steinberg.de - do they reply generally? it seems they do...

[xtp]

Steinberg are a strange crew, they would do well to hire some p.r people with good communication skills.

If you dont own their product but intend on buying it, dont cruise their forums because they will scare you away.

I visited them just after I purchased SX3 and the first response after reading thru a few threads was 'omg! what have I done?'

I think you have to accept for the most part with their products , 'you get what you get out of the box', and thats it. If it doesnt work for you, you may as well ditch it and move on to the opposition.

Saying that I like using SX3, it does work for me, and here in New Zealand the steinberg representative is quite approachable and I have exchanged a few emails with him when I first purchased the product.

[bduffy]

Yes, I should point out that I found Steinberg Canada very helpful, had many correspondences with friendly staff. SX 3 is very stable for me, so I don't really need the Steinberg forums; there are enough Cubase-Gurus here to fix almost any problem. I just want them to make Cubase startup more quickly!

[kritikon]

I think Steinberg might actually help themselves in the PR department by getting rid of the forums (fora?) once and for all. The problem is casual users of the forums assume that because it's linked in with the official Steinberg site, that it's an official Steinberg forum, where you get official Steinberg help and support etc. And that's a perfectly natural assumption to make - I can see why people do assume that, and then get pissed off when it doesn't happen, and all you get is (usually) silence from Steinberg and then 15 pages of whinging from the same small minority of disgruntled users (who for some reason constantly slate Steinberg and Cubase, but continue using it ).

But, if you read the official blurb at the Steinberg site, the forums are not official support forums. They are simply forums used by users for mutual support/chitchat/help hosted at the Steinberg site. And the moderators are not Steinberg employees - but again I can see why a casual user would assume that they are.


It appears that sometimes Steinberg do actually use information gleaned from the forums - every now and then a bugfix appears that certainly seems to stem from forum origins. And occasionally you do get Steinberg employees joining in.


Makes sense to me for Steinberg to get rid of that type of forum, or if they want to continue it, then host it on a completely independent site and make it plainly obvious that it is not an officical Steinberg site. And then they either have an official website for support or not - doesn't seem like they want one particularly though, and that's their choice.\

And of course, you get a distorted view from reading those forums. There are multiple topics about various "bugs" - some real bugs, others user error. But if you closely read many of those topics, it's the same few disgruntled users that post again and again about the bugs. When you read the occasional topic titled "any satisfied users" etc...you'll see page after page of satisfied users and all different users - not the same few. in terms of numbers, the satisfied far far outweigh the disatisfied. But the few are more vocal (naturally so) and give the opinion that there are more problems than there actually are. Of course Cubase is not bug-free or perfect - never will be, like every other host. For every one topic with 200 satisfied users, there will be 20 topics about bugs with the same 5 disatisfied users. So it appears 20:1 in favour of unhappy users, whereas that is radically skewed from reality.


Steinberg cause this themselves by both hosting an unofficial forum at their site, and by refusing to host an official forum. If they just bit the bullet and made an official forum, or scrapped it completely - I feel certain them standard myth about Steinberg unreliability/ buginess/ unresponsiveness would simply die a death. There are many companies as bad in terms of support as Steinberg, and they don't get a fraction of the flak for it. But Steinberg themselves perpetuate those myths by giving apparent access and then not responding to it. Someone on KvR mentioned that Apple/Logic you get no support whatsoever. They don't have a bad name for buginess/ support do they? And I know for a damned 100% fact that logic has bugs, and will most likely continue (along with Steinberg) to do so. Apple obviously discovered that if you ignore a problem, usually it ceases to be a problem. For god's sake, you even have to pay for updates with Logic - not upgrades to a new version - UPDATES! . I was gobsmacked when I first found that out. They don't get flak for that though.


I dunno - no point to this ramble really. Just a ramble. But of course Steinberg do themselves no favours, as usual. If they're so stupid in the PR and common sense department, maybe they deserve to cop some flak. Just seems unfair to me that the other companies don't. Steinberg are no angels, but let's not forget that neither are most of the others (although some companies appear to have positively good support, which proves it can be done).

[dreaddd]

TADAH!!
I'm crossing my fingers to set it up and start learning the workflow on it smoothly, but i proudly announce i finally got my greedy fingers on my Cubase SX copy
thanx a bunch to who helped me on the process replying me on this thread and thanx REALLY a lot to C. Pezeu for always being very superdetailed on the answers and having treated me kindly when i needed help to sort out things while i was buying it from him (and bwwwwwoys its been a damn long process, not for fault of any of us both)
now finally i can start struggling on the goddamn SX
Peace out

[tuhutum]

Reading all these ominous warninglike messages about STEINBERG
some days earlier would probably have saved me $500
Cubase 5 ((upgrade studio 4)the latter was working allright
but there is no surround in it) so the upgrade after installing etc
just quits by startup!!
There is a message : MIDI device manager
and than:....nothing!!!!
What can I do ???
Maybe the best thing is to throw it far away...
Studio 4 stopped running too

[tadam]

Go here "C:\Documents and Settings\"user account"\Application Data\Steinberg\Cubase 5" and trash the content.

[jancivil]

They have actually been quite gracious with me over the years. Perhaps I am an anomaly, but i haven't had any problems thus far getting quality customer service from them. (almost 6 years now) Just my 2 cents.

I've had them on the phone two or three times, installation problem when a total newb, some dongle replacement. They were great each time. I've not had luck with the email support however. They're a big company in a far off land, like another planet to me. But Steiny US, bean berry good to me.

[tuhutum]

well,I tried....
nothing happens...

[breakmixer]

has anyone experiences on dealing with info(at)steinberg(dot)de ?
its a whole week i try to contact them (as adviced from Steinberg US) and not a single line dropped..
does it generally takes such long time to get a reply? do they even reply generally?
no hurry particularly for me, but i hate to keep another person (ie, the seller) in "suspended mode" for such long before starting the final buying deal
if anyone has hints about that, enlighten me pls
PS i need only, after that, to get access as registered user to the forum and the site at steinberg.net, so unless im upgrading (and i wont do it for long time) i shouldnt have to deal with the italian distributor, already contacted and not helpful at all)
Peace

Replied to me within a day, I asked about my arbiter registration for cubase as they have gone bust and they contacted me with an email how to register with them instead, so no problems....

[lotus2035]

2 year old thread!