Steinberg announces new Cubase SX2 update...

[sidrat]

good news for sx2 users:

http://forum.cubase.net/forum/Forum27/HTML/000052.html

[MickGael]

good news for sx2 users:

http://forum.cubase.net/forum/Forum27/HTML/000052.html

...and smart business....

[HanafiH]

Dear Cubase SX 2.x customers,

Since our announcement and shipping of Cubase SX3 at the beginning of September, some of you have voiced concern in these forums that Cubase SX2.x will not be updated, and that no existing technical issues will be remedied.

We are pleased to say that we will be making an update for Cubase SX 2.x available before the end of December 2004 which will resolve several issues which have been reported by you in these forums. These include ReWire support with Reason on Macintosh multi-processor machines, reported clicks in Crossfades and a potential problem with automation data on “frozen” VST instruments. We will be devoting considerable resources to this maintenance update to Cubase SX 2.x, which we will make available as soon as we can.

We’ll keep you informed of any developments!

Thanx,
Steinberg Support Team.

The gob is well and truly smacked. But it may be too little, too late. And they haven’t delivered yet, although I think, as I said in an earlier thread, the war for Steinberg will be fought in customer support, so this time they just might. Then again…

When Cubase SX1 was launched, its support for the now discontinued Yamaha Factory was a flagship feature. It had its own white paper and its own manual and it’s very own promise that implementing the missing features were just around the corner. Of course it wasn’t. Not only were fundamental operations such as automation completely missing, elements of the integration such as meter signal reportage were so badly implemented as to be unusable.

Steinberg’s promises were profuse: next upgrade, they said. This issue eventually became one of the longest running, most vituperative and posted-to petitions in the then history of the Cubase forums. Almost eighteen months after launch, at almost exactly the point at which every SX1 purchasing DSPF owner would be unable to claim a refund under the T&C’s six-month guarantee, some middle manager posted a footnote to the effect that all development for the Factory had been officially abandoned.

ALL DSPFACTORY USERS, LET'S VOTE FOR MISSING FEATURES!
Eckhard Doll administrator From:Hamburg, Germany posted 09 December 2003 16:23
Unfortunately, we won't improve the DSP Factory support anymore.
The current status will remain as it is until further notice.
http://forum.cubase.net/forum/Forum2/HTML/039047-7.html

Steinberg ran away with the punters’ money having delivered a lemon. This is not a software development issue; this is not acceptable industry practice, it was a deliberate, cynical and craven rip-off.

Yamaha has a fanatical following: other makers make synthesizers - Yamaha makes musical instruments. Lifelong Yamaha users value the tank-like build quality, the intuitive musicality, the certainty of support and the sheer excellence of this company’s audio products. How Yamaha, even in its wildest dreams, could imagine after treatment such as this that hard-core Yamaha product users would buy into another Steinberg partnership beggars belief. As a former DSPF owner, I will never, ever, purchase (or even steal) another Steinberg product.

Well so what? Consider the following critique, recently doing the rounds at the Nuendo forum:

…Cubase users are utterly pissed off with Steinberg's slow response (if any) to genuine e-mail technical enquiries, their arrogance towards existing customers desperate for decent support, and lastly because a product with enormous potential is still full of bugs and fundamental flaws more than a decade after it was first released.
http://www.dancetech.com/aa_dt_new/hard ... 234&lang=1

Just another whiner? Same old story? It sure is. The remarks above were posted over five years ago about Cubase 4. It’s hardly surprising. Cubases 3, 4, 5 and SX1 were all promised a final upgrade to close the open bug list at the point the successor version was released. Those upgrades were never delivered. Well now SX2 users have a Steinberg promise. Lots of luck mateys. And after all it’s not THAT much to pay for a whole new set of problems, is it?

The real problem is a marketing problem. In a vertical market new customers matter more than existing customers. In a horizontal market brand loyalty by existing customers is the essence. And the state of the art in horizontal marketing think is ‘brand stretching’, also known as super-branding. Virgin Airlines is a good example of brand stretch, so is Armani Hotels. Closer to home, Mackie Tracktion and Apple Logic are superb examples of corporate diversification coupled with brand stretch.

That’s what’s so peculiar about the Pinnacle acquisition of Steinberg. Steinberg is a huge brand in the tiny world of audio software, but it’s a herring compared with the blue whale of Pinnacle’s broadcast video business. Why are Cubase and Nuendo not brand stretched as Pinnacle products in the way other audio acquisitions have been by their acquirers? In my judgement probably because of the same reason Pinnacle amortized the acquisition of Steinberg at almost a million dollars in negative goodwill (2003 annual report). Steinberg has a reputation, and branding it Pinnacle Nuendo could tar Pinnacle with the same brush. Generally accepted accounting practice evidently draws a differing view from that held by the Borg’s fan boys.

Pinnacle bought Steinberg primarily for its production audio technology, not its market, as is evident in the annual report from the year of acquisition and from the following cakes of praise uttered by its CEO at a recent investor conference:

Paul Coster - JP Morgan - Analyst
“OK. What's the latest thinking on Steinberg? Is that being—you talked a little bit about integrating products. How does Steinberg fit into that picture?”

Patti Hart - Pinnacle Systems - Chairman and CEO
“Yeah, currently, I think, as Art indicated, Steinberg contributed nicely in this past quarter. We think that we have been through the first stage of getting Steinberg on track and contributing to the bottom line, which they're doing. We are integrating some of the Steinberg technologies into our studio product line and I think [we] will as we will with all of our assets - continue to evaluate Steinberg but allow it to continue to operate in the specific markets that it's in currently.”
© 2004 Thomson Financial. EarningsTranscript7-27-04.pdf

Well yes. Consider the Generic Remote debacle – widely considered a means of locking Mackie and others out of Houston’s control surface territory, a strategy that single handed did more than anything else to devastate the reputation of Nuendo, particularly amongst US Pros, and may well have been instrumental in persuading Mackie to acquire Tracktion – a brilliantly cheap market wrecker at the very bottom of Steinberg’s food chain. Whatever happened to the ‘Producer’s Group’ of famous pros who would lead Nuendo to the Valhalla of ripping a new anus into the Protools market? Alan Parsons seems to be being spread a little thin in this month’s Mix mag.

And then there’s the leapfrogging issue. Alternating innovation between Cubase and Nuendo at year wide intervals causing many a distressed production professional to purchase both in order to keep up. Steinberg has had to explicitly disavow doing this ever again. And then there’s Sonar. Then there’s Ableton. And then there’s Magix, a superbly disciplined and well run vendor, reputedly having head-hunted seriously talented MIDI skills to enhance the exquisite audio engines of Samplitude and Sequoia, both of which are rapidly becoming the Pro user’s alternative 3 on the PC.

The client butt-rudging that Steinberg got away with, while there was always a new customer to hook, just won’t work anymore. Too many burnt fingers, too many unforgiven and unforgotten grudges, and far too few virgins in the Mall. The real nightmare is that caught between the rock of Pinnacle’s bottom line and the hard place of the market, it might just get worse. Then again it might just get better. But then, as desperation for revenues sets in, who knows what a man might choose, after the thrill is gone?

[ericj23]

get over it

oh and i see steinberg yet again offer the best integration with yamaha products (the 01x) in sx 3

the fact that it wasnt very good in sx 1 (with dsp factory) shouldt detract from it being better than almost every other app going - whats samplitudes dsp factory support like ?

and if it was such an affront to those yamaha lifers you mention would yamaha touch them with a barge pole ? cos they did

as for all the tired old stuff about cubase ignoring their users - they have milions of users - they can't answer every query immediately - the notion that they dont try to is a bit silly aint it

they do put out updates to programs - regularly

now are you going to tell me that you have even a single peice of software with the level of complexity and cross platform operation that does not have a single bug in it

you dont

so you ahve been stung by a software company - get over it - having a ranting vendetta aginst them (and your post is defintely a rant) just makes you look .......

well cubase user here - glad vst is gone it was crap - sx has been working well for a while now

[cptgone]

Cubases 3, 4, 5 and SX1 were all promised a final upgrade to close the open bug list at the point the successor version was released. Those upgrades were never delivered.

impressive post, and i feel your pain (i have a sw1000xg, btw) but i think you're wrong about SX1 not getting a final upgrade.

and so does deekuppi, on the cubase forum:
'Great news. It's good to have a very stable and fixed "final" version of each major SX version. SX 1.06 has been working very well for me.'

i really expected steinberg to do this, and i'm sure we'll get this upgrade. let's just hope it will be a good one.