Hello,
As @chakkman and others have expressed I think many folks are honestly surprised there are a significant number who “like” or at least appreciate the eLicenser dongle. There are many threads about the issues, failures, and inconveniences of the dongles and I can understand those who are having problems. You know the forum situation - the problems are the ones expressed while the non-problems are often not.
Without further information from Steinberg I can’t say how this will affect us. However it appears with future licensing the dongle will not be there but again, we’ll see. For our use the dongle, or more specifically the lack of need to connect to the internet except for updates, is important. Here’s our use case -
We have 2 PT vanilla systems, 6 PT HDX3 systems, and approximately 14 or so Nuendo systems, most with triple Madi cards, some with smaller interfaces. That’s approximately 22 dongles with licenses. We have another dozen or more daws with all the software installed ready to go. Some have SourceConnect, some have AudioMovers, some have SessionLinkPro, some have RTW metering, some have specific software packages… etc. All different form factors based on what the client needs. Some shows require a laptop with an expansion chassis or other interface - ok that’s a choice of daws 4,11,12,15,16,17,18,19. Some require a single-rack chassis with three Madi ports - ok that’s daws 1,2,3,4,7,8. Some want a Mac tower (for some reason) - ok that’s daws 5,6,14. Some want PT vanilla - that’s any of them. Some want PT HDX3 with Madi - that’s daws 9,10,14, plus any other with an expansion chassis. Etc. We give them what they want and get paid for it.
So - We move our licenses around all the time. Pull a dongle and ship with another system. Last week we had a situation with a remote VO and sweetener and were set to use SourceConnect and a usb Madi interface. As a precaution I sent a Nuendo dongle even though they were going to use SCP natively, once there the op said he wanted a daw, didn’t know Nuendo, I shipped him a PTHD dongle (the sweetener was surround, needed HD) at increased cost. He plugged it in and was happy and we got paid. We swap licenses and systems all the time.
These systems are staged, ready to go, and may not see the light of day for 6 months in the shop then ship out at a moment’s notice unless they’re cannibalized as mentioned above. For the two situations - ready to go system or put-together system for a given show - we often won’t be able to do something like connect to internet, download/exchange a license, or whatever. If, for instance, a local license expires after some period of time and needs to be connected, that will be a hardship. If we have to connect a given system to the internet to give up it’s license to move elsewhere, that’s a hardship. Not being able to grab a hardware license and move to another daw will be a hardship and I’m not sure how to work around it.
Because our systems are frequently used in the LA studio systems we don’t have internet access. With some studios, never. So when a system ships to a location we frequently won’t be able to connect to renew, exchange, or put on another license, depending on what is needed. I’m not sure how to work around that either.
As mentioned we don’t know what Steinberg has planned so my above scenarios are guesses. But they’re an example of a real-world situation where swapping soft licenses may be harder than moving a usb dongle. As some have mentioned I won’t be forced to give up the dongle, but it appears future products and upgrades will not have a usb dongle unless I’m mistaken, meaning upgrading Nuendo will require it, maybe. I don’t know what form that will take but am concerned it will harm us.
Sincerely,
Hugh
It can happen, of course, especially hard drives can crash.