Hello
Now I realise that as soon as I post this there’s going to be hoots of laughter, but…
I run MacOs High Sierra, which allows me to run Cubase 6 alongside Dorico. . Apparently it’s not possible to run Cubase 6 on High Sierra (but I didn’t know that when I got it working!) When I upgraded to Dorico 3.5.10 from 3.1 (and today, when I upgraded to 3.5.12 from 3.5.10) I got an e-licenser update that stopped Cubase working. I’ve put the old elicenser software back and now I can run both programs at the same time.
I suppose my question is “what has changed, and will Dorico eventually stop working with older elicenser software”… Or is it not that simple to answer?
Your problem is trying to juggle running software that’s very old – Cubase 6 is, what, a decade old? – and software that’s bang up-to-date.
We know that Steinberg is looking into a replacement for the whole dongle/elicenser thing (which itself is a bit long in the tooth), but whether that happens for the next version of Dorico is unknown.
More likely, is that the next version of Dorico itself will rule out High Sierra.
Your options for the future are:
Run High Sierra in a virtual machine (which may not be optimal for audio latency, and assumes your hardware itself is able to cope);
Boot to separate OS volumes when you want to use Cubase and when you want to use Dorico;
See if you can get an upgrade deal for your copy of Cubase.
You can of course continue to run the software you have now, without any updates, for as long as the hardware holds up.
Quite so. The problem I have is “legacy material”. I’m also running old photo-editing, old video-editing and old web-software, much of which cannot be upgraded cheaply. I do own Parallels, but some of the legacy software uses MacOs graphics support which Parallels (and other virtual machines) cannot support, so it’s a bit of a halfway house solution. But yes, I have High Sierra sitting in a virtual machine in case my computer explodes! I also have a dual boot Mac. I think I’ve covered most bases, but it feels like I’m sitting on a thin branch and sawing furiously!
As regards audio latency in a virtual machine, well, not a problem - actually I need to run Cubase on my legacy (score) files to generate MusicXML so I can import to Dorico. And because I’m trying to run a business and create new material there’s not really time to convert everything that I might (or might not) need.
I realise that I’ve painted myself into a corner, but actually my Cubase is 7.5 years old, and that’s not as long as I’d hope a car or a microwave oven to last
I did caution people by saying people would laugh when they read my post, and I do thank you for a considered reply. I don’t think my problem is specific to Dorico - it applies to anyone who uses a computer to generate material that they want to preserve and re-visit.
Unless there’s a simple explanation as to what changed in the elicenser to make it break with Cubase and not Dorico, I will carry on till there’s no paint and no corner left!
Computing is a constant process of migrating data, and that data should always be transferrable. Being locked into file formats that require legacy software runnng on legacy hardware is not a great place to be. If , as you suggest, your computer explodes tomorrow – what’s your long-term plan? You can’t run High Sierra in Parallels on an M1 Mac.
I’d say 6 years is pushing it for the lifespan of any single version of software. Surely there are loads of cheap or free alternatives for the software you use? Affinity Photo, Pixelmator or GIMP; Da Vinci Resolve – even iMovie.
If you’ve got data in proprietary formats that can’t be read by modern software, you need to see if you can export it to some intermediary format.
Thanks benwiggy, and I don’t want to fill this thread looking like a Luddite. I’ve been with Apple and Steinberg for so many years that I know there’s a way forward when push comes to shove. My question started off by trying to determine with the elicenser software broke something that I can mend myself (a previous update moved all the files from one folder to another and an alias was all that was needed for the old Cubase to see the new license data). But I do thank you for the time. It’s human nature to want not to buy new hardware, new peripherals and embark on a new learning curve, but when the cattle-prod of necessity pokes at the sensitive bits of one’s day-job, it can always be done
Thanks for your time - collective wisdom is always a good thing!
Don’t worry: there’s no reason to think that Dorico will stop running if it’s running now. Future versions of Dorico (we very much hope beginning with the next one) will use a new license management system in any case, which will decouple it from the eLicenser once and for all, at least for versions of Dorico from that point onwards.
