Troubleshooting Cubase 14 – Part 2

Hi Paul. I am starting to get many Cubase crashes for no obvious reason. I upgraded to Cubase 14 as I thought that would help with stability, but it hasn’t solved the problem. I need to book a session with you as soon as possible. CT

I received the above message from an existing client and we arranged a time to connect for a remote support session. Before the session, I sent my client a link to a past post detailing my previous experiences dealing with Cubase 14:

Troubleshooting Cubase 14 – Part 1

I explained that other Cubase clients of mine were experiencing similar problems and I hadn’t been able to provide any quick solutions so far. It seems that certain combinations of third party plug-ins and Cubase’s revised audio engine are causing issues. My method of solving these issues would be to update any older plug-ins, but do it systematically so we know if any of the updated plug-ins are causing new problems.

Once I was remotely viewing my client’s desktop, I asked him to open Cubase and show me how it was running. We had a look at one of his larger projects and could see CPU spikes occurring.

VST Compatibility

I could see my client was using many VST 2 plug-ins in his project. I recommended that he update as many as he could to VST 3 versions. This should improve how the plug-ins interact with Cubase’s updated audio engine and ASIO guard feature.

I could see my client was using numerous instances of Kontakt 5 in this project. I recommended that he update to Kontakt version 8 and then manually swap out all his instances of Kontakt in the project from version 5 to version 8. Kontakt has had many changes between versions 5 and 8 which improve its stability and performance with modern DAWs including Cubase 14.

ASIO Guard

I showed my client how to use the VST Plug-in Manager to disable and enable individual plug-ins from being part of Cubase’s ASIO Guard.

Results

My client was happy that he now understood the likely reason for the crashes, and we made a plan for what he could do to troubleshoot the problem further:

• Install Kontakt 8
• Install VST 3 version of Best Service Engine
• Install VST 3 version of IK Multimedia Miroslav Philharmonik
• Change all instances of Kontakt 5 to Kontakt 8
• Use Performance Monitor to determine if any other plug-ins are causing errors.

My client told he would put all this in to place and update me in a week.