perhaps.

Also, that could even worse your real-time performance since the DAW needs to go through an external bus to fetch the calculations, at least in the first edition of Thunderbolt cards and the Firewire (which is locked at an 512 buffer) which have been reported with huge problems by several people.



> Essentially, yes, but not just sound card latency - the real-time performance of a DAW depends on all devices that have real-time elements, like the video card, network card, etc.
> 
> Here's an example: let's say you're going to race a Bugatti Veyron against a Toyota Prius on a drag strip. However, let's say the light for the Bugatti is delayed by 30 seconds compared to the one for the Prius, so once the Prius gets the go signal, the Bugatti just sits there for 30 seconds before starting to move. Well, the Toyota finishes the task in about twenty seconds but even though the Bugatti does it in half the time, it has a delayed start, so it actually completes the task in more time even though the Bugatti is a vastly more powerful car.
> 
> ...





> And by the way, the reason that synthetic CPU benchmarks are mostly meaningless for DAW use is that they don't start the clock until the light changes to green (they don't account for real-time performance). All that idle time is not accounted for in CPU benchmarks but has a huge impact on DAW performance.



We've discussed this here before. And on other threads. NO ONE have been able to really confirm this in in a test so far. All my experiences regarding "cores vs GHz", "realtime performance != CPU power" and similar is the following: the more cores, the faster performance, the lesser latency. In all cases I've seen and tried, this has been true. As written above, yes it is true that there are several factors that matter, but a workstation-class Xeon build from a DAW computer specialist of course has components that doesn't slow the realtime performance, and then choosing between "less cores" or not to GAIN real-time performance is a wrongful choice.

The more cores -> faster performance -> less latency -> bigger templates.



> Cubase can use as many cores as your computer has. It used to be limited to 32, but that limitation has now been lifted.
> 
> D



Yes, this is true. BUT, there's one more aspect to it: I recently bought a Mac Pro 2013. When choosing between 8-core vs 12-core there's one benefit of running 8-core: Intel turbo boost. When running projects/programs that lack the ability of properly balancing the cores, the Xeon processors have a function that increases the CPU frequency of the cores currently being used to compensate for this. In the 12-core models, the turbo boost is significally less efficient. This argument could be of benefit if running templates/DAWs/plugins that can't use multi-core properly (older stuff).

IMO, Cubase is great at using multiple cores. The template that nearly killed my older computer everytime it ran didn't even flinch on the new computer, with LOWER latency. I could add numrous plugins: Soundtoys, Altiverb, and other hogs, without any problems with either CPU or realtime performance.



> "higher GHz would beat multiple cores"


 That isn't true either in modern DAWs.


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## rgames (Jan 26, 2015)

snattack @ Mon Jan 26 said:


> the more cores, the faster performance, the lesser latency. In all cases I've seen and tried, this has been true.


In all cases I've seen and tried, it has not been true.

Here's my example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtBxZaUB8p8

That setup is an i7 920. I have an i5 2500k that gives the same performance. I also have an i7 4930k that gives the same performance. Those CPUs are 4, 8 and 12 cores. And they all perform the same on the benchmarks shown in that video, so the bottleneck is not number of cores.

Care to share your example video?

rgames


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## Jason_D (Jan 28, 2015)

> but the fact is that todays CPUs are very much more powerful than the SHARC's in UAD.



I agree. In theory, you would rather run multiple Intel processors than multiple SHARC's, correct?




> Also, my guy may be able to give a dual Xeon test machine for running some tests with my templates.
> 
> If that happens, it will be easier for me to take a call.



Let us know how it works out for you Tanuj.




> And by the way, the reason that synthetic CPU benchmarks are mostly meaningless for DAW use is that they don't start the clock until the light changes to green (they don't account for real-time performance). All that idle time is not accounted for in CPU benchmarks but has a huge impact on DAW performance.



Would Latency Mon by Resplendence be a better benchmark Richard?


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## snattack (Jan 30, 2015)

rgames @ Mon Jan 26 said:


> Care to share your example video?
> 
> rgames



I'm sorry, but if that's the kind of retorics we're using, I'm out.

The reason for pointing this out Richard is because YOU AND I had a discussion about this in an earlier thread. It's a matter of how your template's designed: if you're using a lot of heavy plugins, you need floating point ability = more cores. If you're not, then perhaps your view in this is accurate. And you agreed that might be the case, which is why I was suprised that - again - this "cores doesn't matter"-argument was up without a "disclaimer".

I find it very convenient to be able to add several plugins on my 8-core Mac Pro that made my old 4-core (with higher single core benchmarks) crank up and die. And the meters show that the CPU meter and real-time meter are related to each other. That was also the case on my old machine. And the machine before that.

People in post-pro, sound design, etc, would argue the same, even though they're not using the lower buffer size, plugins require power.


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## simsung (Feb 15, 2017)

Im into this topic as well since i have some issues here.
the most annoying is that cubase projects with 30-50 tracks become quite slow and i always have a latency when clicking somewhere until the computer reacts. So i wanted to see if im able to find the reason for that. So i tested a little bit with
Mac Pro 5.1 12 Core 3,33 ghz Sierra and Windows 10 with I7 4930k 3,5ghz

i loaded kontakt with one CSS Violins and duplicated the track as often as possible.

First in Cubase 9 on the Mac Pro: it went up to 95 Tracks and then had a big lagg and it wasnt possible to work anymore. while CPU usage showed 1600% Ram was at 20gb (24gb left)

Then same Computer and LogicX i went up to 100 Tracks - no issues - i went up to 140tracks and then stopped since it showed that logic handles this much better.

Then Cubase 9 on Windows: I had to stop at 160 Tracks since Ram was full (32gb) and CPU usage was at 12%

So what i could conclude is that Cubase on Mac is much worse than on Windows OR Cubase works better with faster and probably less CPU Cores.
Since lot of people here can work fine with Cubase on Mac - i guess the second option is more the case.
What do you think?


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