I’m referring more to visual issues that make Cubase hard to work in, like this:
For 4 months we had to endure MIDI events being drawn incorrectly on the screen:
Plus constant issues with plugin scaling:
Steinberg control the VST spec yet still can’t get their DAW or third party developers to scale correctly, perhaps made worse for me as it occurs on commonly used plugins, which is a real bummer.
We’ll see once the subscription model comes into effect, I guess. I think we’re very much in the ‘winging it’ stage right now, and it totally depends on what features and plugins your using as to how affected you are with this fingers in ears “We’ll get through this” approach.
I’m sure in a few years time the benefits will be there, i’m just not enjoying this transition period at all. New MIDI Remote, new licensing, new CPU architectures to support, killing off VST2… It’s a lot to take on while also wanting to bring new users onboard too. Too many of us are falling down the gaps.
Unless Absolute 6/HALion 7 shows significant improvements in regards to interface scaling i’ll probably just sell my licenses. For me, getting it on the new licensing and making it useable across different screen setups is just the bare minimum.
The worst part of all of this Halion 7 waiting is for us folks on M1 Mac. It crashes Logic AND Cubase 12. It’s the single worst experience I have ever had with software. It’s not acceptable.
What’s not expectable is anyone updating their comp or OS knowing that Halion 6 is not M1 compatible and expecting Steinberg to take the blame for yet another Mac issue .
Now the sales are over lets hope H7 is just around the corner
Then you only have yourself to blame for missing the sales .
I have a feeling H7’s coming very soon , even thou it’s a part of the Absolute bundle they offer a discount for any one that owns certain instruments in the bundle, so there’s no reason why H7 won’t be released before the new Absolute bundle
Are any of you guys on the M1 Mac Platform? When I had my intel Mac, things were pretty much stable. I would have loved some updates…but it was stable. I really don’t want to switch to PC but yikes…this hurts!
With T-RackS you can literally just delete all of the VST2 plug-ins (or, not install them to begin with) and it doesn’t really take up that much space. It’s a Mix/Mastering bundle like Ozone. If you aren’t going to install it all, it makes little sense to even buy it. You can buy comparable (or better) emulations from other companies (Softube, PA, etc.) if you just need a couple of discrete plug-ins.
Arturia V and FX Collection is 30GB of Data File installation NOT counting the actual VST/VST3/AU/AAX plug-in files or standalone applications. Probably closer to 35+GB when you add all of that in.
Most people buying an Arturia bundle are doing it to install most if not all of it. With these bundled products, and the way the discount promotions roll around, it is economically wasteful to buy a single (or a few) discrete plug-ins.
Same issue as with Waves, Native Instruments, iZotope, and other products.
I am not sure why this thread seems to have taken the turn it has towards the end, lol. Wow, really…
M1 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air 13" hit the market in November 2020.
It is almost February 2023.
If we were existing in June 2021, I could see this making sense. However, considering Steinberg has left HALion 6 on the market - for sale, using impending upgrade/update as a carrot - for 2+ years after the release of Apple Silicon without an update for Apple Silicon (and with barely - if any - other updates at all), I have very little sympathy for this argument.
It no longer makes sense. Sorry, but blaming Apple simply is not going to work.
This is not a Mac issue. This is a Steinberg issue.
Again. M1 devices released 26 months ago. TWENTY-SIX MONTHS. That’s an incredible amount of time for users to “wait patiently” and keep their mouths shut.
That’s how long they’ve had to either:
Update HALion 6 so that current users didn’t have to rely on Rosetta 2 to use it in their DAWs, or
Release an upgrade that is Apple Silicon Native
And it isn’t just about Apple Silicon. As long as users are stuck on HALion 6/Absolute 5, they are also stuck on the dongle. Plus, most of the expansion content is stuck on the dongle. A dongle that, increasingly, requires its own dongle as more and more mobile machines move to USB-C ports only.
So , it’s up to Steinberg ,why does everyone expect every company to jump to orders of crapple as soon as they decide what you can run or not .
Your running a studio ? So you main priority is keeping your studio earning ,which in todays era of tech should mean holding back a couple of versions of PROVEN technology and not jump on the latest and greatest and come to the software companies crying that it’s their fault , it isn’t .
Loads of venders are still JUST making up dates for compatibility with Crapple still to this day .
DONGLE ,So you have to carry on using the dongle for a little longer ? Same here ,that’s the new licencing swap over ,nothing to do with Silcon stuff .
Planned obsolescence, horrible legacy support, and several years of going ‘backwards’ before we begin to see the ‘benifits’ of the newer tech. Just when developers are finally getting caught up…they’ll pull the same stunt all over again. I suppose this is all fine if you want to be on the cutting edge, always alpha and beta testing new tech, and have little interest in preserving/archiving project states.
Still, they released hardware that breaks with 98% of the existing software in the wild. FAR more things are ‘broken’ than have been ‘improved’. Features lost. Entire suites of software no longer working as well as it did before (or at all). They slapped a ‘patch’ on it via Rosetta, with promises to ‘discontinue’ that legacy support at some point.
It’s a prick move to be honest. They should have added support for the intel instruction sets to the new ‘silicon’. If not for every class of machine they sell, it should at least be an option for some enterprise class machines (and at competitive prices). In the least they should commit to keeping Rosetta in the game with top priority SUPPORT for ‘at least’ 15 to 20 years.
I’ve been burned by Apple more than once when it comes to legacy support. First when they dumped PPC and barely committed, for way too short of a period, to emulation for Intel chips; then again, when they hosed those of us who invested in QT technology on the premises that it, the Apple Store, and so forth would be MULTIPLATFORM.
Yeah, the QT hosing hurt Cubendo too! It was a few releases before Video features got back to being ‘usable’, let alone ‘solid’ and ‘feature rich’. Never mind the disaster it was to many of us who invested in QT servers and distribution services.
It’s a terrible platform to do any kind of archival work. Projects done with legacy hardware are DEAD unless you can find a working antique machine somehow and keep it running long enough to spend way to much time trying to ‘convert’ things to something more modern.
While Windows world isn’t perfect either, and there no shortage of bone headed mistakes, bad investments, etc…more often than not I can find MODERN HARDWARE that will run all the OSes and Code going all the way back to 16bit variations of MSDOS (Heck, even Windows 11 can still run most of it…faster than ever before). Can still get interfaces and drivers working for really old instruments and kit. Can ‘hotswap’ it all with a simple drive-sled change and a few BIOS tweaks. In some cases we can even emulate entirely different machines of old (Atari, Commadore, Scads of posix based flavors of Unix, VMS, IBM OS/2-Pink, GEM, even some of the older Mac OSes/Software run better on a Jackintosh than the real machines of old, etc, etc, etc.)
Got a Windows/Cubase project from way back on version 7? No problem if you ran a sys-prep and yanked the whole system drive with the data drive(s). Chances are high you can simply plug the drive into NEW hardware, plug in the mix of old and new instruments/interfaces, plug in your old dongles, and be back up and running within a day or so. Now THAT is ‘legacy support’.
These days there is a rather large ‘gap’ of software versions we can’t even download anymore, and never came on a disk or thumbdrive! You’re forever locked to a ‘third party’, requiring an open ‘internet connection’ to even launch the stuff. It’ll be interesting to see how people figure out how to keep true project archives. I don’t think anyone’s really thought this out yet. Perhaps some kind of virtual machine layout would work…but at this time, it doesn’t exist. Companies with ‘strict online activation’ schemes will always have a ransom portal for you to get at your work. Assuming they even try to maintain legacy support into the future…
Someone else’s money? Sure…I’ll take a Mac! They’re interesting and nice with the ‘right software’. Sill, you’d better come up with a pretty robust ‘conversion/archival/backup’ scheme…because in 10 years you’ll never get older projects to open again unless you’ve somehow managed to ‘preserve a perfect duplicate of the machine, all the hardware, and more’.
It’s amazing that so many commercial studios have pushed out so much content across the decades, using such a “terrible platform”, isn’t it?
Perhaps you need consider how many prefer to buy a product, than be a product? You may not value Personal privacy/security, but for many it’s top of the list when considering which eco system to throw their work and private life into.
Furthermore, as individuals we should be responsible for archiving and securing our data no matter what software or o/s is being used. For audio, that means bouncing a project out to universally accepted files like .wav.
Anyone thinking they can sit obsolete in windows world and not have a suitable process is in for a very rude awakening. You protect your content and data, whatever, so that’s piss poor advice to be giving out just to support some weird anti-apple rant.
To get this back onto HALion/Absolute. Steinberg decided opted to obsolete their own tech, Shutting down VST2, eLicenser and Generic Remote all within the same period. Seems they’ve bitten off more than they can chew is the truth.
Why it’s all come at once, I don’t know… One can only presume that they’ve sat static for too long and it’s caught up with them. Definitely in the ‘winging it’ stage though… Hopefully works out all right in the end, gotta break a few eggs etc.
I think you misunderstand what I mean by total data backup and project access. I don’t want ‘just the rendered takes’. I want the ENTIRE PROJECT STATE. The OS, the DAW, the plugins, the last driverstore stash, etc. ALL OF IT.
Of course it gets bounced out to audio tracks, and of course all the data files get backed up, as often that’s all you’ll ever want or need; but, that’s not the same as revisiting a project in the exact state you left it at a later time. Same versions of everything still in place exactly as you left it before pulling the drives. Older interfaces and external kit/instruments still very near if not out right ‘plug and play’.
It’s not the same thing as being able to hand the client a few hard drives that include a copy of EVERYTHING (but only their project…no chance of accidentally mixing up their stuff with junk from other projects/clients…since you simply pull the drives and replace them for each project). Just add their own machine and dongles if they ever want to revisit the project from its last state.
I’m speaking of recouping and reusing all, or nearly ALL of your DATA. Not just audio takes and bounces of performances/renderings.
Security? Multiple third parties holding you ransom, making it difficult if not nearly impossible to roll back more than one or two versions, to use old code/plugins/etc…
Of course studios want to move on and get with the present and into the future, but at the same time, it’s nice to be able to plug and go with older projects and ideas as well.
Legacy support was one of Steinberg’s mainstays for a very long time. It can still do things that all the others never could, and never will. Particularly with stand alone kit (early MIDI controlled sound modules and such, syncing with other hardware, ADAT support, and so forth)
Logic would dictate that over time it makes sense to cut out some of the old bloat that people don’t use as much anymore to make room for newer/better methods and workflows. Still, there needs to be an easy route to ‘roll right back’ to something that worked well in its time.
Up through Cubase 11, that was pretty easy to do. Swap drives, change some dongles. Reboot a few times, maybe toss some drivers into the driverstore. Didn’t need to be ‘online’. Didn’t need anyone’s ‘permission’ to get everything activated, up, and running. Didn’t need to expose the primary system to the ‘outside world’ over the internet at all. That’s pretty secure, unless someone has access to your machine…or you let random people plug random storage to the system (which can still happen today).
Obsolete, yet 98% of the world’s computer code runs on it. Until ‘Apple Silicon’ came about, you could even make a beefy Jakintosh, and even run Mac OSes in a ‘Windows Virtual Machine’. Obsolete? Hmmm…
Not suitable is suddenly getting cut off from most of the world’s existing code base, and having to wait years for people to ‘catch up’ to the poorly understood/implemented new protocols. Then, just as developers finally get on board…cutting the rope again.
Trusting 18 third parties, and paying them fees to access your own data, trusting them to hang on to your keys, subjecting everything you do…every keystroke, every error log…to their SNOOPING ‘contracts and policies’ is better security?
We still have at least 30% of our health records in the USA stored in ‘obsolete formats’ to this very day. It still needs to be accessed, and ‘converting’ it to newer standards is a monumental task. People are STILL working on it as we speak…and it requires still being able to open the old files, understand them, and even being able to run old libraries that rely on ancient processor instruction sets. Other industries get it…they open doors to the future, but they know better than to slam the doors shut for the data sets and instructions at hand.
Then you just wrap it up in a VM, job done. I can carry a 18 hour battery machine under my arm with Current MacOS, Snow Leopard, Win 7 and Win 11 all ready to go within multiple windows if I want.
But i’d rather just have the content which i’ve already decided necessary for archiving process, i don’t get precious about drivers, funnily enough…
I’m sure you get a kick from writing these IT essays as it’s probably your main line of work, as it’s typical MS bias that you rarely see in the creative sphere. Just remember this is an audio forum, which means that audio content is priority for most.
Suggesting that you only have to worry about archiving when using a Mac is just crazy talk. Not to mention off-topic. Best to let it lie now I think.
My bias is ‘earned’. Apple chose to do their own chip without pivotable instruction sets onboard. They did it on purpose…to save some licensing fees and hose their own users and developers. Yet, they charge way more for a chip that’s not leaps and bounds better than the others, and glue it into systems that are difficult if not impossible to upgrade or reconfigure.
Cubase 12 is frustrating as heck to me. HALion takes forever to open now. Things that worked like a charm for a good decade are now broken. Time saving features ignored to instead make the stuff ‘compatible’ with hardware that only a mere fraction of the population has at hand yet, and right in the middle of a COVID induced world supply chain problem! Factories all over the world are shut down waiting for chips and components…and Apple picks that time to ‘reinvent the wheel’.
I know it will get better and look forward to it, but this ‘transition stage’ to a ‘brave new world’ hasn’t been pleasant. I’m not as directly impacted as Mac users, but even so, the effects trickle down.
It wasn’t pleasant when QT multi platform support was yanked either.
Apple users with newer hardware will find it hard if not impossible to roll back to anything before Version 12. When Rosetta is gone, that might not be an option to run VST2 dependent projects either.
How will your virtual machine deal with the missing instruction sets? How much extra time does it take to build that as opposed to simply yanking the drives and storing them? What expense goes into getting imaging software and keeping a base virtual machine at hand that those images will be compatible with?
Oh well…as you said, we’re beating the wrong horse in the wrong thread. I shouldn’t have chimed in.
Not worth arguing with conspiracy theories and historical falsehoods. Intel Macs still work. What planned obselescence?
Again, they have had over two years to move HALion 6 to Apple Silicon.
People complaining about “planned obselescence” shouldn’t be looking at Apple, but Steinberg who literally has been using this as an opportunity to extort upgrade fees out of their customers as other companies update existing product lines.
Falcon 2 is on Apple Silicon. So was Kontakt 6. And DAWs like Studio One 5 didn’t ask anyone for an upgrade fee just to move to AS. Any of the other 100 companies could have used this as an opportunity to threaten customers with obsoletion in exchange for upgrade fees. Steinberg is one of the only major players who has dared to do that.
The only “planned obselescence” I’m seeing in this scenario, are the Steinberg products we are discussing.
Every basic QoL delivery comes with a massive tax attached to it.
And Apple can’t just copy Intel instruction sets. x86 is covered by patents. Lol… HALion is not free or cheap, and given how little they invest in post-release development (of anything, except Dorico), they should have had more than enough left over to fast track development.
Again, instruction sets were not an issue to DAWs like Ableton Live (full of DSP-heavy synth code), Bitwig or Studio One. Or a myriad of other Synths and Virtual instruments. If Steinberg is running a REAKTOR-level skeleton crew for HALion, then I don’t want to waste money investing further into it anyways… for blatantly obvious reasons.
As for Cubase, once I get a Mac Studio it will be dead to me. I’m going to Logic. The only Steinberg products I will continue to use are Dorico and WaveLab, the two development teams that don’t hose users every chance they get.
Mac users aren’t impacted any more than windows users, VST3 is getting whacked on the head for all, as is eLicenser, as is Generic remote. If you want to use VST2 then you run Rosetta - it’s not hard.
As someone said above, this is a Steinberg issue - Apple have everything in place and as a user, we have options. SB have just bitten off more than they can chew… Why they decided to do it all at once, who knows. It’s not just users they’ve upset in the process either.
That said, i’m an optimist, so hopeful that this change will reap rewards - just right now, i think i’d rather use another DAW until it’s stable. I’m not tied to any piece of software really, as it’s the audio that I concentrate on.
Mac’s have been more or less a very expensive “Apple Logic” dongle to me for a while now. I was a big fan of Logic back in the Atari/Emagic days…went through a few dismal Mac experiences (both personal, and in a big audio/visual studio). Fortunately I always had access to ‘both’ back then. We did ‘show and tell’ in pretty offices with clients on the Macs, and moved to the PC running a lot of Pennacal and APEX software and stacks of enterprise cards chained to racks of break-out boxes, switchers, and mixing consoles for real work.
When the time came to move on from outboard tone modules into the realm of software plugins…and more roles in ‘music composition’ and live performances, fell in love with Cubase and never looked back (don’t need the video aspects much now).
I do believe that once we’re over the hump things will get better, and probably QUICKLY. I’ve witnessed Dorico go from a rather limited ‘proof of concept’ demo to an amazingly powerful app in just a few years! Part of the reason for that is they got to start from square one and take new approaches with newer tech, compilers, and methods.
I’ll hang in there and keep supporting new releases for a while yet. Cubase 12 is fine for most things I do, and there is a lot to like about it once minor kinks are ironed out.
I use v11, with the older ‘all dongle’ versions of HALion, Groove Agent, and their content on a much older machine for live work (I need HALion to open/close ‘instantly’ on demand at the tap of a button).
I get the laggy HALion UI thing with Dorico 4, and also in Plogue engine stuff like Bidule as well. Suspect it has to do with the new licensing scheme. The UI seems to be ‘waiting’ for a hand shake or something before it will open. I don’t expect it to change until HALion 7 comes out…but who knows.
Do you want me to believe that this is a true story? I mean, this is a HALion thread and you’re just spinning out fairy tales, and it’s making me a little uncomfortable.
Just be yourself. No-one’s judging, and as paying customers i’d like to think that all our opinions are equally valid. Consider who you represent when posting and don’t allow bias to mis-inform people. Anyway, stick to the topic at hand is wise.
Not fairy tales. Late 90s and early 2k. It was all during a media shift from analogue to a mix of digital tape and hard drives. PPC Macs were fresh and shiny. Windows for Workgroups was king of the office work-station hill. Also a shift from analogue to one of the first prototype HDTV transmitters. Several stages. In house production of syndicated talk shows, live news, commercials…for radio, television, and web design (at the time internet video was possible, but not very pragmatic since most people were on dialup modems). The studio and station also had a pretty cutting edge weather station and services as well. Capabilities to pull down up to 8 satellite downlinks at a time, while also doing two half band or one full band uplinks, plus a mobile satellite truck, and two microwave trucks (used for live news, sports casts, and telecommunication conferences). Also in the same building and sharing some of the engineers, one of the region’s very first dial in internet service providers (aside from making long distance calls to something like Compuserve or GEnie). It was non union, so everyone in the building got to piddle with everything we showed interest and aptitude for.
