I’m a long-time Cubase user but have to admit I really hate the localised method of support for the product, because it means that different people around the world can have a very different experience when contacting their local support.
Here in Australia, I have never really gotten any useful help going via YAMAHA Backstage (which is the AU support). I recently created a simple support request many weeks ago and haven’t even heard back. Previous support requests with clearly reproducible issues were never attended to either and I was left chasing up constantly just even get a reply.
Has anyone had similar experiences? Is Steinberg planning to do anything to remedy this situation?
I think preferably, there would be a single support team that serves the entire world. A team who actually knows the products in detail and can provide real help.
Similar experience with the two cases I had open with the support in Germany. Took weeks to reply at all, nothing helpful. Granted, in the end it wasn’t directly a Cubase problem but a bug in an old VSTGUI version which caused some plugins to misbehave.
You’re usually much better of in the forum here, there’s some helpful people around and especially Martin Jirzak does a good job analyzing crash dumps and separating plugin problems from real Cubase problems.
I’ve tried local Australian support as well - similar experience to yours. I ended up going through both this forum and raising a ticket directly in my steinberg and got through to them directly. It took a little while to resolve the driver issue I had but it was resolved with development required.
Thank you all for your feedback, glad to know it’s not just me.
I’m really hoping this post brings this to the attention of the Steinberg team because it really hurts their company reputation which is not deserved given how amazing their product range is and how dedicated each product team is on these forums.
I really hope we’ll see a major change to how support is handled moving forward.
Steinberg is the only audio software company that I know of that does not reply within 48h.
Luckily, I’ve only had to deal with them once in 35 year (that kinda says a lot too!).
I have dealt with Avid, NI, Waves, as well as a hand full of smaller developers. All with excellent and timely support.
Indeed I haven’t needed to contact them much in the 17 or so years that I’ve been using Steinberg DAWs. But over the years, there have been cases where I needed support and have rarely if ever gotten reasonable help.
Back when they were distributed by Musiclink, things were a tad better. You would at least get a reply. But the recent YAMAHA transition in particular really made it impossible to get any help.
I’m not certain how to get the appropriate attention of those who could do something about this here other than posting. Steinberg has world class products, IMHO the best DAW, the best audio editing software and one of the top scoring apps on the market. This move to ditch the dongle also opens up their potential audience more. But, having practically no useful official support channel is a major drawback (and IMHO the last big drawback that needs to be addressed).
I used Steinberg Australia support a year or so back (maybe late 2020). I contacted them a couple of times and they got back to me (after a couple of weeks) and resolved my issues in both cases.
I would say if you wanted to make a complaint or make some more noise you could go through the Yamaha Australia Contact Us option from here (from Product Support link): https://au.yamaha.com/en/support/contacts/index.html