[b]serious Trouble With Cubase Sx 1[/b]

[RocknRollDude]

Hi Friendz,

i'm having a serious problem with my cubase, the deal is when i sync my Alesis SR16 Drum machine to it, Cubase controls the playback initially but in a little while the drum machine loses track and stops responding to the cubase and then when i try to close the program to restart it the computer shuts down reporting a log off error on reboot. What is wrong? do ineed to reinstall Cubase. Can anyone help?????

My setup is a PIII 800 Mhz. 256 MB RAM Running XP Professional. Sound Card is ECHO MIA MIDI

Thanks

 

[Easto]

I'll give it a bit of thought for you but I can tell you one thing (that it might be)... 256mb of mem running XP and Cubase! My suggestion would be a bare min of 512mb and preferably 1gig. Somewhere along the line you may just be choking it to death. Try what you're doing with only 1 drum track and no plugins and see if it still exhibits this problem.

 

[RocknRollDude]

Serious Trouble

Dear Easto,

If Cubase eats up 256MB on just syncing a drum machine then i guess it is a sucky software. I'm quite sure there is a bug in the software and as far as my Vegas 4 is concerned it is recording 24 tracks( 24bit 48khz) with at least 5 plugins on each track on the same system and there are no problems with it. I guess then cubase is not worth its price and my decision to buy it was wrong. There is no support from them either. My objective was just to sequence my tracks on the SR16 and then trigger the recorded midi track in cubase through a good software drum module like stylus?????? Thanks anyways for your reply

 

[xstatic]

Something doesn't sound quite right because it should do what you are asking it to do. However, 256 megs of ram on a pentium 3 800 mhz machine does sound kind of scary to try and run Windows XP and Stylus, and Cubase SX> AS far as your Vegas goes, I would feel very fortunate that you are able to run so many tracks with that many plugins. Thats nearly 100 plug ins. I would imagine they are extremly "light" plug ins. I can't imagine that your machine could barely run 1 Waves reverb.

In the end though, it sounds like a different problem. It sounds like Cubase is not happy with the Echo card and is somehow losing sync between the software and hardware. Maybe check to make sure that all of your master and slave settings are lined up. Even though its midi, a clock problem between software and hardware could be conflicting it.

 

[RocknRollDude]

Aren't We Underestimating The Power of a Genuine PIII

Hello Friendz,

Well i think we are all too prejudiced about system power and what i'd like to mention in the context of the 100 Plugins issue is that i dont exactly use 100 but i assign groups of tracks requiring similar processing to a bus and thats how i achieve my plugin ratio of five on each track. I'm sure a 100 plugins wont run on my system and as far as waves reverb is concerned i have quite a few waves plugins and they all work fine on my system. I think the systems that we posses are less hungry then we are. I know a friend running a project studio on a pIII 933 mhz with 512 ram with a motu 2408 and not that many problems with his commercial recording projects. There indeed are smarter ways of achieving a good ratio of tracks with heavy processing for e.g. if my system gives me problems with more processed tracks i usually render the tracks that i think i've completed the processing on and then again i dont have problems. I guess thats a bit of a compromise but when it comes to the artistic you some of the classic records were just done on eight tracks and minimal processing. What we have today at our disposal is frankly more then is required to make good music.

Thanks for all the advice
Cheers!

 

[xstatic]

You are right about a couple of things. There is plenty of stuff that can be done just fine on a pentium 3 800 mhz machine. However, you said a friend was running a project studio on a slightly faster machine with 512 megs of ram. There may actually be a HUGE performance difference between your two machines. First off, what chipsets, mb, RAM quality, externals, windows tweaks etc... he is using may result in completely different performances. This is without even mentioning that they are using twice as much RAM which alone is a gigantic performance boost. As to the 100 plugins thing, every plug in, bus, aux send, different track etc... uses a different amount and type of resource and processing power. So estimating the way you did really isn't even close to accurate. A good example is the waves plugins. You could probably run 20 waves C1's and use the same amount of processing as 1 instance of Waves True verb. My number isn't exact, but the message is still the same.

I am not saying that your system is hopeless or useless, but I think you should be really careful when asking for help. Be prepared to get it whether it be good news or bad news and don't take it personally. In DAW audio the four most important things are RAM, hard drive SUSTAINED throughput, a seperate audio strogae drive (not just a partition which doesn't even help),and a properly tuned OS.

 

[Bass Master "K"]

Hit F12 and watch your CPU usage while you try to track with your drum machine. That will tell you if it is processor related. If all your trying to do is lay down a drum track and you don't have loads of stuff running I'm guessing it's not.

How is your drum machine hooked into your soundcard? Is it through a MIDI cable? It sounds to me like it could be a word clock issue. You might want to look at your manuals for your soundcard and for the drum machine and make sure that drum machine is slaving to the soundcards word clock.

Good luck.

 

[vestast]

Bass Master - I'm wondering the same thing. Is the drum machine and Cubase using the same clock source ?

RocknRollDude - Your system is not running the minimum requirements for Cubase SX ! Check the box that it was packaged in or go to this link:

http://www.steinberg.net/docloader_...0.html&Product_ID=2014&Langue_ID=7&loc=doc153

Minimum requirements is an 800mhz processor, and 384 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended).

Even at that, the minimum requirements will still usually give you performance issues.

Check out this link for some preformance tweaks for WinXP and audio. I'm using most of these tweaks and they work good for me:

http://www.musicxpnet.com/

Edit - Oh crap - I just noticed that your running Cubase SX 1 and I posted info on SX 2...Sorry man.

But still - I would check the minimum requirements on the package and try to add some more RAM at least. Then try some of the XP tweaks..

Good luck.

 

[TheyCallMeBill]

Well I have a pentium 4 3.06 GHZ wwith 512MB ram and my tracks dont line up either I'm thinking about making the switch to pro tools LE

 

[vestast]

Well I have a pentium 4 3.06 GHZ wwith 512MB ram and my tracks dont line up either I'm thinking about making the switch to pro tools LE

Then there's something wrong with your setup.

What's your soundcard ?

 

[xstatic]

Bottom line is that no program ill work right if it isn't set up properly. Whether it be Pro Tools, Cubase, or Sonar.

 

[spinynorman]

I am a long time Cubase user ,love the program.I now record directly into Cubase SX2 via MAudio Delta 1010's so I dont have sync issues anymore(If I'm not recording the drums I sequence them in cubase using battery or LM4 mk2 with Bob Clearmountain samples....now they were worth every penny)
Previously I was recording on a Roland VS1680 and dumping tracks 2 at a time via digital out.I used to have the same problem with Cubase(VST32 5.1 and SX1.5),Cubase would keep playing but the rec button would switch off after about 15 seconds.I finally came to the conclusion that it was something systemic to Cubase(i.e Cubase ' sync sucks) and by changing my sync master from Cubase to the VS1680 the problem was solved.
Also check that your tempo maps ,both master and slave are identical.

Hope this helps - matt

 

[Bass Master "K"]

Well I have a pentium 4 3.06 GHZ wwith 512MB ram and my tracks dont line up either I'm thinking about making the switch to pro tools LE

What is your soundcard? Your problem has to be setting or driver related. Your system should fly with ease with that much oomph unless your soundcard totally blows. I'm guessing your buffering is off. Also, check out that website mentioned above to fine tune your machine.