I have been using Cubase for about 12 years. Maybe more. I started with version 3. I have to say I am fed up with download issues. Every time I upgrade, as I did tonight, I run into problems. There are WAY too many questions as you download, way too many pop up boxes, way too many things that go wrong, way too many dead ends. I just spent $140 to upgrade and what I got was what I am sure is going to be 5 hours of pissing around, trying to figure out what went wrong. I’m sorry, I’m fed up.
I feel your pain my friend…why did you not wait for the trial? 
I mean no disrespect, I just don’t get why peeps buy something that may cause problems when a trial is on the horizon 
best, Kevin
Hi,
When I upgraded to 9.0.1 from 8.5.20, it was the smoothest download/installation experience that I could wish for. Perhaps I was lucky.
One thing I can recommend to you is that you should download the latest eLicenser software from https://www.steinberg.net/en/company/technologies/elicenser.html, then install Cubase 9. The installation offers the latest eLicenser software as well. Some problems can be averted this way.
Can you say what specific issues you have? Are you on Windows/Mac?
I have to agree with Maincat. For me it was really stable download and update and Cubase 9 runs without any problem so far.
updated 2 licences on 2 machines (one my personal win10 laptop and the other PC win7 studio computer) both upgraded without issues. just had to do some bridging for 32bit plugins.
feature wise my feeling are mixed, expected to some new editing tools mostly for workflow enancment
You wasn’t lucky. The upgrade path for Cubase is as smooth and simple as can be.
But nothing is idiot proof!
I’d been intending on installing 9 on a second PC. Your post prompted me to do it and count the dialog boxes.
First if you are getting “WAY too many questions” while downloading, you’ve got something else going on. It asked me one single question - where did I want to save the download? That sure seems reasonable to ask.
During the installation it asked the following 9 questions. All of these are either standard parts of most installations (e.g. do you want to begin the actual installation) or for stuff you really want it to ask you (e.g. where to store the content). Nothing here seems unnecessary or excessive. OK I could do without the EULA & UAC, but good luck with that. 
- Where to extract compressed files?
- UAC from Windows to let install modify the computer.
- Search for updates?
- Include found updates in installation?
- Install Cubase9?
- EULA
- Locations for program & contents?
- Begin installation?
- Finish installation?
Of course the download seems to take forever because it’s large. And if you don’t have decent internet access it can be a problem. But you should only get 10 pretty normal questions total, and 9 of them should only take a couple of minutes to answer. More than that and something else is involved.
I can’t even remember it asking me much, and I installed it 3 times.
Yeah, I couldn’t either. That’s why I decided to install it and take notes on what it asked.
I plan on upgrading from 8.5 pretty soon so I hope I don’t run into any issues with it on OSX. I’ll work through it though…every time I get mad and rant about some Cubase hiccup I make a song with it and forget what I was even mad about. LOL
Happy Holidays!
after the upgrade you can use 8.5 and 9 separately. but i think you already know that