12 Useful TIPS To Improve CUBASE Performance when MIXING

(video transcript)

Today I have 12 tips for you to improve CUBASE performance when mixing.

What’s up, my friend? Chris Selim here from Mixdown Online. Now just a quick announcement before I jump into this video.

I just want to let you know that I’m going to be releasing my next premium course in the next few weeks and this one is going to be all about mixing in Cubase so you don’t want to miss this one. More on that very, very soon.

Make sure you’re on my mailing list if you want to stay informed. And at the same time, if you join my mailing list, you’ll have access to my free mini course, How to Build the Perfect Mix Template. Link is down below.

Now let’s talk about the computer performance when mixing in Cubase. Now, I’m going to focus this video on the mixing side of things, and not the composition or arrangement side working with VSTIs and stuff. I will cover that just a bit, but I’m mainly going to focus on the mixing side of things when working in Cubase. Let’s start with the first tip and this is the most important one if you want to gain a bit more CPU performance when mixing in Cubase. And this one is to increase your audio interface buffer size. Let me show you in Cubase, what that looks like.

Now, I have a mixing session with a bunch of plugins in this one. And if you look on top, I have my performance meter right here on top. Now, if you don’t see that on your end, you can activate that just to see it all the time so it stays static on the top of your project window. You click on the setup tool bar on the top right of your window. And you’ll see it right here at the bottom, the system performance meter, click on that and it’s going to show on the top section of your project window. You can also access the system performance window by clicking on F12. And there you go.

As you can tell, I’m pretty much maxed out. I’m going to go on top, click on studio and go down to studio setup. And then I’m going to go down to VST audio system and I’m going to make sure this is selected. And this is where I have the interface that I’m working with selected on top. 

And then just below, if you will go back to the left side of this window just below I have my Yamaha Steinberg Thunderbolt settings and this is where I want to go. And I’m going to click on control panel. By clicking on control panel, this will open my Yamaha Steinberg Thunderbolt driver window. Now this window might not be the same window on all interfaces so you’re going to have a unique look to your parameters that you have here on this control panel window because this is going to open the control panel of your sound interface directly. 

And this is where you’re going to be able to change the buffer size like you can see here. The buffer size right now is at the 256 samples, which can be low for some.

Now this depend on the speed of your computer. If you have a tool of a buffer size, of course you’re going to have way less latency. However, it’s going to be way harder on your computer. Your computer might produce some glitches and stuff and will not perform very, very well the more you’re going to add plugins in your mixing session. Let me give you an example. 

I’m just going to cancel this one out. I’m going to go back into my mixing session. And as you can tell, my CPU meter is maxed out. If I click on play, this is how it’s going to sound like, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to mix whatsoever using this.

I’m going to go back into my control panel and I’m going to increase the buffer size. By clicking on the buffer size option here, I’ll be able to increase that to another higher value. Let’s go with 1024, maybe in your case, you’re going to have to go to the max. It’s going to depend on how fast your computer is to start with. I’m going to go to 1024 and now my performance meter is a bit, I have a bit more room to play with. Let’s play the song.

(singing).

I still have a bit of glitches but it’s better. I can go and move that up to 2048.

(singing).

Way better. I have more latency, but it doesn’t matter when I mix, so latency is not an issue when mixing, only when recording. That is one thing you can do. You can increase the buffer size of your sound interface to speed up the CPU performance.

Next, what you need to pay attention to and this is the second tip that I have for you is activate multiprocessing and ASIO-Guard in Cubase. And this can be found again in the studio setup window and this time, just make sure you click on VST audio system, where you have your sound interface selected and you will see in advance on their advanced option. You’re going to see activate multiprocessing. That is going to need to, for most systems anyways, it’s going to need to be checked on. And this is for all computers that are using multi-core processors.

And this is the case for the majority of the computers today in 2020. If you have a multi-core processor in your computer, make sure you activate this option. And also you can activate the ASIO-Guard option. And this is also going to free up some processing. 

Actually, what this is going to do, it’s going to shift as much processing as possible from the ASIO realtime path to the ASIO-Guard processing path. End result, you’re just going to end up with the more stable system. If you have dropouts and stuff like that, you can activate that and it’s going to just add a bit more stability to your system and you’ll see it right away. Just pay attention to the metering level on top.

And there you go. As you can tell, it shows right away, but at the same time, it’s going to add some ASIO-Guard latency right here. This is something that I would suggest you to activate if you have processing problems. That is going to help and this way you’ll be able to bring down the buffer size also. In my case, I won’t need to go to be as high as 2048. I could actually go down to 512 samples.

(singing).

There you go. That is also going to help a lot.

Let’s go to tip number three, print your VST instruments before you start a mix session. Virtual instruments are CPU heavy. A lot of them are anyways. And if you add those up on top of adding plugins into your mix session, you’re going to overload your system quite easily. This is something that I do on my end all the time, all virtual instruments, all MIDI performance are going to be bounced into audio. This way it’s not going to jeopardize the performance of the computer when I’m going to start to add plugins in the mixing session. 

And also it’s always easier to archive afterwards if I just need to save that project for future use. I just love to print everything into audio before moving forward. This is what I would suggest you to do is to make sure that you don’t have any virtual instruments active into a full mixing session. This way you’re going to be able to save more processing power of your computer.

Let’s go to tip number four, freezing audio channels. If you went through all the first steps and you’re still having some problems the further you go into your mix, you can freeze audio channels and that can be useful, especially if you’re working on a slower computer. Basically how that is going to work, let’s go and I’m going to select this base channel. I have a bunch of plugins here. 

Let’s say I just want to freeze this base a channel. I’m very happy with the sound that I have so I don’t need to mess around with the plugins anymore. I can simply freeze that channel by clicking the freeze option. Now, if you don’t see the freeze options going to be on top, if you click on the top tab of the left zone of the channel, you’ll see right here, you’ll see the freeze audio channel option. And you also have access to this freeze option straight on your channel now.

If you don’t see it, just enlarge this window and there you go. Enlarge the track list and you’ll see it right there. If it’s still not present, right click on the channel, go down to track control settings and make sure that the freeze is on the right side. If it’s on the left, just move it to the right and it’s going to show right here into the track list. The only thing you need to do, you select the channel and you click on freeze channel and you set up yourself tail size, which is always important to do. You click on okay.

And what that is going to do, Cubase is going to create a freeze file, it’s a temp file, that is going to be stored within your session and that is going to be used when you’re going to play back your mixing session. This way, all the plugins of this channel will be bypassed and the event is going to be locked. From this point on, you’re not going to be able to work on the plugins and you’re also not going to be able to edit the audio event itself. 

Everything’s going to be locked and bypassed. Something to remember. If you need to go back and work on this specific track that you froze, or you just click again on freeze channel and it’s going to ask you if you want to unfreeze the channel or not. By clicking on unfreeze, that will bring back the channel to its original state, where you’ll be able to work once again on the plugins.

You can also, just a side note, you can also freeze virtual instruments if you’re working in a pre-production or you’re writing music and you have a bunch of virtual instruments loaded, you can also do the same and freeze those up. It’s going to work the same way as freezing an audio channel. It’s going to create a file within the session and bypass your virtual instrument. Note that this will only work with virtual instruments and also with audio channels only. You’re not going to be able to freeze FX channel tracks and group channel tracks. Only audio channels and virtual instruments.

For tip number five, don’t mix at a high sample rate. Now I don’t want to start a debate on whether high sample rates are better than lower sample rate. This is not the goal of this video. I’m strictly focusing on the computer’s performance and mixing at high sample rates will be harder on the CPU of your computer. If computer performance is an issue in your case and you’re working with an older computer, I will suggest you to mix at 48 kilohertz and 44.1 and avoid higher sample rates when mixing.

Now for tip number six, remove unused plugins in your session. Yeah plugins, they’re going to take processing even if you mute your channel. I would suggest if you don’t use a plugin, you can bypass it for sure, but better, just remove it. If you don’t need it, don’t use it. You can also disable the track and this is something that can be useful. Let’s go back to the base channel. 

Let’s say, “I’m not going to use this channel. I have something else.” Instead of just a muting, because muting is not going to do anything, the plugins are still going work. I can just right click instead and click on disable track. That simple. And that is going to disable the track. Now, as you can see, I don’t have any more plugins the channel is grayed out. That means that the channel is disabled even though from the mix console, it is not going to be there.

And you can also come back to it if you want to just use it again. You can come back and just click on enable track. And that’s it. And the good thing about this one is that you don’t need to delete the channel or to get rid of all the plugins that you have on this channel. If you’re not sure on what you want to do with this channel, you can just disable it and get back to it if you need it.

Now for tip number seven, direct offline processing, this is a very cool feature that we have in Cubase that is going to allow you to use offline processing on audio events. You select your event, you click on F7 and this will open the direct offline processing window. I talked about that feature before on other videos and this is going to allow you to insert plugins and some other types of processing included in Cubase, straight on the audio itself. 

At the same time, it will create for example, if I try it out with, I don’t know, let’s go and use this compressor. I’m going to click on new version so now it’s going to create a temporary track, again, like it did for the freeze option. And it will create that with the processing that I have with this plugin at the moment. And by doing so, I’ll be able to listen to the track without having to insert any plugins, but just listening to the track itself with the processing on it.

This is good if, I’m going to use this for example, if I have a line guitar where I have a virtual amp. I can use the virtual guitar amp as a direct offline processing plugin instead of using it as an insert and this is going to save processing power of my computer. Again, you click on F7 and you insert the plugin and you can actually insert more than the plugin, could be like a plugin chain if you want. 

You can actually save those as a preset. If you want to get back to some processing that you worked on with direct offline processing, you select again, those audio events and you click again on F7 and that is going to bring you back to your processing window and you can make the change that you want. The minute you make a change or you add a plugin, it’s going to reprocess the file.

This is a good way to save processing. On some channels, it’s not something that I’m going to suggest you to do on all of your channels. But on some specific stuff that you want to do during mixing, a special effect that you want to create and stuff, it can be a very good tool as a creative tool and also to save some processing power, if needed.

Now for number eight, share reverbs for more than one track. This is something that I’m going to do in the mix session, not only to save processing power, but for a better workflow. And on my guitars, for example, straight in my mix template I always have an FX channel for a delay and reverb that is allocated for guitars only. 

Those are very useful every time I work with an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar that I just want to add a general reverb on it, I just route that straight to this reverb guitar FX and also for a delay that I always have set up on this delay guitar FX channel track. Those are going to be used for more than one channel.

If you’re trying to save a processing power, this is going to help a lot because a lot of reverbs, plugin reverbs, will take more processing than other types of plugins. To share that one to reverb plugin to serve more than one channel is going to help you to add less reverb plugins in your session and ending up by saving CPU processing power.

And for the next tip, mix using group channels. This is something that I do also when I mix for again, a workflow reason and not only to save processing power, but that is going to save processing power anyways. For example, let me just give you, show you what I have here on this session. I have two lead vocal channels, one for the verse and the other one for the choruses, both are routed into my lead vocal group channel. 

And this is where I have all of my processing for my lead vocal. I’m sending all of my lead vocal whole channels into that one lead vocal group that is used for processing. This way I don’t need to load processing on every single lead vocal channels that I have in this session. It’s not something that I do on all sessions. It’s going to be a case by case thing, but in this case, this is what I decided to do.

In other scenarios, what can happen is for example, I have that one singer that duplicated his performance more than once, meaning that he’s singing the lead vocal take more than once on separated tracks. I am going to, most of the time, I will route those into the same lead vocal channel and process that group channel. 

This is one example, but that can be done with guitars and drums, types of instruments like keyboards and stuff. You want to just start to process those in a group channel before going down to individual tracks, you can also do that. This way you won’t need to insert as many plugins in your session and saving CPU power afterwards.

Now to the next step, print some FX channels. This is going to be similar to freezing a track, but for FX channels. If you want to free up one FX channel track, you can actually print that on its own channel. And this is super, super simple. Let’s say I want to print out this verb plate. Let me just bring that to one louder. That’s going to give you a very nice example here. 

I have this one, this FX channel track that I want to print. The thing I’m going to do here is to add a track. I’m going to add a stereo track just quickly. And as an input, I’m going to select the FX channel that I want to print, which in my case is the V verb plate. And that’s it. That’s the only thing I need to do and then I just play the song and I recorded this channel and that’s it.

(singing).

Let’s listen to what I recorded.

(singing).

And that’s it. I just recorded the reverb itself and I can blend that up with my dry signal afterwards. That can be very useful in a situation where you are maxed out. And by just printing a couple of FX channel track, you might be able to free up your computer and continue working on your mix. That’s another tip.

Now for tip number 11, work with stuck plugins. Since stuck plugins are part of the system like in Cubase or any other DAW, they will be less hard on CPU performance. And that’s because they are super well integrated into your DAW. Let me give you an example. Right here on this session, let me go and check my buffer size that is at the 512 samples. 

And this is the CPU performance that I have. Now I’m going to load a another project. It’s not the same song, it’s a complete other project that was mixed with only Cubase plugins nothing else. And even on this session, I have way more tracks total than the one that I have right now that have been mixed with a blend of Cubase plugins and also third party plugins. And look at the meter, I’m just going to open this session and just pay attention to the meter that I have, the performance meter.

(singing).

One mix that has more channels in it that was mixed with only Cubase plugins and the other one with third party plugins and also a blend of Cubase plugins as well. But you see the difference in the performance meter. It’s quite impressive. That can be a good option for you to tame down the processing power of your computer while mixing in Cubase.

Now for the last tip, this one is for Windows 10 only. Activate high performance on windows. If you’re a Windows 10 user, you can open your control panel and look for power options. You click on power options and then you will see high performance. By default, it is going to be set up to balance and I’m going to recommend to bring that to high performance. 

This will focus more on the performance more than the energy savings. It’s going to take more energy off your computer, but it’s going to give you way more performance. This is what I have for Windows 10. Now, I don’t know the equivalent for Mac, but if you know the answer by any chance, let me know down below.

There you go. These are my 12 tips to improve CPU performance when mixing in Cubase. If you have any questions, comments or anything you want to add to this, you can leave everything down below in the comment section. Also, if you enjoyed the video and you think that the video is helpful, share and like. That helps me a lot. And to finish this off, subscribe if you are not already and click that notification bell, so you don’t miss anything. Until next time, take care and see you.

6 thoughts on “12 Useful TIPS To Improve CUBASE Performance when MIXING”

  1. Chris, thank you for the video. I have a few questions.

    – I see you’re working off a Windows machine. May I ask about your processing power (type and number of CPUs and cores/CPU), graphics card(s) and amount & type of RAM? I’d like to have a sense of the context within which you are improving CPU performance.

    – I realize this video applies to mixing. However, I have a question about activating multi-processing and ASIO-Guard during tracking. I assuming multi-processing should remain active at all times to allow Cubase multi-threaded access across all CPU cores, right? Is it also correct to assume that ASIO-Guard should be de-activated during tracking, since it introduces latency into real-time processes like volume fader movements?

    – How do you manage your creative decisions when printing VSTi’s in preparation for mixing? Often I will leverage a VSTi’s effects to develop its sound, and this makes it possible to hear how it will place within a mix. Yet, if I print a VSTi to audio to include its native effects, reverb in particular, I find this to be limiting in that the reverb type and level may not work later within the mix. One way to mitigate this is to print the VSTI’s reverb, for instance, separately, if the VSTi allows such a routing capability. How do you manage effects decisions with VSTi’s in a manner that allows you to better visualize the mix later?

    1. Hey Antony!

      1. Here’s a video of my computer built https://youtu.be/d813T4zzpqk
      2. Yes, multi-processing, always ON. For ASIO Guard, try it both ways and check. You can also “activate Steinberg audio power scheme” that is good for Low Latency
      3. Good question. The way I work is very simple, if I like really the sound with all FX (Reverb-Delay etc..), I commit and bounce with it, and make it work in the mix. If I think I would want more control during mixing, I bounce the FX separately. For Synths, that will rarely happen, but that can happen for VST Drums or Drum Samples.

  2. Needed this information. thanks a lot. Can’t wait for the Mixdown Mixing course, I’ll be signing up straight away. Just finished your other course, awesome!

  3. Hi Chris, I suppose that when I disable a track (tip 6), I won’t be able to use that channel as a sidechain (let’s say for ducking). I that correct? Thnx, Bart

    1. Yes, disable a track is mainly when you don’t need the track anymore, but you still want to keep in your session

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