Soft license will get C10Pro cracked in a hearbeat and Steinberg will lose tons of sales.
Go the the Steinberg store website and read the list of programs now using the soft elicense: Halion, Dorico, and others. They are clearly working on it. Cubase and Nuendo are high value targets for hackers, so they’re not going to rush it.
Also, I’ll mention it since people bring up Reaper and Studio One as examples- Reaper doesn’t have copy protection, and Studio One’s protection is not good enough to stop pirates.
As -steve- indicates, recent releases have allowed some products that were previously USB eLicenser only to work with soft eLicenser - notably including Absolute 4, Groove Agent 5 and HALion 6. The full list of licences that can be held on an soft eLicenser can be viewed here (click). Cubase Artist, Cubase Pro and Nuendo all remain USB eLicenser only.
Dorico always worked with soft eLicenser. All editions of Iconica support soft eLicenser. The release of Nuendo 10 brought about a significant drop in the full price of Nuendo, so I believe Iconica Opus is now the most expensive Steinberg product. However, Iconica is not likely as attractive to hackers as Cubase Pro or Nuendo, as it is more of a niche product. A hacked HALion that bypassed licensing enforcement for itself and any add-ons, including Iconica, would probably be less damaging to Steinberg than a hacked Cubase Pro or Nuendo.
Daniel Spreadbury of Steinberg’s Dorico team has hinted repeatedly in the Dorico forum that Steinberg are working on a new, more flexible licensing option that does away with the well known limits of the current system: soft eLicenser ties a licence to a single machine, USB eLicenser requires you to have the dongle and keep it plugged in, whilst moving a licence from soft eLicenser to USB eLicenser is a one-way deal (you can move a licence between USB eLicensers, but not back to soft eLicenser). When pushed for details, Daniel has always said that details will follow when ready. Whilst licensing enforcement systems can be an annoyance to legitimate users, it is not in anyone’s interest for the pirates to muscle in on the products we have paid good money to licence and Steinberg rely on for much of their revenue.
Perhaps we will see a new licensing system start to deploy with Dorico 3, which is expected in the second half of this year, as that would allow for a small scale but still meaningful roll-out. This is just a guess on my part, though - I would not be surprised if Dorico 3 goes on sale using the current licensing technology.
StudioOne has to be AUTHORIZED from your MyPresonus Account. IF you dont have the software registered with its serial you can’t AUTHORIZE it on your PC
Steve, I would event let the DONGLE thing go if it wasn’t a piece of chit and fell apart. Im on my third one here tape and all. Make it like ProTools or better construction and voila
Research will show you that they still have problems with software piracy- which is what I meant. Their system appears to not be effective.
Research will show you that they still have problems with software piracy- which is what I meant. Their system appears to not be effective.
Well then, long live the DONGLE I guess, please make it as good of construction as the one Protools and i Lok have though, this plastic POS is sloppy and falls appart not to mention all the access errors it seems to be giving EVERYONE including myself 
What does it matter what it’s made of?
You stick it in your studio computer and leave it on… pretty much forever. It’s just a regular USB drive. What on earth does one have to do with it to damage it physically? Do you use it as a short chair leg support or something?
You must be ignorant of current Cubase usage. People are plugging and unplugging from different computers, carry them around their necks when traveling hotel to hotel, using them for live gigs etc
Have you had one fall apart as the heat from the chip eats up the casing glue? I have and am on my THIRD one.
We get tired off taping them up. You just dont know I see 
The newest, shortest usb key seems to be holding up better- possibly only because it’s so short there is less plastic to flex.
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I’m a bit surprised by the (lack of) build quality in my new USB eLicenser. It’s relatively compact as these things go and the plastic is fairly thick, but it’s a rather loose fit over the electronics which makes it more vulnerable to being damaged than if it was a tight fit. Worse still, it’s the sort of plastic that tends to crack once damaged.
When you look at the elegant USB memory stick designs from companies like Sandisk and the robustness of the YubiKey devices (which are designed for security and can take the abuse of being carried around on the same ring as my keys), you realise there is scope to improve the physical design of the eLicenser.
(like Adobe)
Be careful what you wish for, as Adobe products can only be used with a paid subscription.
Yeah. Anyway, Steinberg has said several times that they don’t plan to go that route.
Adobe were getting all sorts of problems with piracy when they sold a perpetually licensed Creative Suite. The high cost of a Creative Suite licence plus the biannual release cycle for major updates (with relatively few interim bugfix patches in between, also an interim Creative Suite 5.5 in between the last two biannual major updates) left the way open for pirates to make a killing at Adobe’s expense. Some purchasers of pirate products knew very well they were buying or downloading something that was pirate, others thought they were buying legitimate Adobe product at a discount.
I still prefer a perpetual licence model, but reluctantly moved to Creative Cloud when my legitimate copy of Creative Suite 6 Master Collection had aged to the point where the work-rounds and compromises became unbearable. Creative Suite 6 does not officially support Windows 10, does not support high DPI, does not support modern cameras, Acrobat 10 (or was it Acrobat 9 in CS6 - I forget) did not work with contemporary versions of Microsoft Office and had stopped receiving security fixes - the list goes on. Considering how much I paid for Creative Suite 6 Master Collection, it hurts to have got no more than an introductory discount for Creative Cloud. I saved a fair bit of money by struggling on with CS6 for several years and a little bit more from the Creative Cloud introductory discount, but am still out of pocket compared to those who joined Creative Cloud at the beginning (during the lifetime of CS5.5 as I recall) with no previous investment in perpetual licence Adobe products.
I would not be surprised if there is some piracy of Creative Cloud applications, but the constantly moving nature of Creative Cloud, ongoing online verification of subscription status and the expectation of Creative Cloud users that they should be paying regularly must all be helping.
I join those in saying “be careful what you wish for”. I would not want my Steinberg perpetual licence products to go the same was as my Adobe Creative Suite - becoming worthless because the lack of support for modern hardware and operating systems made ongoing use impossible after the upgrade pathway was ended in favour of a subscription only model.
Paying every year for an Cubase update is almost like being subscribed to. Yes here I am free not to do it and continue to use the old version. But I prefer to have the new version in the hope that they have corrected some things that I don’t like. And consequently I support the programmers (even if the cost is high enough for an annual update).
I am a subscriber to EastWest’s ComposerCloud via an iLok soft-license. And I am fine. I hope Cubase Pro will soon switch to the soft-license.
Totally agree. Dongle needs to go
I agree. Dongle has to go. My new laptop has only 3 USB ports.
1 goes to mouse.
1 to dongle.
That leaves me one.
Also, I was moving my stuff from old computer to new, I was a hassle to drag the dongle between two computers and I have already broken my dongle and patched it with some clear tape. The cover fell off when I was just removing it from the usb port. I would not mind if the dongle was robust qualitym as some memory sticks are.
There are some valuable software information on those dongles - why on earth are they so weak?
iLok licence system worked like a dream. Logged in to my account “Deactivate” from computer 1, then press “activate” on computer 2.
Or you can have licences activated on both computers at same time. I am selling my old desktop so that is why I am deactivating everything on it.
I wish someone would come up with a software that would transfer ALL your VSTs and plugins easily to new computer. I’ve spent almost 2 days getting everything as it was…
Imho this should be the job of each plugin developer. Most are able to pack everything in a simple .vst3/.dll or library file, in this case you can easily move those to the new computer. It gets difficult when the plugins need additional files which are installed on the C: drive, thats where the mess begins.
Unfortunately there is no real “standard” in those things. Only the respective developers can know where files are stored which are needed by their plugins.
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+1 1 milion times
My use case is that I have a stationary computer and a laptop for when I am on the move. I absolutely hate having to physically move that stupid dongle between those computers. I worry that the dongle gets lost or breaks.
A month ago I went on a trip and packed a lot gear for making music on the go (laptop, microphone, small keyboard controller and an accoustic guitar). Turns out I forgot the dongle, so it was all for nothing.
Meanwhile, I am enjoying being a member of the Adobe Cloud. You can use those products offline. You can switch computers easily. It just needs to be online once in a while.
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