UR44 - Steinberg's drivers support policy

Steinberg Hardware UR Series
1

Hi,
I’m a long time Cubase user and recently due to problems with audio interface I own I’ve started thinking of buying an interface from Steinberg (UR44). However I’ve got a few questions. It would be awesome if someone from Steinberg could answer it but ur44 users are also welcome to give their opinions.

Quick intro first :slight_smile:
I’ve used M-audio Profire 610 firewire audio interface for years. I gotta say I had been very happy with quality of it but there were often some problems with drivers and eventually m-audio showed middle finger to profire range users and stopped supporting it at all. They claim that firewire is dead so there’s no use in supporting profire models any longer (If anyone is interested in the topic I recommend reading this thread: http://community.m-audio.com/m-audio/topics/why-will-not-there-be-more-updates-to-profire-os-x-sierra). I get their point, but they could open source the drivers and let users sort it out…

To sum up I got audio interface that look like brand-new unit but can’t use it cause I don’t have fresh drivers (using mac mini 2013 with Sierra osx). My question is: Can I be sure that if I purchase UR44 it’s going to be supported for many years? What’s Steinberg’s policy about it?

Best, Kuba

2

Hi,
USB is the standard connection for almost everything these days and Yamaha is developing one driver for all USB devices. A good example is the CI series. The CI2 has been released in 2009 and the drivers are still compatible. There is no guarantee that the driver support will last for 5 or 10 years because no one knows how operating systems and the hardware will look like in a few years from now but we’ll try to support the current UR interfaces as long as possible.

3

in relation to the UR44… I’ve had mine for a couple of years, they are well built, solid as a rock and performs really really well, never had an issue with it.

My only quib is… I wish they would build one with a 16+ inputs or make a driver that allows for multiple units to be used at once or perhaps the ability to daisy chain units in series where they can be accessed using Steinberg’s single driver… not being in the know how these things work my wishes are probably more simplistic to the reality of how things work in data land.

Rob