Cubase - CPU-eating VSTs

[Ermz]

Hey guys, wondering again if you can help me out with some problems I'm having.

I'm at the mixing stage of a little project I'm working on at the moment. I'm getting to the point where I'm verbing things up a bit to add space. Just as I expected though, the verb VSTs are owning the living crap out of my CPU. I can barely run 3 instances without things popping and dying on me.

Is there any way in Cubase to 'freeze' the reverb into the track so it doesn't have to do the processing in real-time? And this maybe be a newbie-ish question but... is there a way to run one single instance of the reverb and apply certain amounts of it to each track, like you would in an outboard situation with the Auxillary knobs on the desk?

Any help appreciated. Cheers.

 

[Impy]

Use the Master Send Effects, then you can send however much you want from individual tracks.

 

[Ermz]

How might I access those?

EDIT: Wait, I think I'm working it out myself. Trusty operations manual ... cheers.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

Ditto, use sends, saves a bunch of cpu.

Open an FX track in the main window and choose your effect of choice, then go to the track window for each individual track, select the effect in the sends and adjust the send level to fit.

 

[DracWell]

Sends is the best way to go.
I usually have a long rev, short rev and a multitap delay on FX channels and send what I want to have the effect there

But as far eating CPU, The C4 on my guitar group eats _alot_ of power for some reason. Btw. A quick question, you who use the C4 setting for guitars, do you smack it on a group channel or on the induvidual guitars?

 

[Razorjack]

I get huge problems with IK's Amplitube and Edirol's Super Quartet in Cubase (which is shitty when I'm sequencing bass from SQ into Amplitube!!), I lost two backups thanks to those plug-in's locking up on me.

Do you HAVE to use Cubase? If not I'd recommend a move to Nuendo, same interface but much more stable. I moved over after borrowing an iLok from my uni for summer and it's amazing how much more powerful it is.

 

[Razorjack]

Sends is the best way to go.
I usually have a long rev, short rev and a multitap delay on FX channels and send what I want to have the effect there

But as far eating CPU, The C4 on my guitar group eats _alot_ of power for some reason. Btw. A quick question, you who use the C4 setting for guitars, do you smack it on a group channel or on the induvidual guitars?

I used to use in on individual guitars when double-tracking, but now I quad track most things and it sounds best on a stereo group.

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Do you HAVE to use Cubase? If not I'd recommend a move to Nuendo, same interface but much more stable. I moved over after borrowing an iLok from my uni for summer and it's amazing how much more powerful it is.

Oh really ? You mean you can put more plugins on it than on Cubase ? Interesting...

 

[Razorjack]

Oh really ? You mean you can put more plugins on it than on Cubase ? Interesting...

No more than your CPU can handle, but I was having problems running single plug-in's with Cubase and my system is a P4 2.8ghz w/1Gb ram. I am yet to experience a single CPU overload with Nuendo 2, even when running Cubase project files that I had considered dead (CPU overload upon opening the *.cpr in Cubase) I have no problems.

Nuendo was coded from scratch, and as such the backend is completely different from Cubase.

 

[Ermz]

Hmm really. Might have to give Nuendo a look into. I was under the impression that Nuendo was either more of a song-writer's or film score editing tool.

I ended up working out the sends after I updated that 2nd reply, but thanks alot for the feedback anyway guys. The whole concept of sends is alot more familiar to me after dealing largely with outboard gear these past few months, and the lack of extreme CPU-overload is very welcome.

 

[Impy]

Nuendo was initially meant to be steinberg's equivalent to PT with its own hardware etc...

 

[NathanSoulfracture]

i remember when i used to apply the same reverb plug-in + patch to about 4 or 5 individual tracks before i realised i should just create a send haha, what an idiot.

 

[Ermz]

i remember when i used to apply the same reverb plug-in + patch to about 4 or 5 individual tracks before i realised i should just create a send haha, what an idiot.

Haha, yep I was doing the same thing, always thinking 'there's gotta be a better way...'.

 

[Impy]

Most DAW's work sort of like a mixingconsole so there's a way to do all of it most of the time...

 

[black sugar]

If at all possible budget-wise, I'd also highly recommend a DSP card like a UAD or Powercore.

The same rules still apply for making FX sends, of course, but if you can run CPU hog plugins like reverbs from a DSP card and take that load off your CPU, you have a lot more options, obviously.

The cheapest Powercore and UAD packs are just shy of $400 (us), so it's not cheap, but at the same time it really sucks to have to compromise mix decisions based on CPU usage. I mean, if you're feeling an 1176, a Pultec, and plate reverb on the click track, go for it. Just because you can. Ok, maybe not.

On the subject of DAW's, I'm pretty close to moving to SawStudio, which there was a thread on about a month ago. It's hand coded in assembly so there's incredibly low host CPU usage and there are plugins written for it in assembly as well. It ain't pretty, but it sounds great!

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

Yeah, dedicated hardware would be nice for sure.

Its sorta comparable to playing games with a really nice graphics card, dedicated to that application it makes the processing much more smooth.

 

[brandy]

No more than your CPU can handle, but I was having problems running single plug-in's with Cubase and my system is a P4 2.8ghz w/1Gb ram. I am yet to experience a single CPU overload with Nuendo 2, even when running Cubase project files that I had considered dead (CPU overload upon opening the *.cpr in Cubase) I have no problems.

Nuendo was coded from scratch, and as such the backend is completely different from Cubase.

hey - i don't want to offend you - but that is total bullshit ;-)

Nuendo HAD a new Audioengine in V1 - but since Nuendo2/Cubase SX2 the audioengine is exactly the same.

I run Nuendo3 and i can tell you - Nuendo 3 and Cubase SX3 are having exactly the same Audioengine. Same bahavior while working, same stability AND same performance.

The GUI is a little different and Nuendo comes with some dedicated extra-features - mostly relevant for broadcast and stuff.

Nuendo is also much more expensive than Cubase. You can buy 2 Cubase Licences for the price of one Nuendo Licence.

When you realize a performance difference there is something wrong with your setup.

But anyway - Nuendo just rocks :--)


Tip:

Use FX-Teleport (http://www.fxteleport.com/) to run your verb-vst's on an other computer (via Lan). This will result in a rocksolid Main-DAW AND high quality reverbs.


brandy

P.S CPU spikes on a Pentium4 machine can be cause by denormalisation problems - Waves Plugins as well as some others (esp. the Digitalfishphones Collection) suffer from then badly.

 

[Razorjack]

hey - i don't want to offend you - but that is total bullshit ;-)

Nuendo HAD a new Audioengine in V1 - but since Nuendo2/Cubase SX2 the audioengine is exactly the same.

I run Nuendo3 and i can tell you - Nuendo 3 and Cubase SX3 are having exactly the same Audioengine. Same bahavior while working, same stability AND same performance.

The GUI is a little different and Nuendo comes with some dedicated extra-features - mostly relevant for broadcast and stuff.

Nuendo is also much more expensive than Cubase. You can buy 2 Cubase Licences for the price of one Nuendo Licence.

When you realize a performance difference there is something wrong with your setup.

But anyway - Nuendo just rocks :--)


Tip:

Use FX-Teleport (http://www.fxteleport.com/) to run your verb-vst's on an other computer (via Lan). This will result in a rocksolid Main-DAW AND high quality reverbs.


brandy

P.S CPU spikes on a Pentium4 machine can be cause by denormalisation problems - Waves Plugins as well as some others (esp. the Digitalfishphones Collection) suffer from then badly.

I'm not offended, but did you really need to say it was "bullshit" without knowing all the facts of my upgrade? Since my upgrade was from Cubase SX (first version, unpatched, which had known problems with my laptops motherboard) to Nuendo 2 the difference is more than just a few GUI changes.

 

[brandy]

I'm not offended, but did you really need to say it was "bullshit" without knowing all the facts of my upgrade? Since my upgrade was from Cubase SX (first version, unpatched, which had known problems with my laptops motherboard) to Nuendo 2 the difference is more than just a few GUI changes.

ok - sorry for that. You are right.

And of course you are right with this: Between SX1 and Nuendo2 IS a big difference.

But hey, now you tell us that there where known problems with your MoBO, unpatched Version and stuff - so i think it is not ok to tell others who does not know this that they should go for this and that because that and this sux...

On the same machine Cubase SX1 as well as Nuendo1 should run much faster than those actual Versions because they have much sleeker code and much less features etc.

The GUI, the PDC (Plugin Delay Compensation) and stuff like that eats up much more CPU now.

FYI: Nuendo2's first and unpatched Version was a total useless Piece of ... ...total buggy. I sticked with V1 for a long time. Since 2.1 it was usable. Nuendo 3 differs not that mutch from N2, but hell - it works great! Best Nuendo Version ever. I record/edit/mix up to 90h/week and had no crash or hickup since i installed in march. *toitoitoi* Nu3 is much less buggy than V2.

brandy

 

[Razorjack]

But hey, now you tell us that there where known problems with your MoBO, unpatched Version and stuff - so i think it is not ok to tell others who does not know this that they should go for this and that because that and this sux...

Even without the mobo trouble Cubase was buggy and troublesome, if you lost 36hrs worth of work thanks to it you'd understand why I advocate Nuendo over Cubase IF a Steinberg product has to be used at all (eg. For coursework, which is my reason for using it).

You obviously want to try and discredit my opinion, despite the fact that we both prefer Nuendo!! Can't we just leave it at that?