New here (but actually old Cubase user). Hence this post.
Have recently come back to Cubase in 11 and the new 12. Have to say looks great so far.
This has made me look at some extremely old files from when I used cubase back in the dark ages around Atari - 2005 days etc. From old back ups of songs files I think I left some good stuff there as I moved on to other things. New cubase wants nothing to do with these files so I assume there must be some way of getting them back so as to re use them today?
Iāve briefly gone through a couple of threads and articles saying you need to reinstall a cubase from back then (with dongles etc ) in order to do this ? Really
I havenāt got anything from back then and hope there is some other much easier way than this.
I canāt be the only one that would like to get back some old old archive files from the past and rehash them into new cubase
Anyone have any positive experiences with this? Did you get your old files back? And how?
Cubase sx3 was the last version to support import of .arr files. That was years ago so you have been away for a long time. Steinberg keep sx3 available to download so you can run it and convert files. I donāt know if there is a dongle less version. Obviously the top version did require a dongle. There also may be problems getting it to run on win 10/11 but I havenāt tried so I donāt know.
Do a search as this has been brought up many times
Thanks for the reply. Yes Iāve read a few different posts here and there but hardly anyone can say what to do . It seems extremely complicated - download old cubase (but its only an update) then you need a dongle (from 20 yrs ago!) .
Iāve contacted support and asked for some help. I even suggested this - they have an upload service where we can send in old files (.arr .all) and they convert them and send them back. Being these kind of files they are of course really small so no hassle there.
That should be easy to set up? There must a be quite a few people that have this problem that could easily be solved I think .
AFAIK SX3 runs with the same dongle than C11. It should be possible to download and just install it. I also think I remember Steinberg kept SX3 and a suitable license on the E-Lizenser for the very reason of converting old Cubase Atari, Audio and VST versions.
I remember I did this some years ago when I found some old CD-Rs with *arr and *all files from Cubase 1.0 PC days. The then current version was 8 I think and I did download SX3 from the Steinberg FTP, installed it and it would work with the license of Cubase 7.
But that was already quite some years ago, so I donāt really know how that works if you bought into Cubase starting with 11. You might want to just give it a try.
You need the zip file called āSX3.1_CD_Installer_PC.zipā from the steinberg ftp server.
Itās covered by the 11pro eLicense and will run on Windows 10.
The" SX3 update" will only update a previously installed SX3 version.
Well thought Iād update. A positive outcome! Thanks for the advice good people. Ended up downloading sx3 from here obviously went through the elicencing and loaded up nice on win 10.
Actually brought back many memories looking at that lovely metallic light blue hue of the old software. Loaded in my .arr and .all files perfectly and resaved as cprās. Loaded everything back into 12. Really great thing to be able to do.
I dont suppose they can export the ARR files as midi data?, I dont use Cubase anymore havenāt for years, I was an original Pro 24 user who migrated to Fruityloops when Cubase started getting so expensive, especially with midi and dongle expansions and I got Midex, FDI unit etc and then Atari went under I stuck it out for ages, still had all the old gear but sold it about 5 years ago. didnāt think to convert my ARR files to midi. Is it a lost cause? ive just found all the old discs got the data retrieved and onto a CD thanks to a friend who still has heaps of gear, but no Cubase.
Wow 2 yrs! As it turned out the midi data I loaded up was gone . It saw the file .arr etc but there was nothing there although of course there must have been. I just assumed maybe the file was corrupted in some way and forgot about it all. Shame because I could not recreate what Iād tried so many years before but still I enjoy the new system we have now!
I have just been through this whole debacle trying to recover some .all files with mixed results, Still amazed at Steinberg`s poor appreciation of this issue (one of the main reasons after the dongle/e-licenser software that I moved to Studio One - which is brilliant BTW). So here are some of my learnings.
I haven`t yet found a way to access my .sng files (from the Atari days)
I downloaded Cubase SX3
Imported (or dragged in) the .all file (only worked less than 50% of the time. With many files, nothing happened [no error, no crash, nothing] with others they started loading got to about 21% and then programme just hung (had to ctrl+alt+del to kill it)
With the files that did load I tried saving as a MIDI file and got just one of the tracks when opened in Studio One
Read a bit more and found that I should avoid MIDI file 0 (which I had) but also to make sure each track had a different MIDI number and was selected. So then:
I imported a number of old tracks; using a Microsoft General MIDI player as output.
Deleted all empty tracks
Set a unique MIDI channel for each track (make sure any drum/perc tracks are set to MIDI channel 10)
Manually selected all parts (e.g. drag a box so that all tracks were selected)
Went to File/Export/MIDI File
Selected a location to save the file to
Chose my MIDI file settings (basically default but make sure MIDI File 0 is NOT selected)
and exported
As I said at the beginning, I was only successful in less than 50% of the attempts but using the method above I got separate tracks displayed in studio One.
I guess the younger folks at Steinberg have not been through the pain of three (!) different file formats and probably think we long time users (I was a Cubase/Pro 24 user for over 30 years) are all 6 feet under.
Steinbergās utter disregard for this topic is shameful, I mean it is not as if the web isn`t littered with requests (current year 2024) for some form of conversion tool.
It absolutely years ago. Why on earth didnāt you convert when you had the chance? I did them all years ago. Hardly anything is that backward compatible.
But to be frank he has a point. Mine also did not work either. And why should Steinberg not have some little file conversion tool that would enable us to quickly and easily re format old files into the latest incarnation so that we can use them again but in the latest software.?
