Testing Softube Console 1 Fader and Steinberg CC121

Testing Softube Console 1 Fader and Steinberg CC121 (Sunday, 18 April 2021)

My Softube Console 1 Fader was acting very strangely resulting in erratic behavior of the Cubase faders:

I did some extensive testing and diagnosing, but so far I was not able to solve the problem. I suspect the unit is defect. In an attempt to solve the problem I put the Steinberg CC121 and  the Console 1 Fader both to a stress test. Unfortunately, it didn’t help:

Once the problem is solved I will report on this.

My diagnosis so far:

• When using Console 1 Fader, my DAW-faders move erratically with about 1db when using the Console 1 Fader. Not always the same faders. Sometimes it stops.
• I sometimes can hear the motors of the Console-Faders due to this erratic behavior. Sometimes they very slightly move.
• I tried 2 USB cables and several (powered) USB 2.0/3.0 ports
• When I disconnect the Console 1 Fader, the DAW-faders stop showing this behavior.
• The erratic DAW-fader behavior always concerns a fader within the selected page (bank) of 10 faders.
• The DAW-fader only seems to become erratic when set at about -9db. 2db higher or lower and the erratic behavior disappears. Gain doesn’t influence this.
• It doesn’t seem to be a specific Console-Fader that causes this problem. It concerns all faders. Thus not a dirty fader?
• If I grab the erratic DAW-fader with my mouse and try to set it at a different level the Console-fader is not responding. I have to have multiple attempts before being able to move the DAW-fader with my mouse.
• If I bypass the Console 1 plugin then I still have the erratic behavior of the DAW-fader.
• If I make a clean Cubase project with only 80 empty audio tracks and only the Console 1 plugin on each track then I also get the same erratic behavior of the DAW-fader
• I also notice that inserting the Console plugin on about 80 tracks gives an huge (over) load on Cubase audio performance resulting in staggering audio and audio drop out. I can partially fix this by increasing the buffer size of my soundcard (Behringer X32) at the expense of latency.
• I also have controller from Steinberg CC121 that is not causing this problem. The erratic behavior of the DAW-faders also occur when I disconnect the CC121 and only have Console 1 fader attached.
• I use Cubase Pro 11
• I use the Console 1 VST3 plugin
• Computer specs: Windows 10 (latest update), Intel Core i7 @3.5Ghz, 32 Gb ram
• *I also tested in REAPER. Exactly the same problem and behavior.

Update 2 April 2021.  I have send back the Console 1 Fader. In return I received a new unit (different serial number), thus I guess that the erratic faders were a hardware problem. I still find the the load on the Cubase Audio Performance is rather high but after playing around with some of the Cubase settings the load is still high but I do not get audio dropouts anymore. A problem that remains is inability to reassign key commands that start with Alt/Ctrl/Shift to the assignable buttons. For both issues I again contacted Softube support.