Okay, so I wanted to chime in on this again. I might have reacted a bit prematurely, but there certainly is a difference.
I still get VST peaks when loading instruments into Eastwest Play. I unfortunately don’t seem to be able to completely get rid of this problem, no matter what I do. It’s livable, but irritating non the less.
When it’s working, it works really well. And since applying this fix, at least the constant crashing is gone. Loading a project does not feel like playing Russian roulette anymore. Everything works, everything is snappy. That permanent red peak (cpu overload) indicator is here to stay, at least for me.
But Cubase does feel snappier. Less sluggish. My system is totally up to par, and works flawlessly. I think Play just isn’t optimized completely, and Cubase is what it is; great, legendary even, but still sometimes drawn back by years of legacy code, making it not completely optimal.
I’m not faulting Cubase; apart from the younglings like Studio One and Reaper, it seems all DAWs I’ve tried (all of the big ones, Digital Performer, Pro Tools, etc) seem to be like this.
I’m just glad it works. It’s stable. It doesn’t crash on exit. It’s just that still, it seems a bit sluggish when saving, loading, or exiting. I’ve got 32GB of DDR4 ram, fast as heck, but I’m pushing it’s boundaries. It seems that Cubase feels the need to flush this memory everytime I save, or exit. That’s why I can’t just press exit when I want to quit. Close the project. Wait for the rainbow wheel, then exit. It works. Aggrevating, I know, but it works.
I hope a permanent fix will come someday. But for me, I think, this is not Cubase’s fault anymore. Play is still not there. It’s coming, but not yet.
The fix has helped me a lot, making me feel safe and secure instead of trying to win the lottery every single time I start a project.
Now, if only the issue with the midi connections and expression maps could be solved (when disabling tracks)…
Anyway, thanks guys, happy music making!