Cubase Studio 4 / 9.5 compatibility

Will any of the 9.5 versions open my Studio 4 projects?

Should work. Usually old projects open fine in 9.5 with stuff missing - 32 bit plugins, legacy VSTi that aren’t part of the later Cubase versions anymore etc.

Thanks for the reply. However, “should work” is not highly confidence-building, at least not $300 worth… I see on Steinberg’s site that Artist 8 does open them and I’ll buy that if I have to, otherwise would rather buy the current version. Is there more you or somebody can say about this that’s definitive?

They open in Cubase Artist 9.5 and Cubase Pro 9.5 just fine.

Download the trial to be certain.

I don’t have Studio 4 but know that 9.5 opens projects from SX3 which is even older than Studio 4 just fine (with the caveats already given about 32 bit plugins).

The only issue that I can think of that you may come up against is in numbers of Tracks unless you buy the Pro version. There was someone on here recently who’d found that in upgrading from a very old version he actually ended up with fewer tracks to use(I can’t remember if it was Audio/MIDI/Instrument tracks) so you might want to check how many tracks you’ve used in your Studio files and whether Artist (which is the successor to Studio) has enough if you’re not upgrading to Pro. As long as you still have access to your Studio 4 version there are workarounds for this issue anyway but you might not want to have to use them if a large proportion of your old projects are track heavy.

And the 32 to 64 bit plugins is a big thing! You will need all your used plugins as 64 bit and even then some might seem missing because some developers gave their 64 bit plugs a new ID or settings won’t load. So you do need to keep your studio 4 on standby. One way is to bridge all your 32 bit plugs with jbridge. Then they will open. If this is on the same computer it might be easier just to start new projects in 9.5. Unless of course your work is mainly audio and not vsti’s. Then a missing compressor or other type is not that big an issue.

Thanks for the comments – So, the only plugins I used in Studio 4 are the compressor and reverb plugins that came with it - does this mean that I just load the project in 9.5 and configure in the compressors and reverb that comes with the new version?

Yes and they are better and more versatile to boot.