Windows: Dropouts on Intel® hybrid-architecture CPUs with Cubase/Nuendo running in background

As soon as the Cubase/Nuendo user interface is pushed to the background, audio dropouts could happen during playback, depending on the project's overall processing load. Even a restart of the audio engine ("emergency stop") may occur.

In this instance, the hybrid architecture CPU's efficiency cores—rather than its performance cores—are scheduled to handle the so-called prefetch threads (for more information, see this article on ASIO Guard). As the efficiency cores do not provide enough performance, the dropouts may occur.

A command line to exclude Cubase/Nuendo from this automatic assignment is available.

• Please open the Terminal as an administrator by right-clicking the Windows Start logo in the taskbar and choosing "Terminal (Admin)".
• For Cubase 15, enter:
  powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 15\Cubase15.exe"
• Modify the path and executable depending on the application and its version.
• To check the configuration, enter powercfg /powerthrottling LIST
  In the example, Cubase 15 should be listed
• To reset the setting, enter:
  powercfg /powerthrottling reset /path "C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 15\Cubase15.exe"