Crossgrade from Nuendo 4 to Cubase 12

[Roland_Marckwort]

Hi folks!
Considering moving my old Nuendo v4 DAW and upgrading to Cubase 12 and if project files are all
compatible and hopefully usable?

Thx!

[David_W]

I can’t comment on project file compatibility - I hope someone else can handle that side of things for you.

From a licensing point of view, you cannot crossgrade Nuendo to Cubase - only the other way around. You can update a Nuendo 4 licence to Nuendo 12 - it is around 40% of the cost of a new Nuendo 12 licence to do so, though this is more expensive than an outright purchase of Cubase Pro 12 in the current sale.

[MAS]

@Roland_Marckwort, my advice is to do a full 1:1 copy of the project as a backup. If something goes wrong, you will be on the safe side.

We recently retrieved an old Nuendo project from the archive to rework it. (From 5.1 to Atmos.) If you can wait a few days, I can give you a definitive answer to your question.

[Roland_Marckwort]

OK sounds good, many thanks!

[Roland_Marckwort]

Indeed, thanks for that!

[MAS]

Today we received the old hard drives from the archive by courier. This means that I will be migrating the project to Nuendo 12 tomorrow, or Wednesday at the latest. I’m curious to see if everything goes smoothly. The project contains no plug-ins and is completely rendered. So there should be no stumbling blocks for Nuendo.

[Wheels]

Hi MAS,
I had a thought after reading some posts today. I don’t think N4 had +12 faders. If you have problems you might try setting your N12 project to +6 faders before you import or open a session. Just a thought.

[MAS]

We opened the project today. (A backup copy.) And it was actually quite straightforward: When we opened it, we were immediately told that the drive letter has changed. Combined with the question of whether Nuendo should use the old or the new drive letter. As far as I can see, everything is in its place. The fades seem to be correct. The envelopes also seem to be correct. Nuendo has even picked up the colours of the tracks and events from Nuendo 4.x. Things like solo/record and whether a track is locked or not are also carried over.

Contrary to my statement above, the project does contain plug-ins. As these were not installed on this workstation, they were of course displayed as missing when opened. But I can see entries in the DOP window, for example. So something like that will be included as well.

The video is also fine.

The only problem is that the right channel is louder than the left. But this is a 7.1 project. The studio in which we tested it today is stereo only.

In the next few days we will compare the project with the ‘original’. (We still have a studio with old versions of Nuendo. Maybe we can upgrade it soon.)

@Wheels

If you have problems you might try setting your N12 project to +6 faders before you import or open a session.

Thanks for the tip. I didn’t think of it today. Tomorrow then.

[MAS]

@MAS

The only problem is that the right channel is louder than the left.

Routing adjusted: This issue has also been resolved.

[Wheels]

Thanks for sharing MAS.

[Roland_Marckwort]

Thanks all, no luck in this area just yet!

[MAS]

In what way? What doesn’t work?

[Roland_Marckwort]

Cubase artist 12 wont open Nuendo 4 files sadly

[MAS]

We only use Nuendo here, so there were no problems with the old project.
Unfortunately you can open Nuendo projects only with the “Pro” version of Cubase:

Cubase 11 backward compatibility with Nuendo 4

Hi and welcome, You can open Nuendo projects in Cubase Pro only. The matrix of projects compatibility is not maintained and public anymore, but the project format didn’t change since Nuendo has been introduced. So you should be (I haven’t tried) able to open Nuendo 4 projects in Cubase Pro 11. Btw, you can download Cubase 11 Pro Trial and try it by yourself.