A small utility program that converts old formats (.sng .all .arr) to .cpr

Cubase
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I used Pro24III back in the 80’s. It worked so well that I never upgraded to Cubase. I spent my money on keyboards, because computers and software were too volatile then, but Pro24III was rock solid. I kept using it until I got married in '94 and spent the next few decades raising kids. As a result, I have a bunch of old .sng files that need conversion to .cpr to work in Cubase 10.5. I only need Elements for now, but eventually I’d get Pro. This suggestion is a result of this thread:

I’ve already converted the .sng files to .all files using an old Cubase on the STeem Atari emulator. But now I need to put these through SE3 to get them from .all to .cpr. Two problems…

1 - I need 10.5 Artist to get a license to load SE3 (I only want Elements for right now)

2 - I may need an old XP machine or an XP VM to run SE3 if XP Compatibility in Win10 doesn’t work.

All this just for the sake of converting a bunch of .sng to .all to .cpr I don’t want to convert the old files to .mid because I want to preserve all the patterns/parts.

How about if Steinberg were to create a small standalone utility program that converts all the old formats to .cpr? Then we wouldn’t need to deal with Atari emulators, old XP machines, license issues, and whatever.

How about it, guys?

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+1. Alternately, Steinberg might consider publishing the specification of the file formats of early versions, then the community could undertake the process of development.

2 Likes
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too much work for such a small user base that would need to use this.

4

Why not just take the existing SE3, comment out (or delete) all the code for all functionality except for the ability to import .all / .arr files and save them as .cpr

Or just have this functionality in Cubase, period. Why did they ever take it out? I can understand they don’t want their users saving their projects as .all / .arr …but why did they ever get rid of the ability to at least import them?

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As I say, all Steinberg would really have to do is publish the specification of the file formats of earlier versions.

4 Likes
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This would only help if they would also publish the specification of the .CPR format, which I doubt they would as it is still in use.

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See my full post on my post
[Solved] Convert old Cubase files (ARR and ALL) to CPR format

8

Hi

Did you manage to find out how to convert your .all / .arr files to more up to date Cubase file formats?

I can convert .sng files use Cubase SX3, but the older files not a chance.

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Sorry, I’m being dopey. It’s the other way round. .all and .arr can be opened by Cubase SX3. It’s the older .sng files I can’t open.

Thanks

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I have to admit I can’t remember what version produced a file format ending in .sng – where did your files originate?

Note that the .all files were also referred to as “Cubase Songs” (in the import menu on SX3 for example).

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Many thanks for your email.

.sng files are either Pro 24 files or the very original Cubase files from the early / mid 1990s. They cannot be opened by Cubase SX3.

Is there a Pro 24 Emulator, for example?

Any ideas?

Thanks

David

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WOW! :crazy_face: Believe it or not, my second sequencer was Pro24a (the Amiga version) but that’s long gone. Before getting rid of the Amiga, I transferred the songs via MIDI to another sequencer running on a PC.

There are a number of Atari ST emulators out there (Hatari, Steem), and there’s even a version of Cubase Lite that was released as freeware, so maybe that could load .sng files – see this page, scroll to the bottom and there’s a download link.

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I’m afraid I’m not computer-literate enough to use the emulators and have no idea what TOS images means or how it applies to running the emulator.

Do you have the facility to make these conversions from .sng to .mid? I’d be happy to pay a fee.

Thanks

David

14

Files in .sng format from Pro 24 would need to be loaded using either the original Pro 24 application, or Cubase for Atari, which would also require an Atari ST. Pro 24 can export MIDI files, but Cubase for Atari could load the song files directly, preserving the arrangement, and save them as .all, which could then be transferred to a PC and further converted to .cpr using Cubase SX3 for loading into current Cubase versions.

Time to dust off that Atari ST … :thinking:

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I used Cubase (well, originally Pro 24) for 30 odd years but got sick and tired of the dongle and the truly dreadful e-licenser software and a growing number of other niggles but the thing that most annoyed me was this very topic. Steinberg changed their file format twice and never made a utility to convert between formats. Just amazing :frowning: I still have hundreds of .sng and .all files, of which I cannot convert the former. In the end I just had enough and, very happily, moved to Studio One after only using it for one weekend (has a similar, but hugely more productive, workflow to Cubase). I now have a second machine running Cubase 3 and am slowly porting over my .all files.