So the license just says “Cubase Pro 11”?
Can you please try to run the maintenance in the eLCC?
And when you go to https://o.steinberg.net/en/mysteinberg/my_products.html, what does the activation date say?
maybe I’m just not eligible as it turns out. it says “Product activated on 26/09/2021”
I thought because of this sentence “This also applies to Cubase 11 licenses resulting from an update or upgrade.” that if I updated Cubase after November 9 - then I’m eligible. it said I installed cubase at the 10th of November. so weird… maybe I activated it earlier? I could swear I updated it after the said date.
…and the vital piece of information that would have me saved two days of trial-and-error and hunting down?
The Steinberg Activation Manager is a new stand-alone program that Windows users will find by expanding the ‘recently added’ section, or in the ‘Steinberg Activation Manager’ of the Windows Start Menu. (i.e. it’s not on your DeskTop or in the Cubase v12 StartMenu sub-folder)
Also, I’ve found the ‘Products\Show Steinberg Licensing-based products’ link at
https:// account . steinberg . net / products
It unhelpfully shows me a very long string of hex characters for each activated installation of Cubase v12, but doesn’t display any details of the device name, operating system, install/activate date/time, IP address or the ID of the activator.
Can anybody tell me where can I look to see where my activations are (or have been) currently deployed please?
I don’t get why a secondary issiue like timming detarmains whether one deserves to get a free upgrade or not. in the end, everyone paid the same ammount. why is it that if the date I upgraded at is a little earlier, I don’t deserve the free upgrade? makes no sense… I paid a full price for Cubase 10.5, and then for an upgrade to 11. don’t think I’mma be paying for the latest version. I’m frustrated with Cubase as it is.
If there were no grace period at all, a person who activated one day before a new release would be very disappointed. So they set up a way to assuage the feelings of those folks.
They have to set some date. Do you really think simply giving all owners of a certain version a free update? If so, where to draw the line? Cubase 11? 10, 9, 8, 7, 6… blast off 
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it makes sense now lol. thanks for the explanation.
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This will improve in the near future with human-readable hardware identifiers.
I wonder if someone from steinberg can help.
I have updated my usb elicenser key to 11 just before the grace period end. I have generated an email from steinberg with the free update for 12. ( 12 does not support mojave which I use) I have given the DAC for 12 to another user. He has redeemed the DAC and received the activation code in his steinberg account. The licence for 12 is pending in his mysteinberg account. He cannot seem to get the steinberg activation program to activate Cubase 12.
Is it just because the servers and elicenser stuff is overworked or do I need to give him the hardware elicenser key with 11 on to do some sort of handshake?
can somebody tell me whether the price is going to stay at 99 euros for an upgrade untill the next Cubase version, or is it gonna go up at some point?
You are not supposed to do this! The eLicenser licence and Steinberg Licensing licence are supposed to stay together, as the terms of the upgrade (paid or grace period) are that the eLicenser licence becomes not for resale and should be in the possession of the user who has the Steinberg Licensing licence.
The Steinberg Licensing licence will remain “verification pending” for 30 days, during which time it can be used. After that, it will expire unless you complete the eLicenser transaction to mark your eLicenser licence as “not upgradeable”, which means you cannot upgrade it in the future when you move to hardware capable of running a newer operating system.
I suggest you contact Steinberg Support to transfer the Steinberg Licensing licence to an account under your control and get help to complete the eLicenser transaction. This will leave you with a working Cubase 11 licence and a Steinberg Licensing licence for Cubase 12 that you can use when you are using newer hardware.
Based on previous experience, the cost of the upgrade will not go up unless there is a general price increase across the Steinberg range. More likely, any price increase will wait until the release of the next version of Cubase.
There may well be a sale on the upgrade later in the year if you do not want to upgrade now.
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awesome! I will wait for that and will probably purchase it at the time of the sale. thank you.
Thanks David , I already sorted it out, all is now working as designed !
Hi everyone,
I’m beyond frustrated with my Cubase 12 upgrade activation. I’ve made it as far as having a “pending” license, but can’t seem to activate it.
- Open Steinberg Download Assistant.
- Enter Download Access Code
- Click “Upgrade”.
- An error window pops up, saying “The eLicenser Control Center cannot be launched. Please download the latest version of the eLicenser Control Center and try again.”
- Install latest eLicenser Control Center and try again. Same result.
- Deinstall Steinberg Download Assistant, Steinberg Activation Manager, and eLicenser Control Center. Reboot. Download and install new copies of everything. Reboot. Launch everything as administrator.
- Same result. This has been going on for weeks, and now my grace period is expiring.
- I have also tried directly launching the eLicenser Control Center from the Windows Start menu, but that doesn’t work either.
Any suggestions? I’m at my wits end here!
Is there a particular error message you see when launching eLicenser Control Center? You shouldn’t need to run it as Administrator, in fact, the advice I’ve heard is that it can cause issues if it’s running as Administrator.
After launching the eLicenser Control Center directly, I see my Cubase Pro 11 license listed. My USB hardware eLicenser is connected and listed.
I choose “Enter Activation Code” and paste in my Cubase Pro 12 upgrade activation code. My Cubase Pro 11 license then appears in the field below the activation code. I press Continue.
It then takes me to a “Select License To Upgrade” window. It lists all of my licenses greyed out, and there is a message at the bottom of the window which says “Currently, there is no license available which can be upgraded by your upgrade license. Please connect an USB-eLicenser, which holds an appropriate upgradable license, to your computer.”
I have exactly the same issue as @deastman just with Cubase Elements 11 (on Windows). Have spent far too much time on this crap already. I have bought upgrade license from Elements 11 to 12.
Basically my Elements 11 license shows up fine in eLC, but when the Download Acecss Code is entered in Download Assistant or and then Upgrade process followed as in the docs, the eLC cannot find the license to upgrade, with the message in the footer of the app: “Currently, there is no license available which can be upgraded by your upgrade license”). I have also entered the Activation code (displayed by Download assistant above the Upgrade button, before it launches eLC) manually in eLC (by clicking on Enter Activation Code) and the result is the same.
I must admit, your licensing process and eLC in particular are the worst pieces of garbage I have seen in a long time in software, and my first computer was C64.
@Ben_at_Steinberg So how to solve this?
I might have figured out the issue, for others. So my software’s icon (and Windows application name) is called “Cubase LE AI Elements 11” so I though I actually have LE AI software, which does not seem to be the case, but instead I have “Cubase Elements 11”. The purchase process does not have any idea about which licenses I have, so it has offered me the “Cubase Elements 12 Upgrade from Cubase AI / LE 11 and older” which sounded about right to me, given the icon name. When that license is purchased, it does not work since it is looking for “Cubase Elements 11” and that seems to be the root cause of the problem.
Let me just re-emphasize how absolutely crappy the entire licensing workflow for Cubase is. Being a first time user of your software, I didn’t expect I need to be a PhD in your licensing just to get the thing running.
Hopefully part of the server upgrade is to make this a whole lot better.