I’m still continuing what seems a lifetime of endeavours trying to open old Cubase - arrangement formats .ALL and .ARR . I’ve managed to retrieve my old MacBook Pro (it still works remarkably) which is running OS X 10.4 and I still have my Steinberg dongle. I’m pretty sure from what I’ve read Cubase 3 will still open old SX formats. I thought my troubles were over when I inserted my dongle, alas not, after several attempts to open Cubase SX 3 I keep getting the follow Syncrosoft License Control - Error message. Screen shot attached to hopefully help.
I regularly open Cubase 3 on my windows 11 systems around here. You left out a couple of critical pieces of info.
Way before opening Cubase 3, pop the dongle in and open ONLY the latest (ie final made) dongle driver that you got from the sb downloads area…click to open the dongle (only) and then report back what licenses are shown on the dongle itself.
Thanks so much for your help, it is much appreciated, apologises I’m a bit of a luddite.
I’m not sure what you mean by "sb downloads area…click to open the dongle”?
I’ve opened the eLicenser C C on my MacBook Air, check out the attached screenshot and this what’s on the dongle.
And the second screenshot from my ancient MacBook, which is one I’m try to get into SX 3.
Just to keep things relative…the sb download area elicenser dongle driver (the final release) ends 1328. Your dongle driver shows 1326. Perhaps remove your dongle, uninstall the driver, and grab the final driver to install, testing of course that your dongle comes up with the newest driver.
Is your Cubase 3 from an installer that you recently grabbed and installed from the sb downloads area? If not, maybe…after the dongle driver…grab the last cb3 (I forget which one I always grab from the server or ftp)…and install it…unless that’s already what you have.
I won’t be much help on a Mac if gremlins. I do all my experimentation on pc machines that range from current intel all the way back to pentium 1…with the machines loaded with win98se…to xp..to 7…to win11 pro. Cubase 3 and the dongle work stellarly on all those combinations.
One thing I do regularly encounter is…no matter where I start dongle-driver wise…once I do a clean install of, say Cubase 3…it has an already-burned-in-OLD-elicenser driver (of course).
I generally install, say, Cubase 3…don’t even bother starting it up yet…exit…install the FINAL ecc driver, (test the dongle with it), THEN start up Cubase 3 or sx or whatever, let THOSE two communicate…which sometimes errors on first install…exit cb3 one more time…restart cb3…and now final dongle driver and final Cubase 3 or sx version…are communicating.
I usually have a similar couple-of-daw restarts necessary to establish connection ,(one time) to whatever audio interface I’m using.
If Steinberg still have SX 3 available to download and as I’m still using the original installation from years ago I’ll download and reinstall SX 3.
My dongle has always been stable until today, I was obviously using right until Steinberg withdrew the compulsory need for it.
I took DWB advice and downloaded the (Mac) SX 3 from the link you kindly sent me, unfortunately it needs OSX 10.5 to work, I’m sadly running OSX 10.4 and I’m told I can’t upgrade to 10.5 ouch !!!
What’s perplexing me is that when my trusty old MacBook was my main workhorse (admittedly about 15 years ago) everything worked perfectly - dongle, Cubase etc. I haven’t changed anything since then, all my upgrades etc. have been on my newer shiny Mac desktops and laptops.
I don’t think Steinberg offer customer support on older versions of SX, frustrating as I’ve been a loyal devotee since Steinberg Pro-16 in 1984 and I’m on Cubase 15 in 2026. Thinking of the next step to take to open my ye olde .ARR files.
While you’re correct that sb official support doesn’t cover discontinued areas such as older elicenser-driven cubendos, there are options.
Let’s say you are bound & determined to stay on sx with dongle for working on your old files. Pretty much ANY Windows 11 computer (or older) will let you do that. Buy a cheap pc for that purpose. Yes, you want to use Mac but you already see that’s not working on the old or your new Apple machines.
Another possibility is convert your old .arr and/or .all files to modern cpr (on someone else’) win computer..for loading into current version Cubendos on your Mac.
There MUST be someone you know somewhere who has a current Windows 11 computer (or older).
Install Sx on their computer with your dongle popped in. Run sx, load one of your old .arr or .all files, immediately resave as .cpr, copy to an external nvme (or whatever) drive and voila …done. Uninstall sx from their computer and you’re on your way back home where you CAN load the cpr files into your current Cubendo.
That said, the “well sx used to work on my old mac computer” is yes, a frustrating encounter. You have to weigh where you want to spend your effort in ultimately quickly getting back to work on the old songs.
Thanks DJPat - I’m on a Mac platform so the PC route isn’t for me but I do see Virtual Box is available for Mac I’ll check it out, thanks for the heads up.
Thanks MrSoundman for your help, nice one, I’m going to checkout your advised download links with fingers crossed .
Does anyone know if Steinberg have created a simple app. that takes an .all or .arr file and converts into a .cpr file.? It is honestly a very frustrating and time consuming exercise trying to open an old .arr file etc.
I don’t see Sb doing that. Why? .arr and .all are discontinued formats from discontinued daws that used discontinued dongles.
Can’t see sb spending one iota of 24-hrs-in-the-day-to-code-existing-versions…for that
There are plenty of us around who can make the conversions with existing means. Those without dongles…a critical component in any case…can even find people to make their one time conversions if the old stuff is that important to them.
Haha, oh man, if they had the time for that, I’d ask for a better wish …like untangling the dongle from Cubase 6.5 or 9…that right there is likely 30,000 lines of code someone would have to feed Claude
Can´t AI´s analyze both .arr/.all and converted .cpr files to find formula for converter? My AI knowledge is mostly what spectralayers does, audio. Never really interested, since I don´t code
Not really, no, maybe if an AI was specifically trained to do so, but I guess it would need a lot of .arr files and their already converted .cpr counterparts for that. LLMs can code because they have been trained on terabytes of existing code and even then, they still can make mistakes. A conversion from one format to another has to be perfect though, because else the file won’t load or the program might crash.
With open file formats, as @MrSoundman suggested, it would be much easier, and AI could help there, too. Actually, it would probably enough to have the documentation for the .arr/.all files, and then it could be converted to DAWproject.
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