from the initial statement from Steiny in some of the responses, I actually inferred that the very strength of the protection was actually becoming a hinderance to development (I could obviously be wrong). There has to be a point where the new features that have to have all the additional code are going to impact performance, legacy compatibility etc…, no matter how much power the computer has, it will happen, and if again, people are comparing software and they wonder why they can run x number of soft synths, y number of plugins, in one piece of software but then much less in another, that will come out on the internet and people are going to start questioning things.

 

Well, they never protected time critical code but you are right anyways… the overall performance of mcfact free code would be much higher.

But I dont think they will trash the mcfact thingy in general nor do I think they will go with the soft-elicenser.

 

Concerning MCFACT, that - I think we can all agree on that - is a seriously CPU-eating tech, one can easily imagine a version where a variable part of the calculation is done online, on the server side. I mean, like an online dongle.

This could seriously accelerate license authentication / verification / calculation. But it implies that you connect your comp' in a regular basis... I hope not all the time, like Reason for example?

(It's exactly because of that that I hate Reason so much. Plus for their "Reason+" license they have adopted a Ffff.... subscription model that pisses me off.)

Anyway, I can't help but being optimistic on this subject. I think "Einstein-berg" is very aware that they risk to alienate all their legit clients if they do the wrong choice. The simple fact that they said they'll always keep the old eLic./ dongle system alive in parallel of the new system, shows that they are dead serious about it, and that they really don't wanna mess with their actual (pro) clients.

But in my secret, wet dreams, I hope for a failure, a glitch in the new system, so that a Smart-Team-Of-Incredible-Revolutionary-Reversing-Pirates-Ninjas-That-The-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Pronounced-Especially-When-The-Moon-Is-Blue ...will find a way to "democratize", to "try-before-buy-ize" the proggies in question.

 

Last edited: Aug 11, 2021

Exactly, they aren’t stupid to completely cripple the system, but for people that push their systems it still counts.

I would agree, the fact it works so well would be silly, so maybe they have refined how they can implement, but it’s beyond my brainpower to see how, so I would say it will be a soft-e version, but a new and revised version, so all protections will be done by the same system, be it Elements, Artist, Pro, Sound Sets, Instruments etc… I’m guessing the likes of Vienna will adopt the same protection or move to another form of protection (given the success of the dongle though, I’m sure they have confidence in the new systems robustness).

 

I suppose the problem from the Steiny side though is they have to balance it so they aren’t pissing off the users that aren’t bothered about the dongle that have it locked away and never touch, that have countless licenses for different products. Don’t want to throw baby out with the bath water.

I still say they have taken a business view to accept that there may be SOME piracy of their flagship at the expense of getting into the hands of more people that may become paying customers. For example, accept that its 1,000 man hours to break the protection, it’s not going to be some random dude that will break it, but then be able to change the protection code server side so it’s a quick change and then back to square one for the teams.

honestly, as a legit user, I still want to see it defeated, just because I love the way the Teams put so much work into it, plus I love the nfo’s where the teams give it to the devs

 

Synchrosoft services has been stopped in 2011. The actual dongle/licensing system is USB-eLicenser.

 

Steiny bought Syncrosoft in 2008 - same thing, different name.

 

Cubase 3 was a real true-emu, prolly the best one ever done as there was absolutly no patching. Cubase 4 was the one implemented at driver level. It was labeled as true-emu but that was fake. Its was a combination of patch and emulator. Same goes for Cubase 5 but additionaly some situations had to be bruteforced at runtime. The file-encryption has never been broken… for instance you cant open a file created with a legit version of Cubase 5 within the cracked one.

 

I would also like to say that times have changed. There must be a reason why Nuendo has been half the price for some time now: There are plenty of other fish in the sea. The times are over when you can pull several hundred euros/dollars out of people's pockets every year for a few new features and bug fixes.

I know professional studios that have been working with one and the same version of their audio program for five years. Because it works. And because the money isn't that loose anymore.

In the end, the money is better invested in the program itself than in ever more sophisicated protection systems.
But what do I know!

 

I also know people who use older versions of Cubase and don't plan to upgrade, even though some of them bought Cubase 11 license! Good thing about eLicenser is that you can run older versions of Cubase with it, and people have found that versions 8-9 work best for them, most stable, support W7 legally as well as older MacOS versions, so why changing them? They also found out that Cubase 10-11 bring nothing revolutionary to the table, just problems pretty much, aside from a somewhat black/white retro look.

There are also these temptations called Studio One, Reaper, Live, all of them becoming more popular with each day. I think Steiny is going the way of ProTools... if I was a Cubase customer I would be really pissed off about it's instabilities [especially with 3rd party plugins] and CPU usage. No such problems with Reaper.

 

Never knew that! Interesting.

 

I would say they are more trying to position themselves back into that S1, Ableton arena, because when it comes to sequencing it’s still the King. I think they are just trying to make themselves more accessible to the masses.

See, I don’t put Reaper in with the rest when I say that, because of its size and the fact it doesn’t come with instruments. Don’t get me wrong, if you have spent time building up a bank of instruments and plugins, then totally, Reaper is a no-brainer. The efficiency of its coding and flexibility is outstanding, but if you are like many that get into it now, you can’t just install and make music. With the likes of Cubase and S1, you can just use the included loops, kits, hell, you don’t need an interface or midi keyboard because you can just draw in the notes. And given the amount of ads I see for chord packs and the like, it’s a way to literally install and straight away you can start making sounds. I think THAT is a piece of the pie that Steiny are wanted to take by this move, appeal to the copy and paste masses.

 

Another fun fact: Protection hasn‘t changed since Version 6 Good night

 

Shows how good then, every day is a school day! See, I love this stuff, how they beat the devs (or not as the case may be). Still, the tongue out response, a little rude!

 

Seems perfectly logical: they must make the protection evolve only if it has been cracked. If they do otherwise, the costs of development could reach summits!

AFAIK, MCFACT now is in its version 3. It means there must have made several, serious changes since AiR, it's why IMAHO it is sooo difficult, if not impossible, to reverse, as R2R themselves stated in an nfo.

 

Last edited: Aug 13, 2021

The original message on Twitter:

Hello all,

For many of you this is the announcement you have been waiting for. While we put our heart and soul into developing ground-breaking products in your best interests, we haven’t accomplished our promise to provide you with the user experience you deserve in every part of Steinberg’s technologies in recent time.

We have been listening to your feedback for years, but significant changes need time, and we had to carefully lay out our vision for the future. But now the time has come to put our approach to license management at the center of our attention. We have decided to adopt a new license management technology that everyone will benefit from to prepare for coming requirements.

An authorization system shouldn’t get in your way, but support you in the onboarding process. Anti-piracy protection technology shouldn’t restrict you as the customer, but secure your investment. A license management shouldn’t stop you from using your products, but enable you to be creative, whenever and wherever you are.

At this point in time, all we can tell you is that everyone at Steinberg is strongly committed to providing you as soon as possible with a solution that offers more flexibility, more reliability and, of course, a seamless migration. It’s too early to announce details on the schedule or the new environment, but one thing is for sure: The future will be dongle-free.

The Steinberg Team

Source: https://www.amazona.de/steinberg-aendert-lizenzsystem-das-ende-des-elicenser-als-kopierschutz/

 

While we put our heart and soul into developing ground-breaking products in your best interests, we haven’t accomplished our promise to provide you with the user experience you deserve in every part of Steinberg’s technologies in recent time.
BS Translator:
Our products are good, or at least we poured considerable money to make our monkey-devs do them..
But we've been fucking with our users minds/wallets so long even the Dumbest of them have noticed,
and the most Loyal complained, or are fed-up and have already fleed..

We have been listening to your feedback for years, but significant changes need time, and we had to carefully lay out our vision for the future. But now the time has come to put our approach to license management at the center of our attention. We have decided to adopt a new license management technology that everyone will benefit from to prepare for coming requirements.
BS Translator:
We knew for years/all this long you were bugged/screwed by our Dongle, and we Completely Ignored you all along..
But now that we've seen our Reputation and Sales tank so dramatically, that even our fat-walleted investors have noticed,
we thought we'd better do something before it's actually too late..

An authorization system shouldn’t get in your way, but support you in the onboarding process.
BS > An authorization system will never support the user in any way/process, step or aspect of Music creation/production..

It will at most be an unintrusive one-off kinda process where shit gets registered, prolly on-line, and then it's done and you forget it.
But coming from this type of Insidious Fakas, it's probably gonna need 24/7 internet connection,
or at least regular/periodic license checkups before it time-bombs and gets blocked.

Just be thankful we don't force you to install a dummy thing that Virtualizes and forces you to download our dll's everytime you want to use one of our products, that'd give us some Control.. mwahahah

Anti-piracy protection technology shouldn’t restrict you as the customer, but secure your investment.
Good philosophical point, albeit misguided. Security can only go/be implemented in some ways:
To secure from your product from evil unlicensed users, or to secure the users from what.. the net/world?

These are totally Unrelated, and they should/will keep being so.. (heck that's what firewalls/antiviruses are for)
I don't think you will ever find a way to make anti-piracy protection methods create a more "secure" experience from the user's perspective.

A license management shouldn’t stop you from using your products, but enable you to be creative, whenever and wherever you are.
BS, there's no relationship between license management and user's Creativity,
but we say it because (we assume) it sounds cool, modern and trendy..

At this point in time, all we can tell you is that everyone at Steinberg is strongly committed to providing you as soon as possible with a solution that offers more flexibility, more reliability and, of course, a seamless migration. It’s too early to announce details on the schedule or the new environment, but one thing is for sure: The future will be dongle-free.
BS Translator:
Now that our money/licensing deal with iLok/whatever is over, we just have no freaking idea what we're gonna do,
so we cannot tell you shit about it..
But at least the idea is to make it a smooth migration that doesn't excessively fuck-up our few remaining/loyal users,
and we say it's gonna be dongle-free because dongles are so despised and have so much bad-rep attached, we just cannot go this route anymore..

.meaT greß niet SehT

 

Last edited: Aug 13, 2021

Great comment. I am one of those.

 

Last edited: Aug 14, 2021

Thank you. (I feel simply once with addressed. Where I started with this topic, after all. )

 

i´m pretty sure i opened cubase files from 6, 7 and older sx2 and 3 and also interchangeable with the nuendo 4emu
maybe compatibility issues arose when combined with cubase synths but it worked flawlessly for me, for years!!!

if they start using win10 then C11 is as slick as 8.5 on win7. Maybe even faster since they dropped VST 32bit completely.
i found the thing that brought the most instability (before 11) was cubase´s internal vst bridging.
the less of bridging it had to do the better it ran. even jbridge (in large numbers!!) added to(instability) that.

Workflow improvements in the Mixer are a nice touch too ;)

 

Last edited: Aug 27, 2021