Learning from history is usually a good idea. When OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) was released in October 2014, it “broke” Cubase 7. Cubase 7.5 was released in December and Yosemite compatible version of Cubase 7 was released at the end of January 2015.
So learning by history, we’ll probably see the following timetable:
Cubase 8.5 will be released, early or middle, December and an El Capitan compatible version of Cubase 8 will appear late January, next year.
At least that’s what history suggests. 
Nothing like a month+ head start of an El Capitan-compatible 8.5 to force users to the paid upgrade if they want to use Cubase on their El Capitan Macs…
As for the Cubase users who need to be on El Capitan because they use their laptops for other things too (e.g. company they work for mandates latest versions for security reasons, they develop for iOS/Mac, they need some fix for hw problems, etc) let them wait…
And of course anybody buying a new Mac between now and December or whenever the fix is released will have to jump through hoops, un-install the OS, install Yosemite, etc to be able to work with Cubase…
Nothing like a month+ head start of an El Capitan-compatible 8.5 to force users to the paid upgrade if they want to use Cubase on their El Capitan Macs…
That would be so messed up if they require us to pay for El Capitan compatibility. It brings back memories of when Antares charged AT7 owners for a 64bit update.
Cubase will always have a special place in my heart, but in the meantime I’m considering using Logic X for awhile until Steinberg can figure out how to get this thing OSX stable for the long term. I just want to make some music without having to deal with frequent crashes, freezes, missing media from the bay, etc. 
Just purchased Logic X Pro, its cost was less than 50% of mine Cubase Artist, it’s working great on 10.11.1 with all my AUs and I have found it really intuitive and easy to use with great native sounds and instruments.
I will sell Cubase Artist license… 
cheers!
After updating all my software and drivers and doing careful research into compatibility, I bumped one of my studio machines up to El Capitan and spent a few days writing with Cubase. So far it’s been working almost the same as Yosemite, beside the splash screen being a little funky when first starting up Cubase.
Obviously everyone’s experience will be different (I know there are plugs and drivers out there that are definitely NOT ready for primetime) but I was fearing for a much worse situation than what I got. Lucky me, I guess. Looking forward to an official Cubase update.
After updating all my software and drivers and doing careful research into compatibility, I bumped one of my studio machines up to El Capitan and spent a few days writing with Cubase. So far it’s been working almost the same as Yosemite, beside the splash screen being a little funky when first starting up Cubase.
Obviously everyone’s experience will be different (I know there are plugs and drivers out there that are definitely NOT ready for primetime) but I was fearing for a much worse situation than what I got. Lucky me, I guess. Looking forward to an official Cubase update.
That’s cool @orchetect. Did you have a chance to try C8 Pro on OSX 10.11 with any third party plugs? If so, how was it?
Don’t know who you are talking to @paaltio, but I disagree. I’ve had to do iOS dev against beta iOS and Xcode releases. Yes, there are issues, as there are with anything beta. By the time they drop a beta release, they don’t change a whole lot. It’s usually fielding and addressing radars around issues with the APIs as they are within that beta.
I have found that the iOS/OSX beta builds_are good indicators of what final builds will look like. I can’t think of a time I had to make any significant code changes to accommodate a GM build at the last minute, after having done dev against a beta, put it that way. I have had to wait for them to fix issues that affect my code, but if there is change in the API, there are typically options that allow me to stick with the code I have to some degree.
I would argue that It is healthy software development - when you are building against a platform that you_know is going to change significantly once a year - to proactively develop against the next release of the platform you are developing for. Not doing so leaves you with a pile of very upset long-standing, dedicated customers. If what you are saying is true, the iOS app store should be brought to its knees with broken apps every time they rolled out a new release.
The Apple media outlets had already put out the message that this was a fairly innocuous maintenance release, which is what prompted me to upgrade, at a time I usually don’t. I feel like the messaging from Steinberg was clear enough, pervasive enough and early enough to stop me. Not good business.
As for resources, it takes a Dev or QA person half a day to spin up a beta build, load an Application in development onto it with some array of known common setups, and start reporting the things that are going to be problematic, and another hour or two after that to upgrade and perform some cursory checks again. It doesn’t take a big Dev team to do that much, and they could have put the message out sooner based on findings at the minimum. That little bit of effort would have better informed my decision making, and kept me working.
Couple of hardware updates that I discovered:
http://us.focusrite.com/answerbase/are-focusrite-products-compatible-with-el-capitan
I tried the same things they are reporting with my Duet 2. Here’s the deal:
Many of the Focusrite products will_work with C8 if you set both C8 and the Focusrite device affected by the no audio problem (the Scarlett series and one or two others) to 44.1k or 48k prior to launching it. The wording on their site seems to imply that once launched, you can then flip to 88.2 or 96 if you have a project running at that rate, but I can’t confirm that.
I have been able to confirm that the Duet 2 will work with C8 on El Capitan at 44.1k and 48k. However, if I try to launch C8 into a 44.1 or 48k project verify that the audio is working, then try to flip that project to anything above 48 or open another project above that rate and adjust the rates in my Duet 2 and C8 accordingly, I lose audio again. So in a nutshell, you can still work at 44.1 or 48 on the Duet until Steinberg sorts this out.
Flagging every thread about El Capitan since it prevents me from upgrading my mac.
By the way, there should be a sticky message around “Don’t buy the latest mac as Cubase won’t run and you won’t be able to downgrade the OS” isn’t it?
I absolutely love updates like the rest of you but this time I did the sensible thing and waited for confirmation.
I still haven’t upgraded yet, i’d rather have Cubase and all my Native Instruments stuff working.
I’m more annoyed at Apple for promoting the blind upgrade of their operating system without warning people there could be some very inconvenient compatibility issues.
Also, I believe Apple should be doing more to make things compatible. I see a future where they are so pushed to release updates to keep the market excited that they expect 3rd party developers to sort out all the problems they might cause…
Iknow nothing about programming though so i’ll just continue to wait patiently
Smart man, @HarrySound. I filed a ticket with Apogee. This was their response:
“After checking with Steinberg, it doesnt appear as though Cubase 8 is compatible with El Capitan. The Duet runs off of the Mac’s CoreAudio driver, and if its working in every other software, its likely due to Cubase not being compatible. Please contact Steinberg for more information.”
Note that, as reported on their Mac OS X El Capitan Compatibility Info page, for their Firewire audio interfaces, Duet and Ensemble, Apogee is:
… ending official support of these products on OS X El Capitan and beyond, …
No official word from RME regarding their Firewire audio, though ones like the FF800 and FF400 were officially discontinued anyway. However, I have asked the question on their Official Statement about compatibility with El Capitan? thread, so we shall see what they come back with.
Looks like El Capitan has the sheer drop of its namesake, as far as FW goes!
At least Win 10 continues with support for FW, for the moment, but the writing is on the wall now. Like most FF users, we’ll probably keep ours until they or the PCIe FW cards drop, though, as we are not really using them right now, it might be a good time to sell them, while there might still be some buyers on the market for for them. However, I would prefer to hang onto them until AoIP interfaces with smaller IO numbers get released.
I just updated El Capitan 10.11.2 Beta (15C27e) and Cubase Artist 8.0.3 still crashes before it loads.
I’m using Scarlett 2i2 and have installed their classCompliantMode driver. Still no luck being able to use Artist. Just reporting in, in case its somehow of use.
Maybe the general release of 10.11.2 will fix this issue.
Hi,
I was also not able to use my Scarlet interface at first (18i20 in my case). I had it working using aggregate device and it was kind of usable. My problem with that solution for me was that my ADAT inputs had some weird issues (input not lining up properly, noisy buzz on working inputs, etc.) but it might be a working alternative for you as you don’t have any ADAT ports on the 2i2. So for my part I decided to give some other DAW a run while Steinberg fix the issue. By the way, the interface is working flawlessly in Studio One… I’m actually trying the demo of Studio One 3 and I seriously considering getting it as they offer it as a crossgrade. I could use it as a fallback DAW as I still prefer the features in Cubase, but I find them very slow to follow upgrades and all… and plus there is no dongle to put up with!
I found the instructions somewhere in this forum; here is the link to the post:
Hope this help!
So are there any further infos when we will get an el capitan working version?
Once again the steinberg company prooved its inability to provide a flawless osx upgrade process…
Thats inacceptable.
But it also seems that they just dont care about user - im really sorry to sad that but - its always the same
They care. In the meantime maybe you should try your hand at learning another DAW? and then when ol’ Steiny is back up you can have some new stems to load into Cubase! Good luck
The bare minimum would be to provide us a date at which they will give more news.
@samcatchem500:
definitely no and yes. i can work with other daws… perhaps i will change completely to logic like many others. but “not back again”
the thing would have been so simple, el capitan was no surprise release… everyone knew that the new release is around the corner. but steinberg was not fussed about that, cause they didnt care.
ah and perhaps the webmaster from this forum could take the time and take care of the issues with tapatalk, cause the steinberg forum is the only platform in my arsenal that does not work with tapatalk.
thank you
What’s all the fuss with El Capitan? It’s not exactly groundbreaking. The only thing you will likely notice is the new Beachball spinning wheel, since the OS itself is still buggy (I have it on a laptop). Go make some music and enjoy C8 on Yosemite, which works brilliantly.