HELP: Cubase Essential 5 + RAM usage + Cubase crash

M

mattsnoise

New member
Surprise, surprise I have a problem with Cubase using a phenomenal proportion of RAM and causing plug-ins to crash and then causing its self to crash.

I have explored several other threads on this forum and others and concluded that this problem is down to RAM usage, I'm going to throw some numbers at you in the hope that a) you can tell me if these numbers look normal, b) if there's anything I can do about it and c) if not, what's the next step!

For reference: Windows Vista 32bit, 3GB DDR2 RAM, Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz processesor


Cubase with no project open: Process 67,124K RAM 1.19GB ASIO Usage 0
1 track, with plug-in on: Process 287,500K RAM 1.42GB ASIO Usage 30-40
2 tracks, with plug-in on: Process 412, 048K RAM 1.54GB ASIO Usage 40-50
3 tracks, with plug-in on: Process 534,600K RAM 1.66GB ASIO Usage 50-60

NOTE: Process and RAM taken from Windows Task Manager, when referring to 'plug-in', I refer to Amplitube 3.
You can clearly see here the increase in RAM usage and ASIO usage (I've documented ASIO usage as from what I've read it could potentially be related to the problem). ASIO Usage taken as an approximate fro the VST Performance window inside Cubase.

The situation is that in a 8 track project, with 7 tracks using Amplitube and 1 track using another plug-in called Addictive Drums, the Process reads at 1,485,984K and the total RAM usage at 2.39GB
This is very high RAM usage for a computer with only 3GB and I believe the source of the crashing, for when I add a new track and apply Amplitube to it, it comes up with an error message 'no audio'. Having researched this, I put it down to excessive RAM usage by Amplitube because it was open and turned on for all of those seven tracks, so I went into the VST Audio Channel Settings window and turned Amplitube off on each track thinking this would reduce RAM usage, therefore enabling me to use Amplitube on a new track.
However, having watched Task Manager whilst opening this problematic track, it appears that Cubase uses the increased amount of RAM per extra track regardless of whether the plug-in is turned on or off. This means that the computer is still using nearly 2.4GB of RAM, about 80% with the track sitting open, and therefore won't allow me to apply Amplitube to a new track. When I try to, I get the 'no audio' message and most of the time this is followed by Cubase crashing.

I believe the problem here is the RAM because when I try to add Amplitube to an 8th track, the RAM usage suddenly drops by 200MB, indicating that perhaps it has reached a peak and so the computer is forcing a decrease, like its reached a cut-off point. I'm not the worlds techiest person and so I can't so definitely whether this is the right conclusion, all I know is that from reading other threads, it sounds like a fairly safe conclusion to reach.

The upshot of this is is there anything anyone can suggest that may help, or is there any other conclusions anyone can see from my number watching???
 
OK - so all that above is a bit convoluted now that I read it again.

It seems like despite turning the Amplitube plug-in off in Cubase, the level of RAM the computer uses doesn't decrease in line with how it increases every time you add Amplitube to a new track.
Is there a more effective way to turn off the plug-in that would actually reduce the amount of RAM used?

The other thing that has occurred to me is that the computer with Cubase on is also used by other people for other things and so it isn't optimized for home recording, as much as I would love to turn of resource draining processes like the anti-virus protection and wireless card. There is no way I could turn these off for just the 'Home Recording' user, because no-one else would know how to turn them back on, but if I partitioned the hard drive to dual boot Vista, then I could turn all these things off on one OS, therefore optimizing the computer for recording - would this work???
 
The RAM stats don't look too bad - vista is very RAM hungry. I would check how many processes are running - Task Manager - Processes. I'm running win 7 64 and currently have 48 processes open.
I'm not a fan of multi boots, but you could try a clean install, or a fast HDD for your OS? I installed a SS drive and the difference was visable (also reduced noise) or consider XP or win7, both of which are more stable platforms.
Good luck
 
I think that the processes totalled somewhere around 62 - I have been through then all and worked out which ones are vital and which are all the rest, I'm just a bit loathed to turn lots of the extra ones off and optimize the pc when it isn't just used for recording.

I may have half found a way round the RAM thing anyway - if I use Amplitube in its stand alone form (rather than inside Cubase) record in Amplitube, export it and then import to Cubase, it requires much less RAM and I can have as many tracks with Amplitube on as I want because Cubase isn't trying to run all the effects in real time which it was before, even if they were turned off.
Albeit this works, but it kind of defeats the point of being able to use Amplitube inside Cubase for ease and speed and all that kind of stuff!

I sort of thought the RAM didn't look too bad really, because to be fair, it was only increasing a small amount for each extra thing, the thing is that all of them together, added up to a lot of RAM proportionate to what the computer actually has. Like I said, given that the last track I added caused a sudden drop in RAM usage indicates to me that it had reached a peak and the computer was forcibly cutting the usage-but I wouldn't know that for sure!

Thanks for the help, any other advice still appreciated! :)
 
If you know which processes/services aren't vital to your system running smoothly and obviously account for any others that you use all the time just disable them in the msconfig so that when your computer turns on they don't start and you don't have to go through each time you wanna record and close them, but for a long term solution I would deffiently recommend Windows XP or 7 as they are much much better than Vista it's just way too RAM hungry. But if you are set on staying with Vista I would look into buying another Gig or two of memory.
 
I read, 1 min equals 80MB, I'm running a Hanspree netbook with HDMI, & NDAS, LE4 rocks. You might try Ubuntu Studio to do your mastering. Have you read about Hyper threading?
 
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If your hard drive is huge, sacrifice some of it to virtual RAM. Add another 3GB of virtual RAM at least, and max out at say 9GB. I know the geeks will say it's SOP to go 1.5x and up to 2x, but I've had no trouble with 2x and 3x so far.
 
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