Oh, I’m so glad I’m not alone here.
Loyal Customers, lost out big on this fiasco.
You really need to make this right Steinberg.
YES, Why??
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I think people who have already owned and activated Spectralayers Pro 10 BEFORE the May Offers and the grace period.
Please hold off buying this product UNTIL Timo explains why we are NOT getting a decent deal for being the loyal customers.
15% as opposed to 40% less than a month ago. ( Not to mention you pay 1 upgrade fee and you miss paying for a version. SLP 9 - SLP 11 )
How is that fair ?
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Your math is wonky. New customers who bought SL Pro at $180 during the sale got a free upgrade to 11. So what?
I, as an already-existing user, only paid $69.
I’m happy 
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I actually was very happy about the upgrade price. I thought that the upgrade from 10 to 11 would be even more expensive, like for example around 100 euro or so. But I got it for only about 64 euro, cheap for an upgrade… what I would call a good deal.
SLL
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Me too!
he is talking about users that UPDATED from 9 to 10 with a 40% discount, and then got 11 on top of it.
It’s called a grace period. Screw with envy. Those of you who bought SL10 when it came out have enjoyed its features throughout that time. If you want to buy cheaper, hold on to the desire to have the latest and wait for the offers. It’s damn simple!
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Some people will always complain
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This isn’t about the grace period, or envy, just fairness.
Just 7 days ago, both in the premier video and in the chat Dom was pushing a 40% discount buying an upgrade in order to specifically get v11. Those of us who had already upgraded, at any point through the year, obviously cannot take advantage of that offer and only get 15%.
I, personally, don’t think that’s a particularly fair way of operating.
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In any case, it’s can say the same as regular upgrade value. Yjough i considered normally 40% but ok could make 25% at least. But 15% guys c’mon.
Despite that it’s very late here in Germany, I’d like to clarify the situation and add some perspective why it isn’t true that we discriminate users of SL10.
First, this latest Sales Promotion was aimed at users of SL10 who either came on board very late in the product cycle or haven’t updated their SL9 so far - thus, didn’t enjoy any of the SL10 features for about one year.
We’ve offered rebates for SpectraLayers in May 2023, November/December 2023 and now in May/June 2024. This means literally 3x times within 12 months with rebates on full and update products of up to 40%. It also should be considered that we kept pricing the same since we introduced SL at Steinberg in 2019, while we are also facing high inflation and higher costs in general.
With the release of SL10 we didn’t offer any kind of rebate, despite the fact that we were also running a Sales Campain, also in May. I cannot recall this had been an issue back then. Of course, one can always compare this current 15% with a Sales Campaign that offered 40% at any time in the past.
Summed up, this 15% offer is an additional gratitude that we provide this time in addition to 2x further Sales Campaigns. It brings the update price down to about 67 bucks or even less. At some point, there will be certainly Sales Actions coming during the lifecycle of SpectraLayers 11. The price difference between 15% and 40% update rebate from previous version is about $19.
I hope this added a well-intentioned perspective.
Many thanks for supporting our SpectraLayers product.
We truly hope you enjoy the new features and find the update appealing.
Very best,
Timo
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Hello Timo,
there isn’t yet a particular upgrade to version 11 from One.
Many thanks,
Timo
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I’m not familiar with, nor do I care about, their complaining habits, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I’m with them on this one, Steinberg is not doing any favors to those who are early adopters of their stuff, and if you ask me, they should.
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Hi Timo, thanks for taking the time!
What I guess is the point here is that it has been shown time and again that jumping on board early on Steinberg products is not a wise financial decision - if you consider price alone, that is - because it will be much cheaper in another sale down the line.
While of course older products tend to get outdated, forgotten, and cheaper, some loyal customers who tend to upgrade as soon as possible for whatever reason, are feeling unfavored, since it is customary in softwareland for things get a big discount on release.
In one way at least, it helps when the releases come out a bit rough around the edges and still need a x.x.xx or two.
If you want my guess it is that Steinberg knows these are professional tools, used mainly by professionals, for whom time saved is money saved, so we will update in spite of any pricing policies when the features are the right ones. So you don’t do much around releases, bank in on those users, and later on do a more attractive sales to scoop up the rest. No crime in that… but I dunno, I feel like I’ll try to wait more next time!
Specially with Nuendo 13, it was rough dealing with all the issues while paying a premium and soon enough bam, a huge discount.
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I think the upgrade price for SL10 to SL11 is perfectly fair with the 15% discount. 
For those that are upset about it, the context of the recent 40% deal is completely different. Not to mention, there will ALWAYS be some other great deal at some point in the future. We can’t get Black Friday prices every day of the week, folks. That’s how the game works. It sucks sometimes, but in all fairness, the 10 to 11 price is better than I expected.
My only problem with the SL11 is that it is not available on Linux. 
BTW I am in the process of migrating my studio away from Mac/Win to Linux. I’ve already eliminated Windows and converted all my Windows machines to Linux, and I’ve been very happy with the changes. In the future, I’ll be getting rid of my Macs. I’ve gotten to the point that Cubase/Nuendo 13 might be my last versions of those products before I’m switched over. Sadly, that goes for all my other Steinberg products too…
Each month I get closer, but since I’m not completely migrated to Linux just yet, I have to admire the good work that Robin did with SL11. It’s impressive. And since the upgrade price is a reasonable $67 for me, I will go ahead and do the upgrade this time. I think it will pay for itself in one session.
HOWEVER, I am also putting in yet another request to Steinberg to seriously consider Linux support, and I’m hoping for a little miracle in the future, with something… anything… some app, some plugin… maybe it will be one of the Qt-based apps first… SpectraLayers 12 on Linux would be incredible. WaveLab 13 on Linux would be fantastic. Or maybe a plugin… perhaps one of the plugins that uses JUCE? Of course HALion 8 on Linux would amazing. And then the big prize Cubase 14 (or 15) on Linux would frankly be a miracle.
In any case, I have to say that this SL11 update may well be my last SpectraLayers purchase, since each month I move more projects over to Linux, and at some point, my Macs will be decommissioned.
Anyway, congrats again to Robin and Steinberg for a great release. You’ve got me on this one! But please put in another vote for Linux support from me! Cheers!
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‘We decided that the only fair thing to do is not have any discounts, moving forward’
That’s where it ends.
I prefer the opportunity of some sort of discount
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@uarte Have you tried running SL through Wine on Linux ? I’ve heard that it works pretty well (but didn’t try myself).
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Agree with “The fantastic SL11” and with the extreme efficacy and diligence from developers with this utmost update version. There are countless and counting numbers of videos and reviews extensively on this subject, already.
About the specific qualifier some users here choose for the 15% discount on Update prices and actually about how to judge and qualify the overall SpectraLayers Update pricing. IMHO there is missing information and context that could clarify if it is; fair, loyal, caring… or otherwise.
For starts, the mentioned last month of 40% discount for updates of owners of v9 and prior versions (not applicable for V10 owners wanting to update back then, simply because V11 didn’t existed just yet).
This 40% was actually applied to their already higher update price, say above $90+, so they ended paying near to $50 for the V10 update, which would allow them use it as the latest version for only about 30 days (because the 30 days grace period started) and so Steinberg also granted them with a V11 free update.
Not including such V11 update would have meant that those acquiring on the last V10 sale, to become legacy product owners with a 30 days of a newly acquired product…
Note that there are several competing companies that do not grant a single day of grace, and the day a version ends, corresponds entirely to the last day of the product price, with no automatic updates included.
Therefore, comparing these people who finally updated their legacy versions at the last days of V10 cycle, who acquired it for around $50, in case of owning v9 (that’s 40% of $90s, regular last version update price) or with those whom by owning V7 or V8, had to pay $69 for the same update (40% of $120, their regular update price), in terms of money spent… versus those customers who already owned V10 from earlier times, who as explained could not take the opportunity from that last window of lowest price for V10’s complete cycle, is really joining horses from different courses. That sale was the last of a cycle, with an incentive (V11 update) since those have proven to be reluctant updaters.
In sum, owners of V9 who decided to be late updaters while doing it at the grace period, ended paying $15 to $19 less, and V7 and V8 owners ended paying the same $69, for the update to V11, than those others, also attentive owners of V10, whom have come to update rather fast, before June 30th.
The question remains, why these longtime customers haven’t updated earlier? For sure, it has varied responses, but they were lured to come (or choose/had to) into V11 only with that 40% and did it at a late time when one, two or three years had already past for them all along missing the improved, superb SpectraLayers versions 9 AND 10.
For us, using these versions 9 and 10, is hard to image someone waiting so long to come on board and missing on such steep innovation path…
And for them to be able to access it, they also had to be particularly attentive in order to spot the lowest Spectralayers yearly price cycle point and that attentiveness helped them ending with a payment that is $15 less than the actual power users; V10 owners who now found that have to pay $15 more, still on an update cost totaling $68 for access to the new tools and functions.
///That was the comparison of prices and different values, for customers acquiring (and using) software at different price points of the yearly cycle. In fact when we buy we pay for the future value that such acquisition will bring. Loyalty differentiation arise from vendors expecting to cater for varied consumer demands and it requires increased granularity within time, which usually requires greater sophistication of their tailored pricing.
In this case, the price paradox appeared because the new version launch pricing and the last cycle of sale price opportunities were too close in time, but they correspond to diverse incentives for quite different groups of customers needs.
I hope the extended context detailed in this comment helps dilute the apparent incentive disparity at play.
EDITED grammars and a few semantics, for clarity.
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Thank you for replying on this, Robin! Coming from someone whose software is now distributed by Steinberg and thus under the Steinberg umbrella to whatever degree (no idea what your contract is, but clearly you are an independent thinker!), you get yet another round of respect from me for even mentioning the word “Linux” in the context of running SL in the Steinberg forum! I’m almost shocked! 
But yes, one of the first things I did when I started switching to Linux was to test my favorite tools and plugins under Wine/Yabridge on Linux. Fortunately, many Windows pro audio apps and plugins do work great on Linux with Wine and Yabridge, but many do not. I’ve even got things like FabFilter and Melodyne working fine on Linux. But the ones that have the most trouble in my experience so far are typically ones with complex copy protection systems.
So I did test Steinberg on Wine and sadly, I could not get the new Steinberg authorization system to work and so I gave up. However, I will try again, and actually I had a new idea just writing this… perhaps the offline authorization technique will work with Wine… I will give it a shot.
And actually, if the offline method works with Wine, that will be a game changer for me, and I’ll be able to test if any/all of the other Steinberg apps and plugins work with Linux. I have a suspicion that the Qt-based products will have a slightly better chance of working. Crossing fingers. Will let you know how it goes! 
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Sadly, I can’t say how fantastic it is because it always crashes on startup. I’m running it on Windows 10. SL10 works fine. Does nobody else have this problem?