Cubase 12 and terrible Steinberg support.

rob aylestone

Moderator
Cards on table. First Cubase buy was in 96 I think, with Cubase Score on an Atari in Black and White. I've stuck with it loyally since then.

I bought Cubase 12 Pro - an upgrade, as usual. Installed it first on the studio machine at home, then noticed the new licensing system and the ability, like Adobe, to have two installations - so I filled a drive with all the samplers and synths, installed the lot on the Mac in the office studio and got going. With my NAS, I could work at both places. Then one day it started up and asked if I wanted to now scrap the old elicensing. I didn't appreciate the importance of this so said yes, 'assuming' the new licence system would do everything. It didn't. Worse, Cubase 12 Pro in the office studio deactivated. I tried back at home and although it carried on working, next start-up it was deactivated, and the elicence content stopped working. Lots of fiddling and I got it reactivated and all the elicenses restored. Back at the studio, activiation of Cubase 12 failed - I had run out of activations as the cubase on that machine had been deactivated, but not adjusted at Steinberg's end when I removed the licenses. I did a support ticket request headed Activation limit reached error - and explained the problem. Three requests over a month passed and today, I got a message saying they were busy, and I just needed to delete and redownload the elicenser. Seemed a bit odd, but they had closed the ticket. This of course didn't work, and cubase 12 authoriation manager still tells me there are no activations left. They didn;t even read my detailed reports. If I had one instalation and used it (as I do as part of my income) I would be furious - I can work, but only from home, If I do some video work at the office I have to go home to import the audio into Cubase, then go back to the office to bring it back to the video edit. I used to tell everyone how wonderful Steinberg were - no longer. They're rubbish, overwhealmed with more requests than they can cope with and seemingly cannot read the details box and understand the question - I have no problem with the elicenser, just the activations and they are simply useless. There seems nothing at all I can do.
 
I wonder if Steinbeg support is different in other countries. I had a support ticket in regards to C12 upgrade grace period that was responded to 3 times over the course of 24 hours. It was actually my fault in not using the right 'manager' program to get C12 working. It was my misreading I suppose that was the issue. I actually figured it out before their last response. I however do not have any advice unfortunately.
 
I should not have used the delete option, but figured without researching that the new system replaced the old. It doesn’t. The snag though is that this really for me only removed the synths and sample licences, and when it did it on the home machine, I just restored them. The issue is the Cubase 12 machine runn8ng out of authorisations. Thee is even a section on activation issues on the support site, but the answer is ……. Open a ticket. It will be a minimum of five weeks if they respond quickly, but if they don’t triage tickets, just work on time, then stopped work in june, working in September is possible? When you buy the top tier product, I expected more. When you buy cheap maybe a wait is fine?
 
The pro version is quite pricey too.

When I got back into recording, I had initially decided to go back to ProTools. After a couple months, I decided it wasn't the right choice for my needs now. I ended up with the Cubase Pro competitive crossgrade during a special offer. I ended up saving over 50% (though had paid for ProTools, also on special offer).
 
I'm glad I ended up with Reaper. I have a Steinberg activation from an old version of Cubase 5.something, and only one I=Lok license for Izotrope. I fought dongle issues at work with some software products. Activation issues should be priority ONE for any company. If you can't use the product you've paid for, customers get pissed. It's not that I don't understand the need to protect software, but when companies make it so hard to use legally obtained products they deserve to get bashed.

Hope you get things resolved.
 
I posted the topic here, and on the SOS forum, and I just got a response saying my Cubase activations have been reset! It would appear Steinberg monitor the internet - and I'm grateful. I'm back home now, but will activate it tomorrow - I wonder if my home Cubase will need to be re-activated too? Anyway - it seems I'm sorted! Thanks guys

EDIT
True to their promise, all reset and everything works fine again!
 
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