Release notes only cover a fraction of the bug fixes which have been adressed.
If users want to find out whether or not their issue has been adreesed they have to either
• search the forum (cumbersome and not always successful), or
• test for themselves, or
• start a thread hoping that @Martin.Jirsak has some insider knowledge (BTW, fab job, thank you ) or someone from Steinberg chimes in.
Why not take credit for the fixes – it’s a good thing and it shouldn’t take up much time to add all of them. This way it would be much easier for users to get the picture.
I assume that most users would appreciate comprehensive release notes.
I’m not so sure about that. I think most users don’t read release notes at all. And the few who do might be shocked by the number of bugs that had to be fixed (and probably still need to be).
I suppose it’s a bit hard to read release notes that had a thread that was created then quickly removed shortly after (why a thread about a Cubase update is not in the Cubase forum who knows…). I’d guess some of those “not reading” users don’t even know there was a software update in the first place.
As per users not reading release notes, that’s not a good excuse to not have comprehensive release notes, even though it seems Steinberg doesn’t look like the company that likes to do documentation for the sake of the end user, at least not currently.
It’s the good old “it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.” Plus it’s not like these have to be manually entered into a page and they obviously have some sort of automated system to list and keep track of those things.
Studying a list of technical modifications with, say, 200 entries is really more for nerds. Especially since perhaps only half of the items are relevant to one’s own workflow, operating system, etc. Not exactly bedtime reading!
If that’s how you want to call consumers wanting to know what they’re paying for and how that product is being supported, then sure. They are nerds.
But who knows? Maybe having more disgruntled users in the forums creating drama and drumming traffic with argumentative posts because the tiny release notes makes it look like Steinberg is just sitting on their asses turning Cubase into Live instead of fixing versions-old bugs or new bugs is what they want? It’s hard to say.
Yes, who knows… I don’t know either what it looks like under Steinberg’s bed either. I just read the questions and comments here and think that release notes are about as useful to most users as a menu in Chinese (without pictures!).
I would argue that it is much better to know what you are dealing with and to get the information without having to jump through hoops. There are a lot of improvements that usually go unnoticed - these are wasted opportunities for Steinberg to shine IMO!
You could easily divide release notes into a more genereal area which cover main improvements/changes and go into details afterwards. As long as users have easy access to the information which is needed it’s all good.
Just take recent examples like compatability of certain CMC modules, Chinese letters in the user name …the list goes on. It would be so much easier to just list these fixes in the release notes! The more transparency, the better.
Communication is key. There has been a very positive development in recent weeks with Steinberg employees engaging in forum discussions and giving answers to questions only they can answer.
I would like to encourage this sort of transparency and commitment to commucicate with users which also includes more detailed release notes in a broader sense.
One could start by adding a link to the release notes in the left sidebar of the hub. Perhaps under a more appealing name, so that even users who are not so tech-savvy are motivated to take a look inside.
And in terms of content, you could perhaps arrange the entries so that the things that are important and interesting to many users are listed first, followed by the minority features. Thus, anyone who stops reading after the third entry would at least have heard about the highlights.
I’d also love to see more comprehensive release notes.
Having come to Cubase (starting at 9.5, but only as my primary DAW at 10.5) from Cakewalk SONAR, I was used to comprehensive lists of bug fixes in their release notes. Yes, I am a bit of a nerd (maybe that’s an understatement), but, when each new release would come out, I’d read through the entire release notes (typically just high-level bug fix headings, except for information on new features) to see what the odds were any issues I’d been having (whether I’d reported them or not) might have been addressed in the update. That could trigger testing to see if they really were, potentially saving me time later in just doing whatever workaround I’d been using to compensate for the issue.
If you want to get an idea of what these look like, the latest Cakewalk SONAR release notes (I see I haven’t updated to this release yet) are in their forum at:
Note that, while this is a relatively short list compared to what they used to have when I was actively using SONAR as my DAW (prior to the BandLab takeover of the product), they are now doing much more frequent updates. I think the version I have on my system is from just two months earlier. (I typically only find out about updates when I fire up SONAR, which I tend to only do around the completion of Cubase project when checking some of my archive files for compatibility.)
Given that the bug fix-type notes almost certainly come from a bug reporting database, it would seem like it should be a simple thing to create a report that lists whatever the meaningful title of a bug is for any bugs marked as fixed in the new software update.
I would not advocate for having lists of open bugs, though, if there is some major issue that requires it, such as the recent Atmos issue in Cubase had, it would be important to list such known issues.
The Dorico team has set new standards on more than just one level - indeed, it’s impressive.
You are right @Puma0382 - the version history with its release notes is outstanding:
That would be grand if we could have such details for Cubase/Nuendo as well.
That a whole new level of release notes because you can see someone actually wrote about what was fixed instead of it being some automated thing tied to some sort of task management software that’s then sent to an automatic documentation generator which gives the final result.
They don’t have to be this level of complexity but they have to be something that’s not just a random pick of 3-5 bugs that were determined to be the most important to notify.
I agree - every little helps as long as we know what we are dealing with. The Dorico team sets the bar very high…
A few weeks ago, a Cubase Steinberg dev casually mentioned that a feature didn’t make it into the release notes. Seems like this is widely accepted. Again, I see this as a missed opportunity to shine and to improve communication with users.
I share your frustration. I wish for there to be a complete change log with every release and have been bothered by the scattershot delivery of information about changes and fixes, particularly when a major version is released. I understand that they want to sell new features, but I also just want to keep track of which bugs have been fixed and which workflows have changed so I can adjust my process accordingly and hopefully stop doing workarounds. A change log is one of those unsexy things that become really valuable when you’ve been using software seriously. Reaper does it right.
I don’t know why they decided to stop sharing full info what was fixed but I don’t like it either. Often, those details were the reasons why I was updating.
Now they put on us the need to test new versions with a hope that maybe our issues are fixed.
I’m calling it for what it is: laziness.
Maybe they fired person(s) responsible for that documentation. I don’t know it, but it would match the current trend of replacing people like such with AI.
I agree with the others here who asserted it would be in Steinberg’s interest to fully documents improvements, even those that seem less than consequential. As with the last several releases of Cubase, I have zero interest in the banner improvements. But SB did fix one of my two biggest annoyances (scroll wheel up to move forward in the project). If they fixed the other one (stupid screen-right positioning of the playhead when moving backward in the project), I’d be immediately willing to spend 99 bucks for the upgrade. But I have no hope they’ve addressed this issue, so I’ll wait until late summer for the annual sale. A detailed list of improvements might have made the sale happen here.
I think that you are not the only user seeing it this way.
Here’s another example: Missing or bloated control room presets have been an annoyance for many years now. You’ll find countless threads about it in this forum. People have been complaining that this needs to be fixed for a long time. Cubase 15 and it seems that Steinberg has adressed the issue with an overhaul of the associated file management. At least, I have not encountered this long-standing issue ever since. Steinberg does not mention it anywhere, not in the release notes, not in the manual. And there are many other examples as the posts after the release clearly indicate. And I assume that there are even more we don’t know about. All of these achievments are valuable selling points!
Other companies tend to highlight all their achievements (big or small) and use it for clever promotion and marketing. Why does Steinberg keep so many achievements under the rug? Is there a hidden agenda we don’t know about? Maybe they don’t have enough staff? Only Steinberg can tell. At the end of the day we all want Steinberg and our DAW to thrive - that’s the whole point.
EDIT: I know - the use of “we” in a sentence is tricky - I assume (hope) that the overwhelming majority is with me in this case.
) or someone from Steinberg chimes in.