Steinberg Horror Story, Unavailable to use for 2 months now, beware the dongle

Cubase
1

Hey All

Just beware what is going to happen to you as a paying customer. For the record, I have given thousands of dollars to this company since Cubase VST 3.7 through SX1, Cubase 4 through Cubase Pro 9.

About 2 mos ago, I started running into “USBDeviceOS_Finish expected but received”. This has rendered Cubase 9 unusable. After googling this error and following advice on these forums, I’ve done a bunch of troubleshooting (uninstalling/reinstalling Cubase, uninstalling/reinstalling Syncrosoft drivers, trying different ports/etc). Started going through support.

Edit to Add: all the VSTs work on this dongle, just not Cubase itself. Also, there are numerous posts of having a new dongle not resolve this issue. We shall see. ELicenser works fine and can see all my licenses.

Point 1 – You cannot contact support via email. You must contact them during business hours at their convenience.

I went through 3 support people. They all had me reinstall drivers, reinstall the software, etc. One even had me update my audio drivers, being fully confident that would resolve what seemed to me to be an unrelated issue. After a week, the third guy said he’d escalate my ticket. Then, a few days later I got the following email, essentially asking me to spend more cash. No big deal, I went ahead and ordered a new dongle. Then got an email that they are out of stock, and who knows when a new dongle will ship? Is it right to make the customer pay for hardware protection and then not have a ship date?

Spend more money email:
Hello Customer,

The error you’re receiving is related to a failing USB eLicenser which is not uncommon with keys (like yours) that date back to Cubase SX 1. Is the key recognized in the eLicenser Control Center? If so, you will need to purchase a new USB eLicenser here:

You can transfer your licenses by dragging and dropping them from the old USB eLicenser to the new USB eLicenser in the eLicenser Control Center.

I believe this should resolve your request so you may receive a survey. That said, if you’re still experiencing difficulty please reply directly to this e-mail and I’d be happy to assist further.

Thank you for contacting the Steinberg US Support team.

Alexandra Auvinen
Steinberg US Support
Support Line: 844-358-4022

Dongle whenever email:

Dear customer,

Thank you for placing your order in our online shop.

Please be advised that due to strong demand, we are experiencing a backorder situation on the product(s) you ordered.

We currently have no exact date of delivery for new products. As soon as we receive the goods, we will ship your order as soon as possible.
If you would like to cancel your order, please let us know.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Should you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Kind regards
i. A. Julia Wenger

Logistics Customer Center

2

It sounds like you might have been unclear with your first support request or they misunderstood what you were talking about at first.

Not true, you can send them a support request at any time using your MySteinberg.


But yes, like they said the Cubase SX1 era dongle is a time bomb. Not only they’re slower than modern eLicensers (making Cubase slower), they also like to stop working out of nowhere like this. The new dongle will both allow Cubase to run at full speed and wont break anywhere as easily.

If you need to use Cubase sooner, you might be able to buy a dongle locally or through an online retailer. It doesn’t need to be bought directly from Steinberg. You should be able to cancel your order.

Unless you’re missing details in your first post, it sounds like support is doing its job. You just got unlucky with their stock of dongles.

3

I got a new dongle on Amazon in two days:

The new dongle is great! Much smaller than the old one.

4

You can buy a new key here:

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SteinbergKey

5

Yeah. Just buy a new single elsewhere. But… I’m still waiting on a support ticket and it’s been almost a week. So, they aren’t very efficient over there.
A new smaller and classier dongle was also requested by many many people and Steinberg has yet to deliver.

6

Am a little surprised no-one (at support) appears to have mentioned this to you…

It gets you out of a hole for a bit; anecdotally, at their discretion the time period has been extended upon re-requesting/pleading/begging… :slight_smile:

7

He needs a dongle for this.

8

Indeed - I should have said, for future reference… :wink: