The difference between a professional tool and other gear is dependability and stability.
Professional tools work in demanding, production level environments or they are quickly discarded for those that do.
They’re are many of us who work in full time production environments that would gladly have a version of Cubase/Nuendo that is rock solid under deadline conditions, verses one that tries to please both the casual user and the demanding professional.
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In my experience I find that in a “professional” capacity, I only use the tools I need - or discovered through necessity. Beyond that I don’t care a great deal for what else works or doesn’t, I never feel that i’m afforded time to just explore software, as it feels wasted and costly and moreso lost time from my family/loved ones.
Enthusasists tend to learn the software from a wider perspective, have time to burn, and thus far more likely to push the development of software and features that I may only come to use several years down the line… If at all!
So from my perspective, I don’t think you can form such a divide. For me it’s all part of the same pot… Those able to spend the time to explore and bug test are really important to the eco system as a whole. And whether they have an income in audio or not, there’s no reason they can’t be treated with respect and as professionals due to the knowledge, passion and hours that they give back.
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No one suggesting that professionals should be granted greater respect than hobbyist users. My point is that professionals who make a living with their DAW software may be willing to pay for more reliability and performance as an upgrade.
I fully agree.
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Well, I cannot talk for everybody, but I and many others would not pay 2,5 times the price cubase costs now.
I am a professional (I earn my money with recording/mixing/mastering), and I would gladly pay a normal update fee for just bug fixes, but a general rise of 2,5x the price it costs now, would throw Cubase completely out of the competition. They’ll lose more money doing that, because more users would jump ship, which means, there will be even fewer fixes and features.
And we already have a lighter “Elements” version for “hobbyists” a “Pro” version for professionals, so what you are suggesting is already the case. So what they need to do, is to get on their feet and fix those problems, as we already paid for a working DAW at the last big update. Thats the best what they could do, to keep their existing user base and make it grow.
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Meanwhile, Windows 12 hits. And a new MacOS. With bugs. And undocumented new ‘features’. And deprecated stuff. New hardware is released. Copy protection is cracked.
The whole IT thing marches on relentlessly…
100% stable Cubase is a pipe dream.
Working well enough to get work done, and/or have a good time making music, that’s a reasonable target.
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Sorry, that’s bullshit
No one needs an overpeiced “true pro” version of software for few people. We already have ProTools, no one needs a second one
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C11 was stable enough, so why we need to pay more for fixing things that Steinberg broken in C12? They CAN do it, and they SHOULD do it without any additional fees
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The very same users that complain about “buggy” software and “poor performance” are always the first to state that they want a software vendor to “fix” their software but are not willing to provide the resources for them to do so.
As I have said earlier, Steinberg is far from the only developer who’s software experiences some or all of these issues. Just about every developer of audio software (DAWs, plugins and various other software) are also experiencing these issues…and all for the same reasons.
Therefore, if you are fine with your software the way it is, great, don’t complain. If you want a greater level of reliability, less work-arounds required, more performance tweaking, quick support for the most recent new processor platforms and operating systems, etc., then be prepared to provide the funding needed to make that happen.
For us, Cubase Pro 12 is working well and we are experiencing few issues. However, we are still using iMacs with Intel processors.
C11 was not so stable for me. 12 is much better, from day 1. Still, Cubase will never be 100% stable on an affordable general-purpose desktop computer with your more or less random choice of x hardware and y software.
I provide the resources payng for every single update
Just imagine how “many” people are happy to pay extra money just for “stability” that should be included by default in every product. A few?
PA now sells their $300 plugins for $29 and earn much more income than ever before, the era of expensive music software is gone
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If you don’t mind me asking, how many paying clients for audio work do you deal with per week?
“You get what you pay for”…great old saying that happens to be true.
As I said, if you are happy with the software you have and it’s stability, performance and compatibility with new standards and hardware, just as it is, then you have nothing to complain about…and no reason to be willing to pay for more finely-tuned software.
I’m sure every developer is doing all they can to balance development of “new features” which will allow them to release a new version and collect additional operating income…and the effort needed to fix bugs, insure compatibility and increase performance of their software for which they can not directly charge a fee currently…since users are only willing to pay for new features.
However, if bug fixes, compatibility and performance increases are more important than new features…in that case these users may be willing to pay to have developers complete this work over and above what the developer normally undertakes.
This has gone on long enough. I have no more to say on this subject…at this time. lol
We have two studios that are in-use producing music, and/or recording voice-overs, full-time five-days a week on average. During peak periods we have operated seven days a week.
Our work is very specialized…we produce proprietary training courses for large consulting engineering firms. My partners and I are all retired Professional Engineers and educators as well as musicians so this type of educational media production business was a great fit for us.
Our courses are used for basic, on-going staff training and for providing the specialized continuing education required by professional engineers when renewing their state (or regional) Professional Engineering licenses.
We produce the training videos completely in-house and supply them to our clients for hosting on their servers. We work on very tight schedules and therefore, we value tools that are reliable.
On a limited basis, we do accept work from other educational production studios for final production and mastering when their facilities are overloaded. In those cases we receive audio recorded in various DAWs (Logic Pro, Cubase Pro, Studio One, Pro Tools and recently, LUNA) and video from various video production software (Final Cut Pro, Premiere, and DaVinci Resolve).
It’s unbeleivable that you’ve gone 50 years as civil engineer, retired, and now at a full-time music production and video promotion studio.
Most people slow down! 
Please link your site, i’m on a large contract at the moment and could definetly use your services - It’s not so easy to find people with engineering backgrounds AND Cubase as part of their primary system.
Am I the only one with an 602mo update available for cubase Artist 12.0.40 again? Same thing on my laptop , so 2 PCs concerned, and version 12.0.40 was already installed, any infos?
I am a partner in the company, I no longer work. One of my son-in-laws runs the show and two of my daughters work as techs along with four writers and support staff. I still occasionally write music, perform a little and do a few voice overs…but that is it.
We do not solicit new business…the projects we contract for are all proprietary and the products are owned by the firms who commission the work. Specialized Engineering training is associated with new methods of designing solutions to complex engineering problems and the firms guard them as a business property…they do not share their development work with others.
We have two international firms that we do 85% of our business with (and have for over 10 years since we started the company). We have three other educational media houses we do “overflow work for” occasionally which amounts to 15% of our total annual work. We do mot market our services; the firms we work for are exclusive clients by agreement. Therefore, although I appreciate your offer to consider sending us work, we are not in a position to take any additional work at this time.
While I can’t talk in too much detail about the actual process, we are currently producing a ten-part video training series that provides instruction on how the design of large diameter directionally drilled polyethylene pipe water and wastewater conveyance pipelines are designed, constructed and tested. It is very interesting and the future of underground pipeline construction now that open-cut construction of pipelines has become prohibitively expensive due to environment and logistical concerns. I realize that this kind of project is not very interesting to most audio engineers who would prefer to be making hit music recordings, but this type of work is very lucrative…and once you have completed your first few projects for important clients, you are in the “club” and you no longer need to market services…as long as you deliver quality projects on time. Therefore, overhead costs are reduced.
If I can be of any assistance to you in the way of advice or suggestions, without violating any agreements we have with clients, I would be very happy to help. Send me a PM here and we can talk. Have a great day.
Of course if you as a company are making 100.000+ a year you could care less if a software costs you 100 or 1000 a year.
But the vast majority of professionals nowadays using DAWs isnt “big” companies with multiple studio rooms, but producers, mixing engineers, mastering engineers, who mostly work alone. These big studio facilities with multiple people working there, just doesn’t exist anymore with a couple of exceptions obviously (as yours e.g.)
Actually, we are a tiny studio with only a handful of staff members. Most commercial studios we are familiar with are larger than we are.
We don’t spend a penny more than we have to; if a tool will allow us to complete projects in less time or at higher quality such that we are able to justify the cost we will buy it (providing we have the funds available at the time).
To end the hijack of this thread that I unfortunately and unwittingly started, my point was a simple one, I would prefer more bug fixes, compatibility effort and optimization work in the next paid Cubase upgrade rather than new features. I have proposed the same thing to every developer we do business with…because just about every piece of Audio software we have would benefit from that work.
Thanks for at least considering my points…I respect all your comments and wish you all happy music making and a great week!
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That’s my experience too, and in fact I’d say that 70-80% studios I know are now part time and doing other work to supplement an income. I know two guys who do building work 3 days a week and studio time inbetween - but even then they’re twiddling their thumbs.
The only successful ones are working under NDA for post production work for the streaming/digital companies.
It’s great to hear of someone being so full of work they’re having to run 7 days a week at times though, it’s just a shame it isn’t spread as it was…
But then, I guess the advancement of affordable DAW’s is part of the issue here… Garageband really hooked a lot of bands in to the possibility of recording and mixing at home… Here in UK, Most bands just want to roll into the studio, use the analog gear, ribbon mics and drum takes. And play with it themselves at home. And if you refuse you do youself out of business. 