# Cubase 10 Performance MacOS Mojave vs Windows 10



## Jeremy Gillam (May 9, 2019)

I'm getting Cubase 10 up and running on my MacOS Mojave Hackintosh after a detour into Pro Tools land. I'm running into an odd issue that I asked about here. This has me wondering if Cubase still runs a bit better on Windows. From what I understand the performance gap between operating systems has closed for the most part, but I'm curious what others thoughts and experiences are on this matter with the latest versions of Cubase and the newest operating systems.

Cubase 9.5 was very stable for me on Windows but I went down the Hackintosh route because I'm a bit happier overall in MacOS and I was using Pro Tools which is a nicer experience on the Mac. I'm impressed that I even managed to get it set up, but I'm not sure how sustainable the Hackintosh will prove to be and I'd like to have a super stable and snappy Cubase DAW machine going forward. FWIW the future of the Mac Pro may become much clearer in a few weeks at WWDC... 

Not trying to start a platform war, just curious about stability and performance! Thanks!


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## thomasjdev (May 9, 2019)

I haven’t used Cubase 10 on Windows but I can tell my experience with cubase running from my Mac Book Pro is some things seem to chew up a lot cpu that I wouldn’t expect.

One example is adding a reverb FX track. The moment I add a reverb plugin immediately cpu usage jumps up +40% even with no other tracks and nothing playing. Happens with multiple reverbs from different devs so I put this as a cubase inefficiency. 

If I was on an iMac or something I wouldn’t worry as much about the cpu but being on a MBP, which already gets rather hot, playing a simple track + reverb would get me in the 80-100% cpu range and make the fans start working hard. 

As a comparison I took the same midi and replicated the track in Logic and cpu was ~20%. I don’t mean for that to imply that Logic is better, just that there is some room for optimizations in Cubase on the mac

I don’t remember if windows reports the CPU as the overall system or per core, but mac reports per core so cpu % goes above 100%


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## Shad0wLandsUK (May 10, 2019)

As a Windows 10 user of Cubase, I have found from experience and from others confirming this, that Cubase does run better on Windows. Cubase 9.5 and Cubase 10 have run better for me.

I will upload my screenshots of the tests I did a little later on, with noticeable improvements over macOS. For this very reason i moved from macOS to Windows for Cubase.


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 10, 2019)

Thanks for sharing your experiences. In this old thread Evil Dragon points out that one of the factors for performances differences is the file system — that NTFS is better optimized than HFS+. With Apple's new APFS file system I wondered if that might no longer be a factor. That said I recently ran into a performance issue with Spitfire products in Pro Tools and they suggested I reformat my drive back to HFS+. I never got around to trying it but it wasn't an encouraging sign for APFS.


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

I doubt the file system has anything to do with cubase running better on windows. But I agree it does. Especially when combined with vep, cubase somehow interacts with vep in a way that causes the cpu to grind (under vep process ) much More then Logic Pro does.


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## goalie composer (May 10, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I doubt the file system has anything to do with cubase running better on windows. But I agree it does. Especially when combined with vep, cubase somehow interacts with vep in a way that causes the cpu to grind (under vep process ) much More then Logic Pro does.


I've observed this as well


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## Geoff Grace (May 10, 2019)

I have a follow up question: given the performance lag in the Mac platform for Cubase Pro, are there still good reasons why Mac users who already have other DAWs should consider purchasing a copy of Cubase while the current, generous sale is happening?

Best,

Geoff


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

The generous sale is interesting, but their routine upgrade prices are pricey so you will get drawn into more money sooner or later. Only buy cubase if you are committed to the idea of changing over to it, that's my advice. It still has some compelling features, despite the fact that it does seem to use a bit more CPU on the mac. The CPU usage is a real thing, make no mistake, but i want to point out that there are some mac users happily using it and also, in my own experience its possible that the cpu problem you keep hearing about is actually isolated to Cubase+VEP, where the problem is actually in VEP. When I run a test project with Cubase+VEP and compare it to exactly the same test project (100 midi tracks in the DAW feeding 100 channels of VSL instruments in VEP). Logic+VEP is literally taking half the CPU as compared to Cubase+VEP. But here's the thing, when I look at the activity monitor, its VEP that is pegging into the 90's on my CPU. Why it is that VEP is more well behaved with Logic then it is with Cubase is anyone's guess. Logic is using the AU version of their Plugin and Cubase is using the VST3 version. I have also tested the same project with DP+VEP and found it to consume somewhere halfway between Logic and Cubase with VEP in terms of CPU usage. DP is using the Mas version of the VEP plugin.

So.. what we know is that Cubase+VEP is currently a CPU pig. if you plan to use VEP, then I would not recommend Cubase on a mac.

But, Cubase might not be the culprit and might perform adequately without VEP. And Cubase has some nice features...

So... its up to you. I bought it on cross grade last year, not even on sale because the curiosity got the best of me and I always wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I might try to do some projects with it at some point, but so far I haven't and in particular the VEP performance with it sucks.


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## Geoff Grace (May 10, 2019)

Thanks, *Dewdman42*!

Extra points for your comparisons with Logic Pro X and Digital Performer. I have both of those programs (although I'm a version behind on DP) and Pro Tools. I gave up Cubase during the SX era because, back then, Mac users didn't even have feature parity with Windows; and the Mac performance was reportedly more buggy as well. I was hoping those days were over, and it seems they are for the most part, albeit not entirely. At this point, I'm only toying with the idea of switching over to Cubase. I do find it valuable to have more than one DAW, and Cubase may have some use in that scenario. I'm glad I have awhile yet to mull things over.

Best,

Geoff


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## jneebz (May 10, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> So.. what we know is that Cubase+VEP is currently a CPU pig. if you plan to use VEP, then I would not recommend Cubase on a mac.


Well, I think that might be a bit of an overstatement...I mean I’ve been on a measly 4-Core i5 iMac for 5 years with VEP and Cubase, anywhere from 100-500 track templates and it’s been smooth as silk. I guess if you run 1500 track templates it’s a different story...but I just think a blanket “don’t use Cubase and VEP on A Mac” is just too assuming.


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

I think the current Cubase10 is WAY more ok on Mac, then the old SX days. Don't live in fear about that. when I have run it, it seems to operate fine and smooth and has all the features you would expect. I haven't really tested it with a real project other then the testing I did, but it seems to work fine. I think they have come a LONG way towards complete macintosh operability. Its just that when I have tried to play a VEP based project, it choked and vomited all over the place. Wouldn't even play through all the way the same midi tracks into VEP that Logic could do with only 35% average CPU usage. But this may actually be entirely VEP's fault.

More tests are needed with just Cubase alone to compare it against the other daws. I think it is very usable in a lot of cases. There have been numerous complaints about it not being as "smooth" or performant as the windows version, and that was certainly my impression also. Even JunkieXL had something to say about it. However, I can't keep thinking that a lot of the people I heard complain about it are also trying to use VEP. And in the tests I did, Cubase+VEP did actually suck, but in the activity monitor, Cubase was barely breathing hard and VEP was grinding the CPU. so.....


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

jneebz said:


> Well, I think that might be a bit of an overstatement...I mean I’ve been on a measly 4-Core i5 iMac for 5 years with VEP and Cubase, anywhere from 100-500 track templates and it’s been smooth as silk. I guess if you run 1500 track templates it’s a different story...but I just think a blanket “don’t use Cubase and VEP on A Mac” is just too assuming.



happy for you, but for me it has been an absolute pig. Are you running them on the same machine?


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## jneebz (May 10, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> happy for you, but for me it has been an absolute pig. Are you running them on the same machine?


Yes. A lot of variables at play though....I get that.


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

alright, there you have it. One happy person and one that thinks the combination is not usable. Take your pick.


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

My most recent methodical Cubase+VEP testing was also with VEP7. Just tried it again with the latest release. Still choking on 100 simple tracks..it can't even play the whole cue without dropping out and eventually stalling sound completely. As I said early, the exact same cue plays back from LogicPro with 35% avg CPU usage, measured over 3 minutes.

if there is a secret way to configure this combination to work properly on a mac please let us know.


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

Right now I'm a little suspicious about the VST3 version of the VEP plugin being the culprit. something coming from Cubase...through that plugin....is causing VEP to grind on the cpu. When I connect the VST3 plugin to VEP server, the VEP server immediately cranks up a lot of CPU usage before I even hit play yet, which settles down, then every few seconds it hits around 10% on the cpu, etc. So already that is not normal and not what happens when i connect the AU plugin from LogicPro.

But during playback it really starts to grind the cpu inside VEP.. Overall CPU was at 62% compared to 35% with LogicPro on same test. But about halfway through, Cubase stops sending midi to VEP, or VEP stops seeing it..CPU drops low, sound goes away,....total failure 1 minute in.


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## Dewdman42 (May 10, 2019)

Its bugging me so I am going to try to replicate this test without VEP on Cubase. I did it on LogicPro and dropped CPU usage from 35% down to 25% without VEP involved. I'm curious what cubase will do without VEP connection. Give me a few minutes to work that out....


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## chris massa (May 11, 2019)

Geoff Grace said:


> I have a follow up question: given the performance lag in the Mac platform for Cubase Pro, are there still good reasons why Mac users who already have other DAWs should consider purchasing a copy of Cubase while the current, generous sale is happening?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Geoff



I personaly think yes. I have used atari and smpte track, then PC for music, cakewalk and later switched to Mac for Pro Tools in 2002. I never thought about Logic as all my recordings needed to be on Pro Tools so my band and others could take them to a larger studio to finish back in the day. Fast forward I have been in education mode with audio to picture. I see taking advantage of the newest crossgrade $166 + elicenser as a future proof move. Someday my Mac Pro Cheesegraters 2012 will die and I don't know if I will have the $$ to replace them. So being on a cross platform software makes sense to me. If I have to invest my time to learn another DAW it won't be Logic Pro strictly for the hardware restriction. And yes there is always Reaper.


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 11, 2019)

Hit songs have been written and major motion pictures scored with Cubase on Mac. It's definitely a viable option these days! The reason I asked about Mac vs. PC performance was that those little hiccups and bits of under-optimized code seem to really add up when working with big templates and/or in conjunction with VEP. It's pretty clear that Cubase + VEP on Windows is a winning combination, and it seems the Mac side isn't too far behind in some people's setups while still lagging for others. 

Regarding @Geoff Grace's question as to whether it's worth picking up Cubase while on sale — I think if you're happy with the DAWs you're using there's no need but if you're looking for a better option Cubase might be a good choice. In the couple years I've been using it I recall the cost for the annual .5 updates to be in the $60-100 range which seems quite reasonable compared to maintaining a Pro Tools Ultimate plan, but a bit more expensive than Reaper or Logic obviously. Steinberg has terrible customer support but seems committed to improving Cubase, both in terms of bug fixes and workflow improvements (without dumbing down) and also adding new features. If you're familiar with Logic and Pro Tools Cubase is a pretty straightforward learning curve, although it is a very deep and feature rich program and some submenus and terminology do seem like relics of the '90s. The areas I'd most like to see improvement in Cubase are more Pro Tools-like audio editing capabilities and routing in some scenarios, a smart tool, and the ability to freeze multiple tracks at once to make archiving easier. But all in all it's a great piece of software both for composing and for producing other types of music.


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## jneebz (May 11, 2019)

Jeremy Gillam said:


> and the ability to freeze multiple tracks at once to make archiving easier.


Is this different from Channel Batch Export?


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 11, 2019)

jneebz said:


> Is this different from Channel Batch Export?


Yeah. I just like to hit the track freeze "snowflake" icon when I get to a stopping place in my sessions but Cubase makes you do this on track at a time, whereas Pro Tools and others let you freeze as many as you want in one click. Plenty of other great export and rendering options in Cubase though!


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## jneebz (May 11, 2019)

Jeremy Gillam said:


> Yeah. I just like to hit the track freeze "snowflake" icon when I get to a stopping place in my sessions but Cubase makes you do this on track at a time, whereas Pro Tools and others let you freeze as many as you want in one click. Plenty of other great export and rendering options in Cubase though!


Ah, gotcha. Strange to not have that feature available...but I guess all DAWs have that handful of "wishlist" features!


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 11, 2019)

jneebz said:


> Ah, gotcha. Strange to not have that feature available...but I guess all DAWs have that handful of "wishlist" features!


One of those wtf moments in Cubase for sure.


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## arvfur (May 11, 2019)

You can Render in Place multiple tracks in one go if you like. I never use the Freeze function anymore.


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## Dewdman42 (May 11, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Its bugging me so I am going to try to replicate this test without VEP on Cubase. I did it on LogicPro and dropped CPU usage from 35% down to 25% without VEP involved. I'm curious what cubase will do without VEP connection. Give me a few minutes to work that out....



FWIW, I spent some time and recreated the non-VEP test in Cubase10. 100 Tracks. All ViPro instruments with MirPro and Miracle.

Result? Not good. It won't play all the way through without dropping out audio entirely and crapping out, CPU ~3x of what LogicPro was using for the same tracks. 

So what I can say is for me, LogicPro is out-performing Cubase10 by perhaps factor of 3x with 100 tracks of VSL instruments.

while I was building up the project track by track, in the earlier phases with only a few tracks, it was performing well and I was hopeful. As I got past 10 or 20 tracks I started to notice the CPU has straining increasingly but still entirely usable. By 50 tracks it was already using considerably more CPU then LogicPro for the same tracks, but still usable. By 75 tracks I had to close MirPro window and make sure Retina display mode not enabled to get playback. By all 100 tracks, it won't play all the way through no matter what I do.

I think with smaller projects cubase works fine and certainly seems smooth and has many useful features. As I was setting things up I kept thinking, hmm, that is cool, I wish LogicPro did that. But anyway, performance is a factor on mac. It ought to be able to play 100 tracks without sweating. LogicPro certainly can.

I am not a Cubase expert and its possible I am missing some opportunities to optimize the project in some way. Any suggestions welcome.


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 12, 2019)

I had a chance to put together a Cubase session of 272 audio and sampler tracks and some plugins to test on the Mac and Windows partitions of my Hackintosh. With the same buffer and ASIO guard settings the MacOS version outperformed the Windows version with the CPU at about 88%, whereas on Windows the CPU was maxed out and the session didn't play back properly. Here's a link to the session file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1pltwwdq2snclc5/CPU Test.zip?dl=0

A second test with 100 or so Steinberg reverbs also outperformed on MacOS compared to Windows. I'm a little surprised but there you have it!

My CPU is an Intel 9900K and I have 64gb of RAM.

EDIT: The reverb test (320 instances of RoomWorks being fed audio) had the CPU at 63% on MacOS and 98% on Windows.


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## Elephant (May 12, 2019)

What OSX versions are you using ? Might have something to do with it .... ??
E


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## Dewdman42 (May 12, 2019)

Sierra. I'm shocked by his results frankly. What plugins was he using? I was using all VSL instruments and MIRPro, so its always possible VSL is not good on mac.

Anyway, I digress, at least for me here, Cubase is a dog compared to LogicPro. I couldn't even play 100 tracks much less 272 as he is doing on his hackintosh. I've heard numerous reports of mac version running less efficiently, this is the first time I've heard the opposite. (shrug), it is what it is... I guess roll the dice and buy it if you want to find out if it will work on your mac.


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## Elephant (May 12, 2019)

OP is on Mojave. What about @jneebz ?


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 12, 2019)

I am on Mojave. My tests are pretty unscientific, I just added an audio loop and made a few tracks with the Cubase sampler, noodled some MIDI, and added some stock plugins from Steinberg and duplicated until my CPU meter started to max out then compared the results on the other OS. Windows is optimized for performance, the only difference is that it boots from a standard SSD rather than NVME but when I did disk read/write tests the speeds were about the same.

I just did another test with 160 instances of ZebraHZ (VST3) noodling MIDI and duplicating as before. About 55% CPU on MacOS, and 75% on Windows. MacOS wins 3/3 on my build.

It's worth noting that the 9900k CPU completely smokes the 2012-13 Mac Pro CPUs especially for single core performance.

EDIT: 256 buffer


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## Dewdman42 (May 12, 2019)

Nonetheless, on my old crappy system I get 3x the performance out of LogicPro compared to Cubase.


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 12, 2019)

I'd love to see some tests from someone with an iMac Pro comparing Logic and Cubase and Cubase on MacOS and Windows!


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Nonetheless, on my old crappy system I get 3x the performance out of LogicPro compared to Cubase.


Wasn’t trying to knock your system by the way! But I was really surprised about Cubase performance improvements going from a 12 core cheese grater to my home built 6 core i7 8700k rig last year (since upgraded to 9900k). Thanks for taking the time to run those tests and sharing the results.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (May 13, 2019)

Jeremy Gillam said:


> I had a chance to put together a Cubase session of 272 audio and sampler tracks and some plugins to test on the Mac and Windows partitions of my Hackintosh. With the same buffer and ASIO guard settings the MacOS version outperformed the Windows version with the CPU at about 88%, whereas on Windows the CPU was maxed out and the session didn't play back properly. Here's a link to the session file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1pltwwdq2snclc5/CPU Test.zip?dl=0
> 
> A second test with 100 or so Steinberg reverbs also outperformed on MacOS compared to Windows. I'm a little surprised but there you have it!
> 
> ...


Do you have a proper Mac though or do you mean Hack when you say Mac?

Because this is in no way an honest test I am afraid. As someone who built four Hackintosh machines, it is important to understand that a Windows PC running macOS is not a Mac.
The Power Management will behave differently, the operating system will be different and most of all certain Processor architecture and extensions will not behave the same.
They may be present on a proper Mac and not present and disabled for Hackintosh compatibility purposes.

Remember a Real Apple machine has certain extensions and hardware that works with the SMC (System Management Controller) of the Apple machine. A Hackintosh 'fakes' i.e. emulates this functionality. Not to mention Tables that load during Post and hardware tests performed etc.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (May 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Sierra. I'm shocked by his results frankly. What plugins was he using? I was using all VSL instruments and MIRPro, so its always possible VSL is not good on mac.
> 
> Anyway, I digress, at least for me here, Cubase is a dog compared to LogicPro. I couldn't even play 100 tracks much less 272 as he is doing on his hackintosh. I've heard numerous reports of mac version running less efficiently, this is the first time I've heard the opposite. (shrug), it is what it is... I guess roll the dice and buy it if you want to find out if it will work on your mac.


Refer to my previous post... this would make significant difference compared to genuine Apple machines


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## Dewdman42 (May 13, 2019)

what you are saying is all true, however in this case he's actually getting better performance from his hackintosh then from running windows on the same machine. I am more suspicious that there is something wrong with his Windows configuration.

Comparing someone's 2019 hackintosh to a 2012 MacPro is not very useful information for this discussion.

Another factor is that newer CPU's have certain low level CPU instruction set optimizations in them which Cubase or VEP could be using, which a 2012 MacPro cannot take advantage of, and on and on. Perhaps Cubase is coded somehow to take advantage of newer CPU's which are more common on windows by the way, while not being optimized for 2012 architectures, which like it or not are much more common on the Apple community at this time. Just thinking out loud now.

It would be interesting to have a 2019 ImacPro, or the next gen thing coming out this year, tested with both OS X and windows bootcamp, to see how they compare, but ultimately I would still expect Cubase to be highly optimized under windows and less so under OS X just because of Steinberg's history. But its possible they are getting closer and closer to performance parity between the two platforms when the same hardware is used.

What I can say is that here in my studio with my ancient 5,1 Mac Pro, Cubase10 does not perform well at all, LogicPro is performing 3x better. That is true with and without VEP involved in the setup. I can't imagine that a windows setup would perform worse then what I have, but maybe I would have to install bootcamp to find out for sure, which I don't plan to do.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (May 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> what you are saying is all true, however in this case he's actually getting better performance from his hackintosh then from running windows on the same machine. I am more suspicious that there is something wrong with his Windows configuration.
> 
> Comparing someone's 2019 hackintosh to a 2012 MacPro is not very useful information for this discussion.
> 
> ...


Yes agreed on all points there

And I find the performance benchmark results with my 212 Mac Pro to be the same


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 13, 2019)

Yes my "Mac" is a Hack, I understand it's not the same as an Apple machine. But given its home-brew nature I'm surprised it turns on at all let alone outperforms my the Windows boot. I followed the guides to optimize Windows when I built the PC for power management and CPU performance. It's possible I missed something but I used Windows on the machine for a long time with solid performance and no issues as far as Cubase was concerned.

Here's an interesting post where a member is getting surprisingly good real-time performance on an iMac Pro with Cubase: https://vi-control.net/community/th...e-performance-of-imac-pro.68459/#post-4182534

Maybe newer CPU architecture really is a big factor in all this.


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## Dewdman42 (May 13, 2019)

windows also has DPC latency issues, you could have a problem related to that, which OS X in general does not suffer from.

just one example...

Until you know your windows config is completely optimized I do not think its a valid general assumption to make that Cubase runs better on mac compared to windows.

As I said earlier, I suspect that Cubase is taking advantage of newer CPU instruction sets that are not available on the 2012 MacPros. When you code things you can code things in a way to be perfectly efficient on the newer instruction set and horribly worse without it. LogicPro appears to be coding things in a way that our 2012 macs continue run performantly, while cubase is not taking that into consideration. That is just a guess.

Many of us continue to use cheesegraters for perfectly valid practical reasons. Apple has done strange things in the past few years. I think its foolish for Steinberg and others to leave behind the cheesgrater macs just yet. It is still a significant portion of the user base out there.


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