It has been 7 months since Steinberg announced that Cubase would be going dongle-free, are we any closer to it being removed? Or were they just getting our hopes up?

 

That will probably take some time. Maybe from Cubase 12 next year.

 

It might just be a marketing ploy. It may also be that they can no longer implement this due to a lack of money and staff.
It may be that they are really dongle-free because the majority of customers want it.

 

Good point, I personally think that they were just saying it as a marketing ploy

 

Steinberg (part of Yamaha) is a company and a company just wants to generate profits. The company only does a cost-benefit analysis and, as you say, the rest is well presented, i.e. a positive image on the World Wide Web. One thing is for sure, they evaluate all user files and observe the market. And if Steinberg (part of Yamaha) does not meet profit expectations, it will either invest or cut expenses.

Apparently, the Steinberg company is a good investment for Yamaha, and if they want to continue selling their products in the future, that is only possible if the customers are accommodated. Otherwise the customer goes to the competition.

 

Yeah, I am thinking of going elsewhere, anyone think Logic is a good DAW?

 

Yes Logic is really a very good digital audio workstation. But why do you suddenly want to leave Cubase?

 

Cubase 12 still need dongle

 

Because I am sick and tired of the dongle...whenever I want to take work back to my parents house to work on laptop I have to unplug it from the Mac mini and make sure I don't loose it etc. It is something I can do without.

 

That is a really good reason. So let's go and have fun with your new Logic or Studio One.

I once had an Arturia USB dongle that fell apart in the middle. I wrote to Arturia and complained, Arturia replied,
we are sorry but Steinberg is to blame. I wasn't a Steinberg fan before, and especially not since then.

 

Wait, Steinberg own Arturia?

 

Back then, Arturia was still sending boxes with a manual, customer card and this USB dongle. Since Steinberg invented copy protection, Arturia had to buy the USB dongles from Steinberg, at least back then. I was amazed too. So if you had a problem with an Arturia "Steinberg dongle", Arturia was not liable and you had to contact Steinberg. Then heard the usual and got a link to buy a new one. This is also how you can earn money.

 

Ah I did not know that

 

I ask something to VENGEANCE:

"We will remove the eLicenser Dongle in future for this plugins. I cant tell when this will happen but it will. Could be at the beginning of next year."

I guess steinberg will do the same.

 

They have slowly been improving their digital delivery platform (Steinberg Download Assistant) they have a dedicated team apparently. Its still a heap of Sh**t, but I very much think there is more going on under the hood than you think and it will be part of the solution whenever it arrives, much like Arturia and Native Instruments download/licence managers. Cubase is currently the only Steinberg product that appears in the my download section, unless Nuendo does as well..? So this might suggest its at the forefront of the development. 11.5 due out in about a weeks time so not long to find out.

 

They used the eLicenser dongle for older plugins (in terms of when they were released e.g. producer suite).
For the newer ones like Avenger they "invented" an own protection and failed.
In the end they returned to using a commercial system. This time the ever-popular "code meter

Thus I can only imagine that they will exchange the eLicenser with the codemeter USB plugin.
Vengeance believes in copy protection and because of the fail of their own system I really can't imagine that they will have a second try on that field.
Plus I don't think customers will like further auth experiments. Transferring lics from one dongle solution to another wasn't plain joy

 

Last edited: Oct 27, 2021

Lack of money and staff...
I keep saying this for years.
Steinberg devs have so many products to support, code, fix, upgrade, help desk, test, alpha,beta, create new products, new features, handle the security, hardware , code divers, try competition products, + eternal, perpetual new Mac updates so everything can work on older, current and upcoming IOS versions, etc etc, and many other stuff and tasks, like mobile stuff... that it is just impossible to keep up with the pace.

Direct result of this gigantic, obvious, evident lack of staff (shit, there must be dozens of thousands of genius devs, in Germany alone !)=
-Products like groove agent, halion, etc, not getting any new update, for over 3 years
-products that get updates only receive minor new features, such as the recent wavelab 11... without any new 'wow, this is amazing' feature
- support dropped for 32 bits
- support dropped for quite recent OS, such as win 8.1... CRAZY !
-only latest win 10 support (mark my words, cubase 12.5/13, for December 2022 will only support win11, with no win10 support !)
- no 2 cubase versions per year, but only one average Dec update
- ultra lazy development, for cubase. It took 30 years for cubase to get a proper spectrum analyser, because steinberg stubbornly wanted users to buy wavelab, in order to fix their analyser needs
- core features still missing in cubase, even though it's just a matter of displaying known values. I'm talking about a resources viewer, so users can know how much cpu, gpu and ram the cubase modules, plugins, vstis, etc, are using.
- prices keep raising...

Regarding the dongle... users shouldn't think steinberg might have decided to drop the dongle because they want to please their users, or because of some user surveys... or because this or that. NO.
IF they want to drop the dongle, it's only 100% because THEY have decided so, for financial or political reasons. Users have no influence on many other smaller things... and have 0 influence on the dongle thing.
AND if the idea of a dongle free cubase, wavelab, etc, brings me a quite big smile, I can't stop being concerned about what's coming next... which be much worse.

Dropping the dongle won't magically bring 10 or 20% more users. No.
So far, it worked like a charm, for steinberg. They were able to (maybe) become the most sold daw, by (probably) keeping cubase Crack free, for over 15 years. Why would they suddenly say NO to that ?
Then, steinberg knows that a dongle free cubase will be the target of EVERY audio cracker out there.
If VR and others were able to achieve what they did, with a dongled cubase, what would they be able to do, with a dongle-free cubase.
Then, steinberg are aware that R2R have 'cracked it right' the codesoft protection, which was dongle based. A dongle free cubase, with an offline authorization, might get cracked in 24 hours, by the R2R guys... so... steinberg really need to implement some crazy copy protection...... and this is my main concern:
cubase, wavelab, etc, could lose the physical dongle... but use some kind of always online /subscription model...
... where users must connect to the internet, at least once a week, sign in/ connect to the steinberg servers, and in order to work/launch, cubase would have to download a few .exe files from their servers, one a week.
Like:

- the user installs cubase from a special download app. All/some main cubase files, .exe, .dll, etc will be missing
- the user launches cubase. A window asks to type username/ password
- the user is identified and authorized. The main app will download over 100 exes and dll files from the server
-the current cubase installer is v50, and will only work with signed, downloaded v50 exes and dlls
- the app will now be able to work 2 weeks, without internet
-2 weeks later, cubase asks for a username/ password
- it downloads installer files v51, and downloads v51 exes and dlls
-because every 2 weeks, the user will basically download and install a new cubase version, it will be difficult to Crack it, and use the same files, as Cubase will need to download new files, over and over

I really hope the current dongle protection, that many users hate, won't be replaced by some kind of shit like the one above...

 

Me as well.

I agree in almost every point but I don't think they will drop support for Win10 that fast. Because the majority of Win11 boxes will be new bought ones and we wont buy a new box just for Win11 and Cubase don't we?

 

I treid to think of a useful answer to this question....
The only logical thing I can think of without dishing any crap is that there are a LOT of Steinberg products.
Therefore, whatever they replace the dongle with has to not just replace the dongle, it has to co-exist and work seamlessly with every single Steinberg product that has ever used a dongle. While it is likely the majority of people have fairly recent software, there are bound to be users who have software that is more than five years old. The dongle worked with those too so it has to be tested for every single piece of software successfully before they release it.

They copped so much shit over the Cubase 11 server download release, I can only surmise that whatever they release, they do not want a repeat performance of the Cubase 11 release fiasco.