Running Cubase on a network

[BJG]

Induction day today, and the Music Dept is trying (and failing) to run Cubase projects with half a dozen stereo tracks simultaneously on 10 PCs. It's glitching all over the place, or as one of the disgruntled students put it, "It sounds like dubstep".

 

They haven't complained about this before, but perhaps they don't often try to run these kinds of projects on every machine at once, or maybe it's a problem with a replacement switch they're temporarily using.

 

They have a pretty basic dedicated server with a large IDE drive in it. They want to increase the number of machines next year, and I'm wondering what I need to put in place to cope...?

Edited July 1, 2013 by BJG

[BKGarry]

Is this a dedicated network for them?

 

I can remember cubase being very buggy years ago, and you had to move where it was working on Temporary files, make sure it is a local drive.

 

Other things that can affect them is what soundcard it is using a bits like that, I can remember replacing all out the soundcards with Soundblaster Audity 2 cards although it was better, there was still latency issues and playback issues.

 

Sorry I cannot be of more help at the moment, I would say get a Mac network in and setup the golden triangle :-) but that is just me, and I like our music stuff being on macs.

[Steve21]

When you say on a network, are you trying to stream the whole program?

 

Any reason you're not installing it locally?

 

Steve

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I was under the impression that you should have your source files stored locally for Cubase projects. Especially if they're pretty big. This might've changed since the days I had to use SX3 at uni however

[FN-GM]

IDE hard disk? That might be an issue...

[ICTDirect_Dave]

They have a pretty basic dedicated server with a large IDE drive in it. They want to increase the number of machines next year, and I'm wondering what I need to put in place to cope...?

 

We can help you out with a fast, cheap refurb server with plenty of space on fast drives, which should help you no end. Drop me a line if you want to talk more

[supawat1]

I would suggest you to install Cubase on your local machine and copy your track to your local hard drive and also check Audio setting whether it's ASIO. If it does not sound right. Check out Cubase hardware requirement and installation guide.

[BJG]

(Thanks for the ideas...the program is installed locally and the ASIO drivers are set OK. Just noticed I'd reconnected the server to one of the standard 10/100 ports on the switch instead of the 1GHz port, so maybe that why it's started falling over. I'll look into that thing about local temp files...)

[Gibson335]

Cubase recommendations from users are local install, separate HDD for audio files - anything else is asking for trouble apparently.

[BJG]

Cubase recommendations from users are local install, separate HDD for audio files - anything else is asking for trouble apparently.

 

...that sounds like the safest bet, but it's a bit of a problem in a school situation though, in terms of students using different machines, centralised backups, etc...

[Gibson335]

I am describing a school situation. Class management and backups to external devices are the prescribed way to go if the teachers want best-case scanario. It's not as easy as simple network use, no, but it's the trade-off for a better end product. Cubase is simply not designed for network use in the way most of us would think of it.

[robjduk]

Is there a real network version of Cubase or is the OP just streaming it across a share? Cubase is a pain to sort out but never heard of an issue like this but I use local installs and users save to their standard network area.

[mjs_mjs]

if running ver 3 or 4 (i haven't used 5 personally or on a network) you'll need local app files on each machine and local storage space for all the WAV's that cubase will produce, if you even try running them across a network you'll need network throughput from server to desktop of around 12Mbits per track used in cubase (did I mention you'll need next to no latency across your network too) - you'll need this as cubase uses stored wav's for playback and recording of audio - midi/vst tracks don't do this.

 

When working back in IT, on a cc4 network we ABed a network version with shared storage space vs a network version with localised storage - the network version just couldn't keep up with demand of 4 audio track across a pretty standard 100mbit (to switch then 1G fibre lab to server). (both had issues with storing graphics for wav's due to some RM trickery)

 

The only time i've ever seen cubase working across a network was while I was a student at beths grammer school in bexley - even then, it was only used for editing pre recorded wav's and I think we had a dedicated NAS RAID and all Gbit network for the 4 or 5 of us on the course. (this was 7-8years ago now, when SX3 was the top version kinda)

 

I wish you the best of luck but i think you need to pay more attention to the actual data that will be traversing your network as i would guess the network and that IDE (eeeek) drive will be causing the issue. I think you're simply hitting hardware limits.

 

I also have an idea to help you - why not use local drop space (drive partition) then script a move to server and move back for log off/log on - it'll slow down log off/on times but it's a pretty simple solution (tho it may cause other issues down the line)

[peterp]

We have found that Cubase (6.5 and 7) do not like network drives at all. This includes the user profile. Steinberg hardcode something that requires the users profile be local on the computer.

We re-write the users registry at login if they are on a musictech machine.

The keys are

hkcu\\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\appdata

hkcu\\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\AppData

hkcu\\Volatile Environment\AppData

hkcu\\Environment\AppData

 

then turn off GPO processing (to prevent gpo refresh from resetting these)

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Group Policy\{35378EAC-683F-11D2-A89A-00C04FBBCFA2}\NoGPOListChanges dword 0x0000001

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Group Policy\{35378EAC-683F-11D2-A89A-00C04FBBCFA2}\NoBackgroundPolicy dword 0x0000001

[budehaven]

sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but I would l;ike more info about the above reg edits. please pm me.

[synaesthesia]

I'm a big fan of doing things properly, and as Cubase does not/can not, therefore it's not suitable for a networked, educational environment. Proper solution: source something suitable.

[budehaven]

that's all very well, but the music department here is poorly funded and Cubase is all we're provided with so I have to do my best to get it working. if it was up to me the machines would all be running pro tool rewired with sibelius, but reality is very different...