Ok, I don’t actually HATE having the dongle. It works well as far as not having to worry about online activations and having the ability to move from one computer the the next one…but since I’m moving my music production to a Macbook Pro (from a PC Tower) the following concernes me:
It’s waaay to big. I’m just not sure why it needs to be so large. I have seen some of the new WIFI usb adapters and they are not much bigger than the actual usb plug itself. I wish Steinberg, if they continue to use the dongle…which I know they will…would shrink it to such a size that you could just plug the thing in and forget it.
Or…
Develop a SD dongle! That would rock. I’m sure it would be nigh impossible and expensive but that would be the coolest option for laptop users.
I purchased Logic 9 and although I think it has several advantages over cubase (namely the interface…which has a much more natural and elegant design, not the Starship Enterprise look of Cubase)…I think it’s actual engine is terrible. Audio tracks are not automatically ARMED when you select them. You have to stop playback just to ARM audio tracks. You can’t insert effects on ARMED audio tracks until you un-arm them…the engine overloads so easily…Mixing does not feel realtime due to Logic’s “cheating” by not running all tracks at the determined latency…etc…
I think it would be great if SB could integrate the “dongle” somehow into their hardware so that it is always available and can be upgraded as part of the firmware process but this could be potentially quite involved I’d say because notwithstanding the current software, downloading of device firmware in and of itself would have to be incorporated (as well as the website) but that would probably be an industry first which if anyone could do it, it would be Steinberg.
I’d be wishing for all the manufacturers to (optionally) licence through the dongle too so I don’t have to trawl through tens of licences when updating/upgrading!
Also, I’d be after the plugin code to be stored on the dongle so that when I swap to another PC all my plugins are instantly available.
Add to this a ‘Buy Plugins’ button somewhere a-la AppStore and I’d be well happy.
Oh, and a ‘disable plugin entirely so Cubase doesn’t crash’ button please too
Can’t see that an SD one would be a solution - just as much of a PITA for people who don’t have a SD card on their main DAW, and aside from that I can’t see how it would work technically, SDs are storage, not code.
It would be nice not spending ages authorizing all those plugins on a new DAW, etc., but I can’t imagine steinberg makes their technology freely available, and the iLok seems to be way ahead in 3rd party acceptance.
