Hidden in an announcement for a new driver for the MR interfaces, Steinberg is announcing that there will be no new drivers anymore and no drivers for Catalina. I spend thousands on MR hardware that will become useless soon. Thank you, Steinberg, you are no better than M-Audio.
To be fair - that hardware is pretty old. It’s impossible to keep supporting stuff like that forever. Catalina has put a huge strain on resources so I don’t find it at all suprising that they are not going to support it.
In my experience Steinberg don’t have a great track record maintaining software for older devices. The CC121 hasn’t seen an update for years - and I remember the midex 64bit fiasco. I made a decisions to stay well clear of SB for hardware products long ago and I’m sticking to it.
Some of their hardware products obviously look (and are) amazing but you never know how long they are going to support it so why take the risk.
I moved over to RME many years ago and they have been rock solid. I still see firmware updates for 12 year old PCI cards 
Thx, DR. I had similar thoughts about my M-Audio Projectmix IO. That’s why I decided to go with Steinberg only 8 years ago. The hardware is fine and robust, still in perfect condition. It is firewire and working perfectly under Windows 10 and Mojave. The driver is just software that needs to be maintained by the vendor. There still is no other audio device that is as well integrated with Cubase.
Anyways, I see no need for Steinberg to drop MR driver support for Windows. The MRs were advertised as professional devices. The prices were high. Probably, Steinberg did not sell enough to afford continued support of their customer base who believed the marketing.
If I decided to stay with Mojave, later Steinberg would release Cubase versions that will be incompatible to Mojave.
If I decided to stay with Windows, later MS would release Windows versions that will be incompatible to MR.
I believe that Steinberg should offer to trade unsupported Steinberg hardware in for a supported one.
I checked the RME site and found no statement regarding Catalina and Cubase.
I use windows - but the RME drivers are Catalina compliant
It’s Yamaha not Steinberg … same with mlan fiasco. Take a look at the Yamaha 01x digital mixer … 2000 Euro for a doorstop. Never again Yamaha audio hardware.
Yup, me, too. Yamaha announced the end of support for the 01x after promising there would be a 64-bit driver. They developed one, but only for the 64-bit version of XP, never going beyond that. I had the experience of buying Yamaha hardware for which I had to wait for months for the first production unit, only for it to be discontinued without support less than a year later.
To be fair, I got my MR816csx for half the retail price on a “loyalty” discount after they announced the end of support for the 01x. I don’t think it would be untoward to ask for something similar on the MR discontinuance. The MR wasn’t as well thought out as the UR814. Direct monitoring only worked on a stereo input on the SPDIF input. It never worked correctly on chained units.
Ah yes, but the relentless requests eventually led to an “unsupported” version that’s been working very well, even now on Windows 10 1903 (link in my sig). I think the real issue is the Firewire support, and if Catalina won’t “allow” it, then there’s not much point in investing resources in a Windows-only driver. You could try begging though, as we did with the Midex …
Me too, best single upgrade ever. I use a RayDAT with no AD/DA of its own, and just connect what I want over ADAT. Never have to change the driver, never have to learn a new GUI, and it just keeps getting better with each update. Over the years I have saved money, given the short lifecycles of other interfaces, not to mention the time I no longer waste trying to get sub-standard drivers to work. Don’t think about it it. Do it. Just do it. RME!
true - but it took many months - or was it actually years ? wasn’t prepared to stop using midi on the off chance that SB would see the light - by the time the beta drivers eventually appeared the midex was long gone
shame cos the hardware was good - and they had that LTB thing which seem to help the timing
I had a Midex3 and got a bargain on a Midex8 as soon as the unsupported drivers were announced, and before the news hit eBay.
But back on topic, RME is the best strategy, whatever way you look at it; it makes your rig effectively vendor-neutral in terms of AD/DA.
What about resorting to only class compliant devices?
Does anyone know if this is legal?
Can a supplier just force it’s clients to upgrade to new hardware?
Is there a time limit to this?
Yes, it’s called capitalism.
Can a supplier just force it’s clients to upgrade to new hardware?
Yes, it’s called planned obsolescense.
Is there a time limit to this?
It will probably last until the end of end of capitalism, maybe longer.
This is a sad new for many of us!
I just bought a new computer - just to use with this hardware - and it’s incompatible? Not only did I waste days (full days) - trying to figure out what was wrong… but now my audio interfaces are useless? As a software developer - I understand the reasoning for some of this… but - I also don’t think it would be very expensive or time consuming to write a new driver. This is a bummer. I definitely will try a new interface company instead of buying anything from Steinberg going forward. This is the first time I’ve ever had a negative feeling about Yamaha.
At the very least…
It’s not planned obsolescence if what makes the device not work any longer is something outside of the device. If Steinberg releases a converter and one of the many OS releases doesn’t work with it you can’t blame the driver for that, nor could Steinberg plan for that to happen.
Having said that Steinberg/Yamaha should support devices for a reasonable amount of time over a reasonable amount of OS versions.
When did the MR hardware come out?
When I purchased the top of the notch device, Steinberg did advertise it as supporting Windows and MacOS. None of the audio device manufacturers guarantees any support for future OS versions. Only the reputation makes customers buy expensive hardware, trusting that there will be driver updates. Steinberg does not live up to that kind of reputation.
Their new hardware is cheap usb stuff, lacking duplex adat support, except for one extremely expensive device. I wonder whether customers will trust in driver updates for that one. Certainly, I will not trust in Steinberg anymore.
If you’re going to quote me at least try to understand the point I’m making. What I was addressing in what you quoted was whether or not it was “planned obsolescence”, which it wasn’t.
I just got the news today (oh, boy) that my MR816 will no longer be supported, and I have a brand new iMac 5k on the way.
Great, thanks Steinberg. Now I have to give myself the gift of shelling out for an emergency Focusrite replacement. At least they support Catalina on older devices.
Never again.