I have had a rough relationship with Steinberg for several years now… I won’t get into details, but suffice it to say that I’m not a fan any more. To stay focused on this thread, though, if you still like Steinberg as a company and can live with their various “issues,” I would have to admit, begrudgingly, that the 9.5 upgrade from 9.0 (and from several prior versions BTW) is actually worth upgrading to. Just being honest. It has the potential to be one of the better Cubase releases in a long time, maybe when it hits 9.5.40. Right now it still has teething issues IMO.
9.0 was a real disappointment for me, and I regrettably felt forced to upgrade to 9.5 (after an internal debate of whether or not I wanted to send them any more money). But since I’ve upgraded, I will admit that 9.5 is indeed better than 9.0. I just wish they would focus on COMPLETING features and making them rock-solid before unleashing them on the public. Their upgrade/release cycle is broken IMO. It has caused rushed/incomplete features that take way too long to stabilize IMO. I feel that the version to wait for going forward is the 9.5.40 patch, or at the earliest maybe 9.5.30. Right now we’re on 9.5.20, soon to be 9.5.25.
For 10.0, I’ll likely wait until 10.0.30 or 10.0.40 if I decide to upgrade at all again. Just depends on if I’ve abandoned Steinberg by then or am willing to keep trudging along with them. I don’t do it happily, but I’ve spent a ton of time with other DAWs and for my current projects, the other DAWs are missing too many key composition and film-oriented features as of right now, although some of the competitors are pretty impressive. I’m keeping my eye very closely on the competition, and I have licences for several of them.
DOP (Direct Offline Processing) in particular has been a BIG disappointment for anything but the most rudimentary of workflows. I really hope they can straighten it out soon so pros can actually use it seriously. Similar features have existed and are stable in other DAWs for years, and I can’t understand how Steinberg botched the release so badly on this feature. But it has great potential IMO. It’s extremely frustrating to feel like I’m beta testing it, especially knowing that they’ve already upgraded Nuendo’s version of DOP to a better version. DOP has a LONG way to go, but if they eventually get there, it will be very powerful.
However, I really like the new metronome and improved automation. They are very welcome improvements right now. Other little minor workflow improvements are good too. I don’t personally get excited for the new 64-bit mixing engine (it was fine for me before), plugin facelift (don’t need them), or softube stuff (don’t use or want a Console 1), but it’s overall a more refined DAW in several ways. With the glaring exception of the mess that is/was DOP, I have to admit it is a decent step forward. Again, only if you can still deal with Steinberg as a company.
My honest two bits.