Purchasing & Owning Cubase Pro 14

Cubase
1

Cubase Pro 14

Greetings everyone!

This is a kind of pre-sales question for Cubase Pro 14, but try as I may I couldn’t get through on the Steinberg Help Centre for online shop support as it kept returning the error “oops - You’re not authorized to access this page”.

I have always considered purchasing Cubase over the years, but have been hesitant. I would use it more for hobby & interest use and if anything progressed from it further down the line, then all well and good.

Some things that put me off in the past, was using up limited USB ports availability (on a more than capably powered laptop) by having to use an authorising dongle, to name but one thing.

The currently offered reduced sale price along with some free software plugins thrown-in, is making me very tempted.m (if the sale lasts).

Currently I’m just wondering two things:-

  1. is the USB dongle still a thing and if so is it permanently required to be plugged in? … I guess I may have to change my mind requiring its use, if I really want Cubase Pro 14.

  2. Is the software perpetual, in so much that I can re-download it at any time in the future (even be it years from now) should I acquire different or additional PC’s?

Thanks.

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Hello and welcome!

  1. The dongle is long gone (well, since Cubase 12). The current versions use Steinberg Licensing, which is a challenge-response authorization method: https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/4409835265810-Information-on-Steinberg-Licensing
  2. Yes, it is a perpetual license. Nobody can fully guarantee what happens in the future though, so if for whatever reason Steinberg don’t exist anymore in ten years time, you won’t be able to use the program anymore, because it cannot be licensed. That is the bane of any challenge-response authorization… apart from that, yes, no problem. You can have the license activated one up to three systems, and you can deactivate/activate systems as you like.
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Ok thank you, info much appreciated.