An open plea to Steinberg

Reaction to 8.5 has been mixed, from euphoria to derision. I’d place my own somewhere in the middle - not hopeless by any means, but feels rather like tinkering at the edges rather than truly facing the big issues that remain.

The same issues keep coming up again and again - unasked for big shiny new features are broadly unwelcome, specific workflow and performance improvements extremely welcome. 8.5 does have a few of the latter, which seems to be the main source of optimism.

But I’ve been through maybe half a dozen support issues in the last 24 hours, pretty much all from a year ago, none of which have been addressed. Many of them are a very big deal to a lot of customers. Meanwhile in the fallout from each release, inevitably lots of people start discussing the newer competition, who are perceived to be ahead of the curve in terms of customer responsiveness.

So how about a new approach. Let’s invent the marketing tagline for Cubase 9 right now - “The Cubase YOU asked for”. Spend an entire year going through all those bug fixes and feature suggestions which keep coming up, so we don’t have 20 new little improvements and fixes in 9, but 1020. No big new features, no cloud excitements, just making Cubase as lean, reliable and powerful as it can be. Get to grips with windows management and UI bugbears once and for all, resolve engine issues (such as the ongoing VE Pro nightmare on its 1 year anniversary), disabled / enabled track consistency and enhancements, faster renderings and so on.

I know the reply - whole point releases have to have something new to make people buy it. But this is the cycle of despair we’re in - new features soak up ever more resources trying to fix them (wow, the all-new VST Cloud doesn’t function well, wonder how many people hours that will now suck up that could have gone into more substantial improvements). And I know the other reply - why pay for stuff that should be free? As customers, we have to be pragmatic. The kind of changes I believe vast numbers of customers are waiting for will take an awful lot of time and resources, be they bug fixes or new workflow features. I’m happy to pay for that, if I get a much stronger product as a result, not one which is ever-spiralling downwards into unfinished ideas and bugs.

So to users - +1 and add your voice here if this sounds like a plan or come up with a better one (that isn’t “give us everything we want for free right now”). To Steinberg - let’s think about doing things differently, eh? How about opening a genuine and ongoing dialogue with your customers here?

  • 1

I stay with Cubase only because they have the best overall set of MIDI editing tools and because of Expression Maps. Other than that it appears to be an increasing hodgepodge of bolt-ons that don’t result in a coherent, functional whole. The lack of slick windows management alone demonstrates this.

I fear the only real solution is a complete rewrite which will never happen because of the cost in man-hours. The only thing that would drive it would be a significant loss of market share. All it would take to lose me is a worthy competitor adding their version of the features that keep me.

(It may be my lack of Cubase-savvy, but so far as I have learned the effort it takes to replicate CC data to multiple tracks is another clear example of awkward functionality that cries out to be addressed.)

+1

amen

+1

I have chosen not to upgrade to 8.5 as a matter of protest since I believe there are just too many bugs that still need fixing from 8.0.

+1…busy weening myself off C8 and onto Mixbus 3…

Ain’t that the sad truth.

Anyway, +1.

The best tagline for Cubase 9 is, unfortunately, already taken.
snow-leopard-0-new-features.jpg
Ahh, Snow Leopard…

+1000

Can we get a rep response? I have a list of bugs and problems raging for years, and steinberg is introducing a lot of new features a lot of people won´t use.

Please fix the bugs steinberg, there have been here for ages.

I cannot believe that key command focus (wasn´t an issue in previous versions), VCA grouped tracks arm record bug, and disabled tracks loosing quick control and expression maps (to name a few) are design choices.

Amen, the fact is that they should feel lucky to have a community of people who are enthusiastic about their product. So much so that they give them advice on how to better it! Listen to your users collectively, and use a better prioritization scheme for deciding what to include in future releases. Not sure what’s going on in those meetings where some of the more obvious and more requested enhancements are being pushed aside for asinine and unneeded features.

  • 10000

Ivory Towers are not cool.

Just a recent example from Adobe retracting a useless let’s-not-scare-the-newbie “feature” after thousands of user complaints, with an apology mind you… All is not lost, maybe.

+1

NoiseBoyuk, you sing good but your voice is very bad…i don’t think you understand
Steinberg’s marketing and plans…they do not care about existing users…they know
they got us stuck with them…all they look at is new features (of course non working)
just to draw new users in. They don’t care about our 50 bucks for upgrade, they care
about 300-400-500$ new users coming in. Its that simple.

+1

I appreciate the effort Steinberg put in some of the new workflow features, heavily inspired by Studio One (keep doing it), but some serious issues have been reported countless times since December/2014 and still not fixed. Again:

  • VEPro/AsioGuard
  • Disabled tracks not recalling quick controls
  • VCA grouped tracks bug

Steinberg, please listen and take action.

+1

Every time a new update comes out we say: “OMG! another new synth and couple of new (wanted) features (lots of unwanted), but what about bugs?! Old bugs?! and ancient bugs?! and workflow!!!” and we’re begging SB to listen to the user base, but nothing changes - new release - and it’s all the same.
VST Transit… SoundCloud… collaboration… I just see thousands of “composers” driving here and there across Australia looking for inspiration and longing for collaboration with someone they’ve never met before to give them blalbla and get from them blablalba… what next? connection to astronauts??? If you guys have to search for inspiration then stop doing music just drop it, go and do something else in your life, because there are a lot of people who can write music every minute non-stop and to be able to do it they need decent reliable software without workarounds (for years).
Come on Steinberg, do you REALLY think that a new customer will choose Cubase because of a new synth?!?!
Cubase is not a tool, this is environment or OS. We need workflow enhancements and features which will help us work with less mouse clicks etc. And all functions must work without workarounds that’s it. It’s time to recognize it.

I’m on the same boat, but with an eye constantly open and a license of Reaper just in case.

I am quite happy with Cubase. I have a few annoyances which I wish would change but in general there is no other DAW that gives me what Cubase does. Specifically the way of editing MIDI and expression maps. Cubase is a very robust and complete DAW. IMHO probably the best. But this is a very relative thing, everyone has their own workflow and preferences. I haven’t had any major issues with Cubase 7, 7.5, 8 or 8.5. I don’t know but I never have major issues with my computers (PC and MAC) even after using many versions of all kinds of software.

Years ago I would use pirated software. I had all kinds of issues. Now, every single piece of software, samples, instruments, plugins on my computer has been legally purchased and I rarely have major issues. In fact, I can’t even remember when was the last time I had a major issue. I upgraded to 8.5 as soon as I saw the news. I upgraded to 8 two weeks into the announcement. I haven’t even had anti-virus for 2 years. I’m not saying every person that has an issue has pirated software or is on porn sites. I am aware that everyone has a different setup and issues can arise from the slightest difference in setup but I can’t help but wonder if some (many) of the issues some users have are because of illegally downloaded software. Not necessarily Cubase, but any software.

If you don’t have any pirated software, then I feel for you and I hope your issues get fixed soon so you can continue making great music. But if you do have any pirated software, you really can’t expect to have a smooth running setup and have no right to complain about issues.

Now, when it comes to features and workflow, ultimately the product is for us. They should listen to us very closely. It’s just smart business. Give the customers what they want and they will keep coming back and even be glad to pay for point updates because we get what we need and want.

I am not defending Steinberg at all but I think sometimes some users go too far in their complaining. Major complaining about every tiny thing. Sometimes I think people just complain because that’s all they know. Steinberg could address every single issue everyone has ever brought up and some people will still find something to complain about.

However, I do agree that Steinberg should listen to and address our concerns much more than they currently seem to do.

Just to be clear, I’m not accusing everyone who has an issue of pirating software. I can’t know who is and who isn’t. I just see things based on my experience and other people I know.

I can image monthly bugfix/hotfix updates… A team specialized in doing just that.
Maybe tackle from 5-20 bugs every month.

The new major releases can then boast with new features and not bugfixes. (.0&.5)

That would be a great idea. It would be a ridiculous proposal but I would be willing to pay $5/month for them to do that.

Im not gonna pay for things that should already work…