I agree, the price is not reflecting the features added.
Prices are very reasonable for what u get compared to competitors
But steinberg needs marketing with some offers and improvement , add the features suggested by members of the forum from years , fix a lot of problems and make a solution for bad customer service support
I think that Cubase already deserve more than 99$ for upgrade, but all of the above should be improved
If the increase in the amount contributes to more services and support, I have no objection and they deserve the support from us
Unfortunately the hundreds who updated and love it are not posting their complaints about it.
Definitely vote with your wallet. Sales is one metric that is concrete.
Are we allowed to have our own opinion or should we all agree with your points?
@almaelectronix Are you asking me?
@steve It was rhetorical
Actually, the annual Support and Update cost for Pro Tools Studio is $199 for existing Perpetual License owners. In my opinion that is way too much for what one gets.
The problem with support plans is that the company rarely delivers the bug fixes you are describing. In fact, in Pro Tools case, you get essentially nothing for your $199/year and are trapped into paying it because if you lapse your are forced to pay a reinstatement fee (which is much higher) to restate the support plan or you are forced into a Annual Subscription Plan that is $249 a year!
I would be careful what you ask for. We don’t want to add the annual cost of “Bug Fix” support plans that end up giving no value and that could become mandatory whether you want to purchase them or not.
I would be much more happy to pay for a dedicated, one time, bug fix upgrade that added no new features but cost the standard $99 upgrade price (just like when a new full number upgrade is offered. 11—>12 for instance).
I echo the thoughts of fellow users.
Steinberg would close if the updates were for free. There is only so much Steinberg can sell and once a version has been sold, there will be no more money coming in the company.
My problem is that every update has serious issues. What I would rather see, is for the company to take its time and thoroughly test a version before it is (sadly) beta tested on its clients.
That is what the clients deserve, imho.
In addition, I suggest you wait for a period of sales, as Steinberg do make deals on upgrades.
Steinberg has said here they don’t test on older systems. So it is no surprise I suppose that so many people are having problems.
Do other sequencers, like Reaper, Pro Tools, and others “beta test on users” and have problems with new releases like Cubase 12 is having?
Where did you get that from? That’s not true and you should get your terms straight first.
- Perpetual license: You buy a not time-limited license to a product and pay it once. This usually includes minor updates, but that is defined by the manufacturer. You can use the licensed product for eternity, provided of course your “environment” allows it (supported OS for particular version and so on).
- Subscription license: You rent the product for a certain time period. This is usually handled with monthly or yearly plans. You get any updates for the products, as long as the subscription is active (meaning you pay the plan). If you cancel the sub and the sub is expired, you are generally no longer ably to use the product. (Some manufactures include a fall-back option, but not too common)
- Life-time license: This is generally defined as a perpetual license, which inludes all upcoming updates for eternity (as longs as the product is supported). This means “pay once” for the license and get the updates forever without any additional payment.
- Update/support plan: This is an optional or mandatory addition to a perpetual license, which covers a certain time period (usually 1 year) and provides access to any updates during that period.
ProTools does not offer life-time licenses. Avid offered perpetual licenses with update plans as well as subscriptions. The perpetual licenses are beeing phased out, so it will be available as a subsctiption license only after a short changeover period.
And I guess Logic updates are payed as well, if you wish to remain current. I’m not entirely sure, what the price structure is, though.
The only DAW with a life-time license I’m aware of right now is indeed FLStudio.
BTW. I find it problematic and a bit too lame to just compare the prices of products by a couple of manufacturers, which are obviously driven by completely different business plans - and then to go ahead and demand to get the same price for another product. Software development is very expensive and not free. No further update payments and no subs won’t pay for any further development of software products. ImageLine decided to go with life-time licenses for FLStudio, but they do sell alot of instruments and effects in addition to that. Apple itself primarily is a hardware company. They mainly provide the software to encourage folks to buy their hardware, which is bought at a premium.
Steinbergs products are IMHO reasonably and competitevly priced as standalone-retail software products. Look at Nuendo, a full-blown media creation DAW system for music, post, game and so on - not many directly competing products with that versatility and none in that price range.
Sorry for the lengthy post … and Cheers.
Well, I have a brand new system and a very powerful computer, and still experience problems, some of them are serious.
I couldn’t say, I have no idea what other companies do, as I am only using Cubase.
Yes, Pro Tools have had issues too and so does Ableton. They all do just at different times.
And they all test and they all do beta user testing including Cubase. Ableton is the only one I know that invites anyone to join. The others only invite a closed group of users so it’s not open to all but it exists.
You have to remember that this forum is for ppl with issues only. So it looks like everyone has issues with C12 but it’s not the case. Lots of have C12 running perfectly fine. This is the internet as well, there will always be some studio owner that says everybody he knows is having the same issues, everyone on the internet knows 10 ppl with the same complaint as them, it’s not evidence, it’s anecdotal.
Beta testing will never catch all corner cases, it just doesn’t work like that. Just because there are issues does not mean there is no beta testing on users.
Ppl with issues with software generally think everyone must have the same issue, in practice it’s not the case.
Cubase is a very very reasonable price for their updates so I think the status quo is just fund for me. It would be nice to see some updates for Cubase 11 during the next year but usually the last version is fairly good by the time the new one comes out anyway.
I disagree.
What is added is simply always worth the update price.
Sorry. No support for this crazy notion.
I seriously demand free food. It is all just updates for the first time I ate something.
I also demand a free new TV set and a free new Computer once I have bought one. It is all just updates. -
Sometimes I wonder whether mankind is doomed.
Glenn uses Reaper now.
Every program has issues, unfortunately…
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I’ve read Nuendo upgrades are less problematic?
If true, would it be reasonable to hope/expect Cubase upgrades to one day be similar?
Or are there some structural Cubase issues that would make that aspirational in a hypothetical sort of way only?
I’m good paying for upgrades that work. As has been said, coders have to eat also!
Cubase team have been releasing updates for 30 years, they have not all been so problematic. Also, for my part, C12 has worked perfectly since it was first released.
Sometimes things do not work perfectly, thats the way it goes, it’s not unique to Cubase.
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Nuendo is best thought of as Cubase Pro with extras. The additional stability on release is done by delaying - the first public version of Nuendo 12 was 12.0.20. It is not problem-free - it is rather unstable on my system, with crashes in the RME ASIO driver, freezes on exit and more. I look forward to the next patch release; at least I have Nuendo 11 to get tasks done.
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Many features are tested in Cubase before Nuendo is released, so there’s less likely to be bugs. But as shown with N12, it’s not always the case.
If you buy Cubase 6 months after release, it’s effectively doing the same thing. Historically cheaper too! 
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I don’t want to deter people from buying the latest version, but I never buy a new version…too many bugs needing fixing…