I run Cubase 9.0.10 on Windowa 8.1 and I have been having audio dropouts ever since upgrading to 9. I thought it was just me and am quite relied to see this thread. I would be interested to see how many users on Windows 7 and 8.1 are affected. Mine is a 6 core machine with Hyperthreading turned on and it is definitely affected - see details below. Which has not been an issue for me prior to Cubase 9.