Steinberg's dongle alternative coming

I don’t see a single post arguing otherwise. What’s up for debate is the outdated method of tying a physical dongle to a software product, when more efficient, customer-friendly authorization schemes are available…

Plenty of major AND minor developers w/well-known titles using dongle-less authorization schemes today, so the argument about Steinberg requiring a dongle alone for “strong copy protection” is, well… weak.

Just to be clear, (and maybe this was not directed at me) this is NOT my argument. My point is not, and never has been, that a dongle is required (or desired, for that matter).

It isn’t my business to say what sort of copy protection Steinberg uses. That is their job. My business is to decide whether I will spend my money on their product.

J.L.

I don’t need to take Cubase to the stage, but I’d love to be able to use Halion 5/HalionSonic 2 without a dongle on my 2 USB-port MacBookAir.
The only VI’s in my collection that require dongles are Steinberg’s and EWQL.

Steinberg already has dongle-free copy protection in place for their entry-level products, so it wouldn’t be that big of a jump to at least take the shackles off the VI’s.

There might be an external solution available for this task:
http://www.seh-technology.com/products/usb-device-servers/myutn-50a.html

We have had a test run here at work and it worked very well. The USB-eLicenser is available on the network and you can “take it” to be able to work on your system. It is not possible to use the same USB-eLicenser simultaneously on different systems though.
Also note that this is not an official recommendation because we haven’t done any official tests so far.

Regarding the USB-eLicenser dicussion in general, I can only say that the USB-eLicenser will be here for some time to come. We are currently discussing a shorter version that would be introduced during next year if everything works as expected and we are also discussing a rather simple way for you to cover short term downtimes due to a USB-eLicenser failure or theft. No details are available yet but we’ll let you know!

When you say shorter, I assume you mean like the Bluetooth mouse transmitters? That to me would satisfy all problems. Mine has been in my laptop or 18 months and I don’t even think about it!

What about the “leasing” of say the Artist soft licence within ELC though in the short term? Is this not feasible? Essentially you are disabling the dongle but still getting 75% of the product as and when you need it.

Not exactly as short as some of the Bluetooth transmitters but significantly shorter.
Cubase Artist also requires a USB-eLicenser, it would have to be Cubase Elements and depending on the project, this might not be enough as a interim solution as features are missing. It should be possible to continue to work with the version you purchased.

I thought Artist was a soft e, not a problem then

:astonished:

Thank god I didn’t purchased the Arstist versión (as wantend a while ago) for on location recording the :confused:

Why not consider the Waves alternative to protection? They allow users to move the licences from a cloud to ANY usb storage device or to a PC. This is the best of both worlds. One is able to use a laptop without risking damage or using hubs additional ports etc.

But isn’t the new Waves solution cracked already? :wink:

Yeah… you get the download bundled with Cubase 7 …Air version! …LOL

As far as I know, It was cracked a few days after the release.

Eh… are we seriously talking about Waves being cracked, when every version of Cubase has been cracked since VST32…??.. remember the parallel port dongle!!

What?

Heard dat! Word!

Back to makin’ music.

In the studio and on stage.
{‘-’}

Like I said before, I’m stupid #3. I don’t dislike the dongle (It’s even some kind of nice if you are in a really “pirated” kind of country like I am and say “I use my soft original”).

But again (#3) please, steinberg, can you give us some kind of good constructed hardware??? or at least say “no, we don’t want to invest in a better hardware because we also profit from broken dongles”

¬_¬

Yeah! I know exactly what you mean!

SB would likely not “profit” from broken or abused dongles because when you navigate the forum history; we find that mostly they are replaced, license and all and losses are viewed as honest mistakes.

What techniques do people use to protect their dongles when they are on the road with Cubase? I have a laptop that I use to record the band, and I’m always worried that some clumsy band member (let’s just say the bass player) bumps into the dongle and breaks it. I always thought that it would be very useful if laptop makers had a recessed USB port just below the keys. But short of that, what do people do? I have heard of using USB extender cables and then taping the dongle to the spot below the keyboard. Any other techniques?

Not using Cubase on the road, using software without dongles instead.

For our live set (in a few months) I will have a look at Cubase Elements. I only need it for the backings / the click track and for playing a few selected VSTis, so it should be ok.

Sadly, I also can’t take Halion 5 with me. :frowning: