I’m the biggest sucker of all… bought the update on Sept. 26 because I just totally missed the sale (life stuff) and thought, for some reason, that Cubase 14 would probably not drop until next year. Here we are… missing both the sale and the grace period
What about the menu color fix? Because I would say it’s a fix and not a feature. That’s the only thing I’m really interested in, but asking me to to pay a full update price to get the menus fixed, just because I wasn’t lucky enough with the grace period, is too much.
Could you at least patch the menus in Cubase 13? They are painful to look at.
If you don’t agree with me, then try and switch to High Contrast theme (AKA “dark mode” theme). Win10 hotkey is: Alt+Shift+PrintScreen and then open the menu shown on the screenshot:
Does that look normal or acceptable to you?
Regardless of the grace period thing, offering a considerable discount before releasing a newer version is a way to squeeze money out of naive customers which is an unethical practice by Steinberg. And I am not even accounting for the intentional postponing of features that should already be implemented a few versions ago.
Having said that I’m still hooked to Steinberg products, namely Cubase Pro and Dorico Pro, because they are indeed unmatchable tools.
Indeed - and I’m really excited about the new integration of the Dorico scoring engine into Cubase Pro. I could never really get into the (admittedly deep but complicated) cubase score editor.
I don’t know how this works out but surely for those people it will cost more now which isn’t customer friendly. So maybe a price that makes it around the same total cost had they updated from v12 to 14?
On another note, please don’t start making cubase like other daws just to rake in more money. I loaded a track in CB14 and to my horror the volume dot/control had vanished on events. By accident I found it’s new place, then clicked and a slider popped up then vanished. Then I realized I need to click and hold at a very small area on an event. What a load of hassle that has become, just that one thing is enough to put me off and start me using other daws again. What a horrible intrusive change, everything about it is just wrong, the volume slider popping up, hard to set volume and it being in the way when your using last audio as like a visual reference. Is there an option to change it back?
So whatabout users that rely on such offers so they can afford to buy such software then?
I’d happily use software that was 18 months old and cost me 50% less because of that fact. If you want unethical practise and examples of being squeezed for money then go try a Pro Tools subscription for whatever it is a month.
What people can’t seem to get their heads around here is that Cubase are offering sales on outgoing products, and grace periods for people that have paid full price so close to a new release date.
I can’t see how a company can be called out for that. The only answer is they stop doing it and just charge a monthly like the rest are going, and then hopefully all the people moaning will get what they want… One price for all, lump it or leave it.
It’s for this reason that people like myself are doing our best to make people to see this perspective. I don’t want to be locked into an eco system that’s costing me 20/Month, and I want there to be sales if I find money hard.
But that’s where we’ll end up if we don’t support the model that’s in place currently.
Well said Alberto! It drives me crazy to read all of the ‘entitlement’ ‘me-me-me’ messages here.
There were European laws coming out but last I heard they were held up.
But this was to address this problem from software companies.
But the most you could really hope for would be a full refund at the price you paid. If then you rebrought CB14 you could end up paying more than the upgrade price.
Only way to really get things fixed that aren’t being fixed is to start a petition and get as many cubase users as you can then present the petition.
That would let them know where there is a real issue to fix
They do put out surveys and ask anything extra you need to say, but unless enough sy about hte same thign they won’t address it. Could be too that it’s an external issue so could be someone who has worked out a fix for it.
Yes, Avid are the ultimate money vampires. I’ll give you that.
are you sure? another response tells me after speaking with customer service he was told that’s it’s based on purchase date.
@Ben_at_Steinberg explained it in another thread, it is the date when the Download Access Code is redeemed. That means when you enter the code into the Download Assistant.
This is not activation, that is a different thing.
Answer
I think there is some confusion between Redeeming and Activation which are totally different things.
But Ben makes it absolutely clear.
Nevertheless if you still have doubts you can reach out to support, also I see no harm in going ahead and redeeming it if haven’t already.
It is absolutely fair to trace a line, I missed the free grace for just 3 days, butI bought at 70% discount.
What it doesn’t seem fair is letting the system being exploited by delaying the activation, for whatever reason.
I felt gutted as I purchased/activated C13 in september. Now there’s 14.
Reading all the comments here though, made me realise I don’t feel nearly as passionate about it as some of you! But good on you!
I like updates, but will wait until it goes on sale in a year or so. Since the 90s I’ve spend a solid 4-figure number on Steinberg. I think that’s plenty.
it looks like I activated my code for cubase 13 on the 14th of October, does this mean that I will get version 14? I will contact customer support about it…
I delayed activating C13. You’re saying that means I exploited the system? That’s a very strong accusation!
If I cared about your thinking on this topic I’d be offended, but as it is I’ll just explain why I deferred, in case you might want to reevaluate your conclusions - or not, it’s up to you. I’m trying to do you a favor by pointing out there are circumstances that may cause you to reevaluate your concluding that delay=exploitation, maybe you’ll conclude other points of view besides yours are valid also. Or conversely, maybe you’ll see this as no favor to you at all, and decide since I delayed C13 activation I definitely exploited the system, full stop. Either way - no difference to me!
I bought C13 a long time ago, maybe a year?, because I was so excited about using it. I intentionally deferred activating it because I wanted to wait for a few revisions to take place, to iron out a lot of the bugs.
Then a lot of things changed personally, including changing my musical focus to performing live instead of DAW work. Then lo and behold, here’s C14 being released this week, and I still haven’t activated C13!
So there’s another example of “exploiting the system”!
It seems to be based on when you entered the code into the system, not activated on a system. But your first stop should be to check for grace period via the activation manager.
As there’s confusions between machine activations and the date the DAC was entered, You can actually download the data that Steinberg hold to view what that date was if you go to your account controls:
The downloaded user-profile .json document can be loaded into chrome and you pick the ‘pretty print’ option up the top right to be able to read it nicer:
In the “DownloadAccessCodes” section are all your download access codes, and when they were redeemed (“downloadDate”), the last one will be the latest.
If unsure then the “accesscode” value is the download code you received when purchasing, minus the hypens.
As that’s the main data Steinberg hold in relation to your ID, then I presume it will be the date used for the grace period, as they don’t appear to hold any other relevant data.
Just open the Activation Manager, click on the profile icon in the upper right corner and select “Check for Grace Period”. That should tell you if you are eligible.
I did that and sadly nothing is there, it’s weird because I activated on 14th of october, I think I will contact support and see what they say, I just tried to install cubase 14 but it knows that there is no activation so won’t open it says I need a license.
I am a first time cubase user. I bought Cubase 13 pro as part of Sept discounts and was super excited to use this product (essentially activated right after my purchase). Steinberg now wants me to pay an extra 99 USD to upgrade to Cubase 14 Pro. I feel like I am ripped off! I am super disappointed by this purchase. If I had known earlier a newer version is on coming I would have deferred. Steinberg should give us a free upgrade to Cubase 14 Pro!