Steinberg Horror Story, Unavailable to use for 2 months now, beware the dongle

[Daimonicon]

I've been using Cubase since 2002. That's 15 years and my dongle still works fine. I must concider myself as lucky then. My PC's haven't lasted that long though. Three or for years and they're history.

[SJ_Digriz]

Ok, I innadvertantly started the “well my dongle never breaks” subject. My bad .. that didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. The point is that this is an aberration. It is not the norm. So, although it sucks for the OP. It’s not like half the user base is down months at a time because their dongle is broken. That’s all I was getting at. And as another person posted, there are numerous outlets for replacements. VSL sell them also for example. And a WTB post on this forum may turn up a cheap alternative.

[tooneba]

The harder their developers work to make their DAW better, the worse their CS team treat their customer. Don't make Cubase Great Again

[jancivil]

Man, I feel for you .. but jesus I've been using Cubase since before the stupid Parallel port dongle. I've never once had a dongle go bad or break. I have like 5 or 6 of them. WTF do you guys do to them?

Consider yourself lucky. You don't need to do anything. This is electronics and every time you turn off/turn on your computer, remove the dongle to another computer, etc, can cause it to break. ESD is a major USB device killer.

My main one goes back and forth between a tower in the studio and a laptop almost daily. And multiple dongles have been doing that for years. Truly don't get it. They aren't that fragile. I don't even particularly take care of them. I toss them in my laptop bag like gum packs.

So you burn incense to the Dongle Deities at the right time every day, not everyone is blessed like you.

All seriousness aside, they're f**king fragile.

[jancivil]

I broke a dongle and it meant heading out to Guitar Center. Steiny replaced my license and VSL gave me the 30 days thing for everything as the broken dongle was examined in LA. I had a few hours downtime. This is an aberration, yeah.

[ghettosynth]

Man, I feel for you .. but jesus I've been using Cubase since before the stupid Parallel port dongle. I've never once had a dongle go bad or break. I have like 5 or 6 of them. WTF do you guys do to them?

I do take care of mine, and I have had one just sort of fall apart in my hand. I move them around some amount, yes, but I'm not harsh and I don't travel with them at all.

However, my first steinberg dongle just fell apart as I was removing it at some point. It was just the plastic shell, the dongle still works. I wrapped the shell in some masking tape to hold it together and up until recently it held my older and unused licenses (e.g. Cubase 5). FWIW, it's about eight years old now, it fell apart about three years ago.

The newer stubby ones seem more robust and iLoks kick their ass in terms of mechanical robustness.

You might just have had good luck as to the batches that you have bought from?

In any case, OP is complaining about a fifteen year old dongle that costs less than $25 to replace? GTFOH!

[JonSolo]

At least six years running strong on the original dongle that came with my Cubase (6 I think).