Cubase 12 released

[andrew71]

A1 was made by Waldorf (Wolfram Franke). It's one of the examples where the issue was the license. Another example was reverb made by Waiio, Wiiso...? I can't recollect name of the company that did it.

Oh I remember unhappiness in psytrance community when VB-1 was discontinued. Almighty bassline machine was taken away by greedy corpo from poor hippies

Wizoo? https://www.kvraudio.com/product/wizooverb-w2-by-wizoo

They were quite well known in the early days of VSTs. I think they provided content for Steinberg/ReFX's Xphraze plugin, which I liked playing around with. https://www.kvraudio.com/product/xphraze-by-steinberg

[pixel85]

A1 was made by Waldorf (Wolfram Franke). It's one of the examples where the issue was the license. Another example was reverb made by Waiio, Wiiso...? I can't recollect name of the company that did it.

Oh I remember unhappiness in psytrance community when VB-1 was discontinued. Almighty bassline machine was taken away by greedy corpo from poor hippies

Wizoo? https://www.kvraudio.com/product/wizooverb-w2-by-wizoo

They were quite well known in the early days of VSTs. I think they provided content for Steinberg/ReFX's Xphraze plugin, which I liked playing around with. https://www.kvraudio.com/product/xphraze-by-steinberg

Oh yes, Wizoo Their reverb was impressive at that time. Definitely level higher than other reverbs in Cubase

[David W]

I think the procedure goes like this:
1. Check the current license
2. Nuke Cubase 11 upgradable license on dongle
3. Deposit Cubase 12 license in the new system
4. Deposit Cubase 11 non-upgradable license on dongle

Nearly.

1. Deposit 'verification pending' licence for the new Steinberg Licensing product in the user's My Steinberg account, which is valid for 30 days
2. Carry out an eLicenser 'upgrade' transaction to replace the existing licence with a "not upgradeable" licence for the last eLicenser version of the corresponding edition of the product
3. Once the eLicenser transaction is complete, replace the 'verification pending' licence in Steinberg Licensing with one with perpetual validity

So long as the eLicenser server is not overloaded, all this should happen seamlessly. Most people experiencing issues with a Cubase 12 upgrade seem to be having issues with the eLicenser step. This is the old eLicenser server not being able the cope with the high load.

The eLicenser transaction has multiple steps. Seemingly, the old licence is handed back to the server, then a new one is issued. Depending on exactly when the transaction fails, you can either have your eLicenser licence temporarily disappear or see a licence that is greyed out and not usable. Running the 'Recover' or 'Maintenance' options in eLicenser Control Center should sort this out, assuming that the server is responding. Once the eLicenser transaction is complete, you might have to click the refresh button in Steinberg Activation Manager to obtain your perpetual Steinberg Licensing licence from the server.

[David W]

I have a different concern. I bought Absolute which contains Halion.
I want to update Halion (when it comes out), but not Absolute.
I'll probably have to contact Steinberg at that point, but I'm not real hopeful about it.

Steinberg has never allowed people to update part of a bundled product separately. You have to update the bundle. The thinking goes that you do not have a separate licence for any of the component products, but for the entire bundle.

An Absolute update is usually not much more expensive than a HALion update.

[pixel85]

So now even licenses are disappearing. People are using C12 one day and another... "Dear Cubase user, we hope that you have another DAW because Cubase is temporarily unavailable. We deeply believe that your customers will understand the delay."
It looks like this new licensing system still needs time to mature.

From one side I feel sorry for those who are in this situation, and they have incoming deadlines, but on the other hand, updating software a few seconds after it was announced is a rookie mistake.

[kritikon]

Definitely a rookie mistake. It happens every single time and still hordes queue up for the new version. Especially as they're doing a major change such as the licensing, it amazes me how many stampeded straight into it and the inevitable shitstorm they got.

[EnGee]

Well, I can't see any performance improvement. The realtime performance is slightly better in Cubase 12 but the average Asio performance (probably the same as the average audio performance in Cubase 11?) is even slightly worse for me.
At best, I would say that the performance has remained the same. Has anyone noticed anything different?

Hmmmm! If there is no real difference in performance, then, for me, I really don't see any reason to upgrade! All the new features are not important for me!

[BONES]

I don't see how licensing is a major change. At best it's a module that sits outside the main codebase and should be an absolute doddle to swap out for something else. When Autodesk made 3DS Max dongle-free, 20 or so years ago, it was the most trouble-free change ever.

Anyway, I got an email from Dom Siglas yesterday, like getting that annoying c**t to contact me (it wasn't him, personally, it was a Steinberg mailout made to look like it was from him) is going to have any effect. Having to sit through his annoying videos is one of the reasons I was keen to get away from Cubase in the first place. Seriously, that guy is so f**king annoying, I can't watch more than about a minute of any of his videos. He's not as annoying as BlenderGuru but he's in the same ballpark.

[kritikon]

Well, this is Steinberg. Licensing sounds like it should have been a major thing for them, as it seems the dongle security was written all through Cubase - that was why it was so difficult to crack (from what I read - I'm no coder or expert on it). I remember reading something from crackers about how it was incredibly time intensive to attempt cracking Cubase precisely because they'd put dongle look-ups so extensively in the whole program. Whether that affected performance I dunno - but it's always been put out there that some of Cubase poor performance sometimes was due to security being so entwined in the coding. I dunno.

Whatever - Steinberg new versions are notoriously hit and miss. I would never buy immediately into any new Cubase version - always worth waiting for a few fixes or even the 0.5 version IMO.

[D-Fusion]

I Finnaly got Cubase 12

[LeVzi]

OK So for those who have gone from V11 to V12 , are you seeing a hit in performance ?

I have seen multiple people stating there are CPU spikes even when idling, it's less "responsive" than V11, so what are people finding ?

[PAK]

OK So for those who have gone from V11 to V12 , are you seeing a hit in performance ?

I have seen multiple people stating there are CPU spikes even when idling, it's less "responsive" than V11, so what are people finding ?

I'd need to do some tests, but the response appears roughly the same (Update: B0rked. Some instrument CPU usage massively higher than 10.5) However.. there's definitely some "weird" stuff going on.

I mentioned the VST 3 scanner was stuck in a loop which wouldn't let Cubase launch (apparently it separates out the VST 3 part) Once killed, via Task Manager, it loaded and scanned inside the program without blacklisting anything. Where it gets weird is, when it was stuck, the task bar was actually showing a message related to the Steinberg license being checked.

Then, when using the program, at one point I noticed higher background CPU usage than would be expected. Turns out (without me prompting it) the VST3 scanner had somehow launched itself again, and was stuck in another loop. The Steinberg License checking process was also shown running, except it had HUNG (was not responding in Task Manager).

So there seems to be something strange going on with how the license checking is working at times, and perhaps this is what's hanging the VST 3 scanner? Or it might be vice versa. Don't know.

I also got Cubase 12 to lock up by doing nothing more than pressing the enable / disable icon (on the top left) of a plugin (Arturia's OB-XA V). Note this sort of stuff tends NOT to happen with a freshly launched Cubase, and the instance had probably been running 24hrs+ at that point.

I usually stay a version or two back with the .5 releases. But I wanted to know how this new license system behaved. I'll also be looking for reports of any improvements in how Cubase manages high core counts. That will influence whether I stick with it, as well as some future hardware decisions..

[LeVzi]

OK So for those who have gone from V11 to V12 , are you seeing a hit in performance ?

I have seen multiple people stating there are CPU spikes even when idling, it's less "responsive" than V11, so what are people finding ?

I'd need to do some tests, but the response appears roughly the same. However.. there's definitely some "weird" stuff going on.

I mentioned the VST 3 scanner was stuck in a loop which wouldn't let Cubase launch (apparently it separates out the VST 3 part) Once killed, via Task Manager, it loaded and scanned inside the program without blacklisting anything. Where it gets weird is, when it was stuck, the task bar was actually showing a message related to the Steinberg license being checked.

Then, when using the program, at one point I noticed higher background CPU usage than would be expected. Turns out (without me prompting it) the VST3 scanner had somehow launched itself again, and was stuck in another loop. The Steinberg License checking process was also shown running, except it had HUNG (was not responding in Task Manager).

So there seems to be something strange going on with how the license checking is working at times, and perhaps this is what's hanging the VST 3 scanner? Or it might be vice versa. Don't know.

I also got Cubase 12 to lock up by doing nothing more than pressing the enable / disable icon (on the top left) of a plugin (Arturia's OB-XA V). Note this sort of stuff tends NOT to happen with a freshly launched Cubase, and the instance had probably been running 24hrs+ at that point.

I usually stay a version or two back with the .5 releases. But I wanted to know how this new license system behaved. I'll also be looking for reports of any improvements in how Cubase manages high core counts. That will influence whether I stick with it, as well as some future hardware decisions..

Yeah definitely seems like a few bug fixes are needed. But that's always the case with Cbase.

[Grumbleweed]

Just have to say I've upgraded and am using 12 like I used 11 and have no problems and so no gripes.
The missing synths weren't used before so I'm not going to miss them now. I'm happy with the new toys.
I know everybody has a different opinion and experience in these things but I wanted to point out the update isn't a shitstorm for everyone.

Grum.

[PAK]

Ok, I need to restate what I wrote.

Some plugins are seeing MASSIVELY higher CPU usage here when measure from Windows. For example, the Korg Triton Extreme VST is generating about 5% load under Cubase 10.5, but it averages around 17.5% in Cubase 12! W T F (This is playing some notes on the default patch BD Grand Concert)

Bottom line is Cubase 12 has badly broken something, in terms of CPU usage. The only thing I did, which isn't standard, is install Cubase in a custom path, rather than the default one. If it continues to behave like this I'll try uninstalling and using all defaults in a reinstall.