ASIO meter is maxed out but CPU is only at 40 or 50%

Hi,

I’ve been experiencing this for so long that now I’m used to it. However I’d like to know if I’m the only one having this problem.

Most of the time my ASIO meter within Cubase reaches its limit WAY before my CPU. For example I can get a big project with the ASIO meter maxed out, but the WIndows task manager only shows 40 or 50% of CPU used.

I have a I7 920 as CPU and my sound card is RME HDSP 9632. If I increase the latency it’s better but still there is a huge gap between the ASIO meter within cubase and the CPU consumption in Windows task manager.

Why is it Cubase can’t use more CPU power ? I’m even wondering if it makes any sense upgrading the CPU in the future if Cubase doesn’t take full advantage of it :confused:

Anyone else experiencing this behaviour ?

I’m on Windows 64bits and I use Cubase 5.5.3 32 bit.

Hi patcub,
Upgrading your CPU will do absolutely nothing for your asio consumption as these are two different measurements. Asio has more to do with your sound card/buffer size etc so either increasing your latency, as you mentioned, or upgrading your sound card hardware/software device will improve your asio performance. Your I7 is plenty of horsepower.
In the meantime, you may want to freeze some midi/instrument tracks or convert them to audio to free up some asio.

Thanks for your answer. I guess I’ll keep on using VE Pro to host vsts outside Cubase in order to ease the ASIO performance of my projects. Cheers.

That sounds like that will free up more ram for you. Otherwise, CB 32 bit in a 64 bit environment will top out at 4G and that’s a shared measurement. Use your CB 64 bit to access more ram. If you run into incompatibility issues with 32 bit plugins, then your VE Pro will help with that. If you’re going to be using it anyway, that will help your ram access in CB 32 bit also.