my friend, your statements are very glib…do you not get that some people do not want to upgrade to 9? and if they don’t upgrade to 9 they are left with an incomplete DAW…do you just not get that?
I don’t think 9 is worth the money so I will not upgrade but now I am left with an incomplete DAW…it’s just not right,
lets suppose an upgrade to 10 doesn’t suite you so you don’t upgrade, fair enough…but then you find that an important part of your current version is no longer available to you unless you upgrade…would you be happy? of course you wouldn’t!
we don’t all want to spend 100Euro on an unnecessary upgrade or be forced to spend 100Euro because the company will not provide the complete DAW that was paid for!!
The daw is not incomplete, it’s exactly as you bought it, with a quicktime based engine.
If you don’t want to upgrade you miss out on the V9 perks, simple as that.
your right my friend…it is as i bought it…but a part of it has become a security risk and Steinberg made it obvious a long time ago…before the 9 update, that 8’5 would be getting the new video engine and now they renege on this promise, I know you like to say …where’s the statement but by any reasonable standards of fair play they led people to believe there was a video engine coming…a good explanation of this is in an above post…
fair play is dead and buried in the Steinberg camp that’s for sure!!
I will not reply to any more of your posts because there is no point any more…
You call it fair play, it was a product manager speaking before marketing aproval, which was corrected already 5 months ago. And still that statement is ignored. Was it handy? No, was it clear? Yes! stop beating a dead horse…
BTW, it was a senior product manager who is also in the Marketing & Business Development department. So if you can’t trust that guy, who can you trust?
But anyway, Raphie, it’s clear we do not agree on this issue, and of course you are entitled to your opinion. Your point of view is very much aligned with Steinberg on this matter, and if we’re keeping score, you won. So you could perhaps be a gracious winner if you wanted, but instead you…
As for you being tired of moaners, I’m tired of apologists, but since we’re both mature adults I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to get along, since we’re both paying customers who can surely both handle respectful disagreements, right?
As for buying the upgrade, I actually already (regretfully) did buy it, in anticipation of the new video engine, as I indicated elsewhere. As I’ve detailed in other posts (here and elsewhere), along with other people who confirm this on their systems, Cubase 8.5 performs better on my system than Cubase 9. Additionally, I’ve tested the new video engine on a clean install of my system, and it uses 2x - 5x more CPU than Studio One, Reaper, and yes, even Cubase 8.5. I have not yet tested it against Pro Tools. Not that it really matters to you, but for me, Cubase 9 has been a huge disappointment in several areas. The whole saga of the video engine is on top of that, and has burned out my goodwill for Steinberg. Naturally, someone like you would glibly say, “just move on to Studio One.”
Oh wait… you already did say that, following the typical script:
In any case, like many professional (and hobbyist) users here, I use several DAWs in my studio, including Pro Tools HD, Studio One, Reaper, Cubase, and others of course. It all depends on the project and client for me, so I’m actually much less passionate about this than it may appear. However, I do believe in fairness and keeping one’s word, and yes, while it may appear I’m sitting here moaning and groaning to your great irritation, it’s also called speaking up about something.
I’ve been a long-time fan of Steinberg, and it’s kind of sad to see them do this. Is this is a big deal in the scheme of life? Of course not. It’s nothing. But I’ve also invested a lot of time in Steinberg products and made a lot of music with their products, and I’d like to keep Steinberg in the center of my studio, rather than push them out to backup status or phase them out completely. I know that doesn’t matter to you, and obviously it doesn’t matter to Steinberg either. So then I say my peace hoping some solitary guy at Steinberg listens, and maybe it will impact things slightly for the better, or maybe not.
So I do wish you well, and I wish you the best with the Steinberg you’ve chosen. From time to time, I’ll likely “moan” here as it suits me and you are of course welcome to disagree and be dismissive or just ignore me, and I’m perfectly fine with that.
As to the larger point of Steinberg’s gradual but steady decline IMO, since Cubase 6.5, I really hope they turn this ship around, because Cubase has some really great features and a tremendous history and place in the DAW world. I personally don’t feel right to send them any more money until they do change course. You’d likely say, “good riddance” to people like me, but I hope when the day comes that some feature gets messed up for you, that you’ll have supporters to help make your point to Steinberg, if any of us are left to help out.
I wish you the best, but I only see features improve and I’m happily committing to one single daw. Which has served me well for many years and will for many to come. I happily spend my €50 every year and stay current.
Btw yesterday i read that your demo would run out in 2 days? With all your concerns you still bought the upgrade? Why?!?
I likewise wish you the best! Cubase has also served me mostly well for many years, except more recently.
As for a demo running out in 2 days, I think you’re referring to someone else. I haven’t used the demo, I bought the upgrade a while ago, before I realized Steinberg had canceled the 8.5 video engine.
Ok, my bad… so you have full access to v8 and v9
I don’t use video so I can’t say anything meaningful about performance, but outside video IMHO v9 is so much snappier and lean and streamlined than V8 for me. I couldn’t care less about lowerzone or the sampler, I decommisioned 32bits plugs a long time ago. For me, the improved look and feel and percieved performance made it well worth it. I get gigabytes of stems via wetransfer every week, mix and/or master multiple projects each week. V9 has never let me down,V8 was a lot more quirky for me. I’m on a new 6800 16GB x99 system though. The biggest improvement in snappyness, who would have thought, was upgrading my nvidia 9xx to a 1070gtx, just buttery smooth performance. Each usage scenario is different, so is each workflow and each system reacts different, but for me V9, with updated EUCON drivers and my SSL SIGMA DELTA automation has been a hell of a ride. Life has never been this good.
I’m happy to hear it’s working great for you, but as you mentioned, “each usage scenario is different” – in my case I deal 90% with film/video projects right now, and Cubase 9 has been a mess for me, and obviously, the whole issue with the video engine has been a problem for people like me, since even Steinberg acknowledged the QT security issue 16 months ago.
In any case, my main system is a 10-core Xeon workstation with 1080GTX running RME hardware, works beautifully for everything I throw at it, with most DAW apps on separate boot SSD drives, all running quite well with the notable exception of Cubase. Cubase 8.5 was okay for the most part, with some issues here and there I could live with (except I will no longer install QT on my system since it is now long-deprecated and with each passing month the risk continues to increase), and Cubase 9 has been glitchy and unstable compared to 8.5. On the same system, S1 and Reaper are surprisingly solid, and when needed for certain clients, PT HD is also rock solid. Reason was also super stable, as well as Ableton Live (although I have phased out Reason and Live and have recently picked up BitWig). (BTW, BitWig is pretty inspirational if you like modular concepts.)
Now that the new video engine has finally been released for Cubase, the performance is honestly terrible, and at high CPU load for massive projects, it’s clear the new video engine will cause people lots of problems, not just me. The optimization is well below what I could have anticipated. Steinberg has a long ways to go to optimize the engine. And again, not to beat a dead horse, they’ve stranded 8.5 users, expecting them to continue to install QT, which I will no longer do. By Steinberg’s own words about 16 months ago:
"The actual risk of security gaps in QuickTime for Windows is unknown. According to reports, an attack through the security gaps in QuickTime for Windows is possible, but not highly likely. It also seems to require user actions like clicking internet links or opening malicious files. In any case, > the risk increases constantly due to the missing security patches.> "
Quoted from: https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/115000083290-Security-gaps-in-QuickTime-for-Windows
So after 16 months, I’m not going to risk it any more, no matter what people in this forum like to say about its “low risk” in their opinion. 16 months is way too long to keep something like that on a working professional system, especially now that several alternatives exist, in several DAWs, not to mention Steinberg’s own (poorly optimized) new engine.
Anyway, we could go back and forth on this, but I am happy it’s been good for you. I know it’s been good for many people in their unique scenarios. I don’t criticize that, and I believe it. Every scenario is different. Many issues are likely just configuration or system issues, or just user error, but some highly experienced people are having legitimate problems and while your usage doesn’t appear to overlap with theirs, it is a legitimate problem people are facing. Like I said before, Cubase has many great features, but I can’t financially support a company that has done what they’ve done recently. Once again, best wishes to you.
Back to the topic at hand then, what would you gain with a bad performing new engine in V8? You don’t want to use the old, which I understand and you can’t work with the new, so what’s the plan then? My RME madiFX is flying at 64k buffers in V9, couldn’t get below 256 in V8, go figure.
Well, you’ve hit on the exact dilemma I’m now facing. Bingo. I just tested the new engine, so I’m literally wrapping my head around this new wrinkle in the situation RIGHT NOW. I did NOT anticipate the new engine to be so poorly optimized. In one of my posts a day or two ago, I think I mentioned that since the performance of the new engine is so poor, I wasn’t sure how helpful the new engine in V8 would be, should they ever release it. I was disappointed at the whole situation. However, on a technical level, it would STILL be safer than using the old QT engine, so it is USABLE. So I guess I would trade having something low-performing and “safe” versus better-performing and an unknown, growing risk. So I still think Steinberg needs to do the right thing.
Either scenario isn’t fun. So I’m just sort of tired of the whole thing. That’s why my solution might be more drastic than other people here, in that I’ve decided to move Cubase to backup status in my studio, and I’ve been trying to move film projects to other DAWs. It’s an overall unsatisfying solution, since there are features from Cubase that I will miss (although there are great features in other DAWs that Cubase doesn’t have BTW). So I do NOT have a perfect solution, hence my reason to continue to talk about it here in this forum, hoping that Steinberg will pay a little attention along the way. I do NOT want Steinberg to crumble and die. I want Steinberg to succeed. But the current Steinberg has created an unpleasant situation for me and I can’t trust them anymore. So in that sense, I’m done. Too frustrated. However, I always try to keep an open mind, and I don’t like to hold grudges. There is still time for Steinberg to do the right thing. And honestly, we’ve all been here before… if you were around Steinberg back before Yamaha bought them, there was a pretty bad time when they really were awful. But they turned around. They can do it again.
Anyway, you are totally right that this is the situation I’m facing, and for now my solution is more or less working, but it’s not a net-positive yet. On the other hand, I will say that I have really enjoyed discovering and testing other DAW software during this time, to see what they can do, and I’ve been amazed by what advances some of them have made. I’m not here to convert anyone to another DAW, but there are viable options out there. I don’t need to mention the names of those other DAWs anymore, everyone knows what I’m referring to.
So I guess in a way I’m in holding pattern – playing “wait and see” – although with each passing project I do, I am finding I can get by pretty well on other DAW software so we’ll see what happens in 6 months, a year, two years. I just wrapped up an audio mix for a huge convention in another DAW, and it went perfectly. This is part of my profession, so it’s not like I’ll wither away and disappear. I would be foolish to not keep an eye on Steinberg’s progress, even if I stop upgrading for several years. Steinberg and I had a great relationship for a while, and with Yamaha’s backing, they won’t disappear. But there’s something going on there, IMO, and the management has made some very poor decisions. If they turn things around, they’ll most likely see my upgrade fees again.
I’ve had my journey several years ago. I’ve accepted that no DAW is perfect, but for me Cubase is the most advanced daw, with the most default functionality I actually use. I’ve developed a very personal workflow where Cubase, EUCON, my outboard and madiFX intergrate perfectly. I use limited 3rd PTY plugins, I don’t spend time on flavour of the week plugins.
And I’ve never been this productive. I get 20 odd stems to mix, I load them in Cubase, route them to the different busses on my SSL Sigma, ride the faders on my Artist mixes. Apply the odd plugin and I have a first mix within 30mins, no surprises, no crashes, no distractions, just work. If I needed to do this with video, I would only require the video to play and audio to stay in sync. And no crashes. I couldn’t care less if my ASIO utilisation was 20% higher or lower. It needs to deliver the task at hand, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t “play” with my daw, I don’t benchmark with it, I don’t get distracted by forum trends.
Not to you, but in general, I see a lot of people spending an awfull lot of time on discussing, benchmarking. for me it just needs to work.
In general, my approach is more or less similar to yours, but when I find a problem, I like to get to the bottom of it and solve it. I have beta-tested for enough companies in the past to know that it matters, and there’s usually someone inside the company that is actually listening and trying to make a difference. If I have a free window in between projects even now, I like to drill down even more to understand why a certain problem exists. Recently I’m setting up for a huge project… I want to lock down my configuration, so I’m spending more time than usual in the forums. I don’t do it that often any more, but when I do, it helps me understand the system that much better, and if I know a developer inside a company, I’ve emailed him my personal results in the past. One particular DAW that I no longer use (I won’t mention names) that I used to beta test for and correspond with one of their lead developers, had an earful from me and a really smart group of like-minded DAW users, and just now – years later – they have implemented some key ideas we all shared with him. It’s almost like they are following the blueprint of what we shared with him all those years ago. So I do believe it makes a difference, even if it takes a long time.
And frankly, I really appreciate the people in this forum who spend the time – for whatever reason – to get into the details of benchmarking and other testing. It helps keep Steinberg (or any company) honest, in my view, and helps them make a better product. It’s those people who spend that kind of time, who have frankly pushed Steinberg to spend time optimizing Cubase so it is as stable as it has been for you. So we all owe them a thank you IMO. Some people here have been mistreated because they are so picky (and good) at benchmarking, for example, and just because someone else doesn’t care about benchmarks, etc., doesn’t mean we are all not benefiting from it. And BTW, why does it have to bother you? They’re just different than you.
Like you, I want my DAW to be rock solid and take a beating in a very hard work day. The best DAW config I ever had was back with around Cubase 6.5, where everything was so solid for me, I couldn’t believe it. It was a rare and magic time for my experience, where everything came together perfectly (and probably accidentally).
I also agree that no DAW is perfect, and there are going to be holes here and there for one person or another. For me, it has been a gradual but steady decline since 6.5, when Steinberg started doing the interface crap with v7. I tolerated it and accepted that there was going to be a period of growth, since it was obvious what direction they were going. I was even optimistic about it a few times, but I became less and less happy, and at version 8.5 I was becoming frustrated for some projects.
I didn’t make noise about it though until this video engine fiasco, and while I do use other DAWs, Cubase was at the time central to my work. At the time, I also had some projects in Live, some in Reaper, and of course, I always keep Pro Tools around for those clients who require it. But Cubase was the key tool for a while.
Cubase 9 has been the worst for me and my particular workflow, and we don’t need to rehash the video engine. But it’s the first time I actually regret sending money to Steinberg in many years.
Now I’m in a strange place, although it’s pretty cool to really push other DAWs and see what they can really handle. It’s been inspirational in some cases, to see how one developer has approached a common workflow task and see how good his thinking process is. There are a lot of tools out there, and I don’t blindly stick to one.
What I don’t like is feeling trapped inside a DAW that is giving me headaches. I felt that years ago with Pro Tools and other DAWs, but I keep Pro Tools around because I HAVE to. With Cubase, I never felt really trapped until recently, and it’s unfortunate, because I feel with good management, Steinberg could crush the competition. But Steinberg is its own worst enemy. They miss opportunity after opportunity, IMO, they are stuck on an old yearly development model, and they could have buttoned up the business of a lot more people right now. In my case, I’ve now sent money to their competition – quite a bit of their competition, and will continue to do so. And it’s money that could have remained with Steinberg TBH. As a long-term customer, they should be concerned that those of us who have spent so many years in Cubase are considering moving on. It shouldn’t be criticized by other users here in the forum, IMO, but rather it should be acknowledged and understood, and maybe there’s something at Steinberg that needs correcting.
I think it’s good to be picky and critical and trying to get to the bottom of things. I’ve done my fair share of beta testing.
There is room for Steinberg to improve, I think that’s clear and I think they are well aware of all logged issues.
As you know stuff can be very configuration (hardware/OS) dependent and sometimes one is just lucky and everything just works.
My autistic self would like the video engine to improve, it needs to outperform the previous one and at least needs to be on par with the competition for the likes of performance and stability. My rational self only asks one question: can I complete the task at hand? If so, just do it. That doesn’t mean that improvement isn’t important, but once shared and acknowlegded, it’s time to move on and get back to work. Steinberg isn’t stupid, they work via the lean principle, have their sprints with developer topics and deliver according to priotisation. I have some faith in them that stuff will evolve and improve.
we just have to accept that there is stuff that you can influence and stuff that you can’t. IMHO a performance discussion is good for improvement. Relentless bickering over and old version of Cubase isn’t
And you are right, Cubase has changed, the cosmetic changes over 5/6/7, the topics we had back then now no one complaints about it anymore. Count your blessings, imagine what your work would be like without Cubase, you are now willing to accept these compromises out of anger, but once the anger is gone, you will really feel what you need to miss out on once it’s gone.
I’m quick to be grateful for the amazing tools we have access to in this era – from any software/hardware developer. So I agree with this general idea. I definitely appreciate that I’ve made money and created many cool projects, specifically with Steinberg products (and many other products from other developers). However, Steinberg needs to remember they need happy, paying customers to stay in business. So the gratitude goes both ways.
Agreed! Vote with your wallet on the other hand don’t expect miracles. It’s a one-way street: upwards an onwards, focussing on 9 improvements, over 8 maintenance be a more fruitful discussion.
And BTW, Raphie, I want to thank you as well – by having this conversation with us here, this thread has been at the top of the list during our rather interesting exchange and it now has over 2100 views… which is a good thing since that means someone at Steinberg might actually read it. If you hadn’t come into this thread, it would likely be on page 2 or 3, so you’ve helped out!
And honestly, for anyone else who does or doesn’t agree, there is a lot of good food for thought.
Yep, it’s all good and I don’t dissagree with your POV.
Hi there
If you don’t use the video engine, why even take all the time in getting involved with this thread? This thread being about ‘the video engine’.
Anyway, just saying.
FYI – to Steinberg’s credit, they have just released the new video engine for Nuendo 7 – this is fulfilling an old promise, and I’m happy to see them do it. Now, will they do the same thing for Cubase 8.5?