DOP and Atmos. Search the forum.
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I won’t quibble over percentages, I have a different experience, especially with other Steinberg products like WaveLab and Dorico (and to a lesser extent SpectraLayers), where I’ve had a lot of success with direct communication with the developers and getting good results. That’s why I think the future of Steinberg is how the Dorico team handles things. I see the culture changing at Steinberg, BUT since we’re talking Cubase/Nuendo, even with my enthusiasm and optimism, I agree that they can make some more improvements in the ways we’ve been discussing. And as for longstanding bugs – especially showstoppers like you’ve been dealing with – I think they need to invest more resources.
My own situation is obviously different than yours. And over many years, I have come to accept the reality of the situation and look to the many positives, as I see them. Ergo, for me, net positive and general optimism.
Having said that, it seems to me that you’ve come to a crossroads about what you are going to do. And if you choose to pass on upgrading to v15, that would be very understandable. The Steinberg “formula” for the Cubendo teams is unlikely to change significantly enough and quickly enough to alleviate your frustrations. We both know that. While I see progress in a lot of areas, which is great for me, it’s probably not fast enough and deep enough to solve your situation. At least that’s my take on it. I hope you don’t abandon ship, but I totally get it if you do. You have been unlucky in terms of getting the fixes and responses you need over the years, unfortunately.
I can only speculate that this is because of a combination of allocation of limited resources, plus some old corporate patterns still echoing at Steinberg today, plus the likelihood that the fixes that are needed for your showstoppers are very deep and costly to fix, plus some bad luck that of all the issues that plague you, the buggiest ones are the ones they aren’t solving or communicating much about.
Frankly you’ve done the very best anyone could do - you’ve been patient, professional, etc., but maybe it is time to vote with your money and not upgrade this time?
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Yeah but see that’s the thing though, while there were some issues with DOP in the past they made it much worse in v14. This is not just a “longstanding” bug, they should have understood that since this is a core part of the workflow of many people breaking it further means hotfix asap.
I think I waited four months or so after initial release before I even tried v14, and then it’s been another three months until the latest update, so now I’m looking at seven months since release. Not even an official comment. How is that even a thing???
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Although my answer here is to the OP’s original question, I do see it has evolved like most threads do. But I’ll try to stick to the question…
I am excited to see the next version of Cubase. I am still on ver. 12 and my need to stay current isn’t as urgent as those of you who make a living using it. My requirements as a hobbyist/enthusiast are that the basic functions are easy to understand and use. One of the biggest issues for me is the GUI. I need it to be crisp, clear and readable. I would also like to take advantage of one of the new control surfaces that don’t currently work with ver. 12. That is why I am eagerly looking forward to the next version.
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Indeed it did evolve! And I think to the credit of the Cubase community, it evolved in a non-trollish, generally thoughtful and respectful way! Thanks to everyone for the good posts, I appreciate a civil and professional thread any day of the week!
It’s a thing, unfortunately. You are putting a light on one of the rough facets of the reality of the “balancing act” I was talking about before. I appreciate this, as it will (hopefully) make Steinberg even better.
Crossing fingers they are reading this (and the other threads that mention similar things) and will recognize that while many of us appreciate the good work, they have some more improvement to make! Let’s go Steinberg! Reach for the stars! For all the good things you guys do (and I’m of course still 100% looking forward to v15 as per my original post!), let’s get this kind of thing straightened out too!
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Thanks. It seems much of what I found on a search was in the Nuendo forum, which would explain why I didn’t notice anything. I also probably wouldn’t have paid attention to any topics on Atmos since I’m not using that. I did note that someone from Steinberg has acknowledged the Atmos issue in 14.0.40:
There is also a pinned post from Steinberg in the Nuendo forum.
I have used DOP recently (definitely in 14.0.32 – I’m not positive if since 14.0.40) without issues, but my use is generally fairly basic, mostly just using it for dereverb or other noise reduction process on a few clips then making the processing permanent as soon as I’ve confirmed it had the desired effect.
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DOP is fine for basic tasks, but it can get wonky in complex workflows. This has been documented for a long time, unfortunately. When it was first released about 8 years ago (I want to say around Cubase 9.5 or so, someone correct me if I’m wrong), it was a giant bugfest. It was AWFUL. Disastrously unreliable, and when I upgraded back then I found bug after bug after bug. And I complained bitterly in the forum. It almost chased me away entirely from Steinberg, it was that bad. To me, that was Steinberg at its lowest point. That was the OLD Steinberg IMO.
Since then, over the course of the last 8 years, they’ve made many improvements to their whole process, thanks in part to the leadership who started paying attention more IMO, and since then, they’ve never released a major feature THAT broken again (at least that I can think of). I do believe Steinberg learned a big lesson back then, THANK GOODNESS.
Looking over the course of many years, I see progress, and especially with the other apps I use, I see a team culture and a corporate culture going in the right direction. Hence part of my optimism and enthusiasm.
HOWEVER, there is still more to do, obviously! There are vestiges of the “old” Steinberg corporate culture that still exist at Steinberg, unfortunately, and I hope they continue to evolve and transition more completely over to the “new” Steinberg, which has earned my respect. But nothing is perfect of course! We live in the real world, and we never get EVERYTHING we want, it’s just not realistic.
Case in point, DOP is STILL not 100% reliable for complex tasks. This is documented time and again here in the forum, each year since v9.5. I personally believe it is fundamentally flawed, and while the concept is very good, and they have fixed the most egregious cases for the basic use cases, there has been too little progress for fixing bugs that appear in complex use cases. Why is that? I don’t know for sure, but I BELIEVE that the deeper fixes are extremely resource intensive for them to address, and I think Steinberg calculated that it was not worth it to go all the way with the fixes. THIS is part of the “balancing act” I referred to before in this thread. Like it or not.
Am I happy about this reality? No. I wish Steinberg took their time on the feature from the beginning. But unfortunately, they didn’t, and some of us are still dealing with it years and years later.
Here’s my solution: I just stopped fighting the DOP situation (and frankly a few other similar situations) and I do NOT use DOP for anything complex. Just the most basic workflows and it does just fine for the most part. Occasionally they add a new improvement to it, which I test, but it has never gained my trust for heavy duty workflows. I just work around it, and pretend DOP doesn’t exist when I want to do something complex with it.
Yes, I am annoyed by this reality, of course, but I’ve come to accept it. It’s not RIGHT but I also am keenly aware of the saturation of the DAW market and the profound implications for DAW developers to stay in business! This is the whole reality of the balancing act, and I get it. Steinberg is NOT a large company, despite what some people here might imagine. They have limited resources and they have to make hard decisions. Some of those decisions I definitely disagree with. However, I agree with MANY of their decisions.
Compared to all the other DAWs I own (and that includes just about all of them on the market), Steinberg still rates IMO in the upper group of developers in terms of addressing these kinds of issues. I could list broken feature after broken feature in other DAWs just as easily as Steinberg’s biggest critics would list of Steinberg. And in the end, what I determined what really matters, is what tools get me to the finish line of my projects the best way for the kinds of workflows and creative tools that I need. And I realized Steinberg tends to get me there better most of the time. Cubase 14 has been a joy for me to use, overall, despite the issues. The new workflows in it have been things I’ve been asking for over the years, and for the most part, they work well. Steinberg deserves kudos for those features IMO.
Also, to be honest, I’ve evolved as a human being over the last many years. For example, I don’t get as “angry” about some kinds of things as I did 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, etc.. There are way too many other things that are more important in my life and in this world than the frustration of DOP not working 100% as advertised. When it was released 8 years ago, it was utterly broken. But now, it works 99.5% fine for 90% of basic use cases, and I’ve just come to accept that, and it’s “okay” for me. However, I totally understand someone who has complex use cases and they find it only works 80% of the time, or worse, or breaks current projects. And yes, when an update BREAKS it even more for some reason, I can really understand frustration! That’s not right! But my solution for DOP: Don’t use it for complex cases. Solved.
Does that kind of suck? Yes. Is it worth switching to another DAW? Possibly, if your frustration level is going above a certain threshold that only you know. At that point, sure, switch to another DAW, and send Steinberg the message that you won’t tolerate it any more. And you do that by not upgrading. If enough people do that, then Steinberg will feel the impact on their revenue and someone at Yamaha might even take notice. But the question is, what DAW will you go to? And is the grass greener on the other side of the hill? In my experience, generally speaking, NO, it is not greener on the other side of the hill. Just DIFFERENT on the other side of the hill. And perhaps better for YOUR workflows, so then go for it. But every DAW has issues and shortcomings, and only you can decide what is “best” for you… and in some cases, some other DAW might “fit” someone far more than Cubase/Nuendo. If so, then go for it. They would be logical and justified to switch. Sometimes someone who switches won’t notice the shortcomings of the other DAW simply because their workflows never use the problematic features on the other platform. Again, that’s totally understandable.
We’re all doing our own “balancing act” and what’s best for one person might be awful for another person. We’ve all got to find the right tools for our creative process.
Anyway, I don’t mean to go on and on about this. My own enthusiasm and optimism for Steinberg is the same as when I posted this thread, mainly because I understand the equation and I also accept the equation. And for me, the equation balances to net positive.
The reason that I am spending time writing this is that yes, any thread like this should definitely cover some of the rough spots too, and DOP is indeed one of them, along with the related silence and lack of official acknowledgement over the years, leading to genuine, profound frustration of some users. Also, VCA functionality is another problematic area. In my opinion, those are two features that have given people headaches for a long long time. I wish it was different, but it’s a fact. Should Steinberg invest more resources to test and fix them, especially the big ones that come along from time to time? Of course! So I’m right there with those who are asking for that.
But I’m ALSO going to give credit where credit is due to the Steinberg Cubase/Nuendo teams. v14 was FILLED with good stuff, productive stuff, creative stuff, and I’m very grateful for what they’ve done with this cycle! To me, v14 was the best in years, and on top of that, I see progress with the corporate culture, agile development process, attitude towards open source, proof that they are executing a very long-term plan (i.e. new score editor has been in the works for years and years), and so forth.
So I can sit here applauding Steinberg for their great work and be excited about v15, but ALSO be very realistic about their shortcomings. One can do both at the same time. At least that’s how I look at it.
Cheers!
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Which is added to how some issues that existed in v13 (or v12 even) were pushed to v14 still unsolved, adding up to new issues exclusive to v14 or people upset the issue they expected would be solved by investing into a version upgrade is still there. And then it will be weird if people at Steinberg act surprised when the same people complaining about these dragged bugs pay to upgrade to v15 and the same bugs are still there. Biggest offender at the present moment seems to be the MIDI Remote API, which has bugs which haven’t been addressed since v12.
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From what I gather the issue is mostly that either there are too many remote surfaces displayed or that the used ones disappear or, recently, that mapping disappeared.
While these are problems with MIDI Remote, I don’t think they have to do with its API, do they?
Presonus (Fender) solved the Studio One forum problem by closing it down in 2024.
Good to know I guess. From what I read, things started to go south when the CEO suggested the DAW should not need more than a 3-page manual…or something along those lines. Then, more recently, the push toward pseudo-subscription.
I suppose we could all say we subscribe, but I like it the way Steinberg does it.
I think it would make good business sense to stay way from Black Friday (which always starts ridiculously early, because people blow their money on Black Friday. Better sooner
IMO, over the past 5 years, BF has become much more diluted. There are longer sale periods and not lower prices. You can only go so low. A new user might not recognize this, but I sure do. NI is trying to peddle the same Plug-In Alliance products for the same price or even higher, that Dirk the former owner of PA sold them years ago. Waves, UA…their stuff is continuously discounted year round. Of course they will offer a single BF freebie with the objective of pushing the buyer into a bundle. Then annual updates and upgrades…
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Give us a build-in Clip Launcher or a VST plug-in
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It astonishes me how little knowledge people have of AI implementation.
OPen AI have had roughly $66 billion invested into them to build a language model over a decade of research and development.
But people seem to think DAW makers can knock up in 12 months AI masterpieces with 10 devs and about $1 million investment.
If anything i would like to see Cubase focus on refining the core product, using AI to help the dev team refine the code they already have and make engine adjustments that can get the maximum from the core engine.
Is it possible to recode the Cubase/Nuendo codebase using more modern coding tequniques and really pushing what is there to its ultimate limits.
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I upgraded to the latest 14. patch just before I read about the issues (back again? oh no…) with Midi Remote.. Have you experienced any showstoppers yet, Jonny? I will be finding out about x2 VIP scripts for controllers that I rely on today..
Very good thread, btw, deep problems but expressed very civil, way to go, Forum members! I’m personally in the ‘excited’ camp for v15, and with those that think Steinberg are on an upward trajectory- but yes please to +10% on defect fixing and +5% on Devs Helping on the Forum.
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The last .40 update chilled my enthusiasm. I think that there’s zero fixes for the bugs that people were asking here very often (definitely none of those affected me) and it introduced new bugs.
I guess that major issues off 14 will never be fixed because the next big release is almost here.
I am not a big user of midi remote. I only have one surface set up with the editor for 8 rotary knobs mapped to the focus QCs. Never lost the assignment. But I also have the ghost surfaces.
so far so good… all working… no midi ghosts. Not noticing anything good or bad about the 14.40 patch. Mac Silicon.
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They have to do with both since you have to create a script for your device as the GUI for creating your own remote devices has limited functionality. If you look at the pre-made layouts, they have all sorts of things you cannot do with the GUI at all like bank switching.