Yeah while I know Cubase is fine software, the combination of having to have a hardware dongle and the lack of ARA support is enough to probably push me to Studio One.

Hang in there guys, something big is coming, it's gonna be beautiful,everyone is gonna love it, trust me!!!

Primetime
Hang in there guys, something big is coming, it's gonna be beautiful,everyone is gonna love it, trust me!!!

lol

The hardware dongle has worked perfectly for me since I moved to Cubase several years ago. It's an amazing program. I love it. It's easy to use but deep at the same time - and can do pretty much anything you can imagine with an incredible suite of plugins and VSTis. It's been very stable on my rig. 

Ken Matson
Yeah while I know Cubase is fine software, the combination of having to have a hardware dongle and the lack of ARA support is enough to probably push me to Studio One.

Yes, my thoughts exactly. Also having to pay to renew the license every time there's an update - not that you have to update each time, but from my past experience, you don't get free updates within a year or anything. I am torn about which way to go.

I was reading the Cubase forums last night and the only thing that concerns me and I'm sure going to piss off a lot of cakewalk customers is that Cubase will not work with 32 bit VST plugins hence their own page about it:
 
32-bit plug-ins can't be re-enabled, since those are not supported by Cubase 9.
 
 

35mm

Jari

husker
Just posted on KVR:
 
"Actually the price for the competitive price was €359 until today. In order to make it available as soon as possible we just reduced the price to €289. After the Welcome Offer Promo the price will go back to €359."
 
So, 290$ in the US probably.

24 hours ago when I was looking for alternative DAW Sweetwater's price for Cubase Pro Competitive Crossgrade was already dropped from $449.99 to $325.00.
 
And this: "This is a specially priced version of Cubase Pro 9.5 for registered owners of one of the following: Ableton Live Standard/Suite, Apple Logic, Avid Pro Tools/Pro Tools HD, Cakewalk Sonar Platinum/Professional, Image-Line FL Studio Signature/Producer, MOTU Digital Performer, PreSonus Studio One Professional, or Propellerhead Reason 6+." More here. (it's exactly the same ad that I saw 24 hours ago)

Yep same as I saw 24hrs ago too. The OP did say starting on 23rd though. We will wait and see. You know it's the end of Cakewalk when a sales guy from Steinberg posts an offer in this forum without getting banned :/ Sad.

Nevertheless, I think it's an generous offer and I'm going to buy Cubase tomorrow.

Rain

jermusic78
 
One thing that I would absolutely LOVE though would be for Steinberg to acquire the softsynth Rapture Pro from Cakewalk.   Rapture Pro was released in 2015 and is one of my favorite soft synths, it is VSTi, AU and AAX compatible.  Rapture Pro is a great workstation plugin and I say that as someone who owns Steinberg HALion 6 as stated above (also great).  I would like for Steinberg to save Rapture Pro if possible.  A DAW can be replaced and while migrating projects can be a pain, it can always be done via MIDI files at the end of the day, especially if most of your projects are MIDI based like mine are.

If only...
 
Even long after I switched to a different DAW, Cakewalk synths remain go-to for me. In fact, the only other 3rd party synth that I use as much is... Steinberg's own Retrologue, a most brilliant synth.
 
I have a tough time imagining myself without Rapture/Dimension and Z3t4...

Well - at least we can use Rapture, Dimension Pro and Z3TA 1 and 2 without problems in other DAW's for the time being. It's too bad I already switched to Cubase Pro since April this year, so the offer does not apply to me. At the other hand, I could upgrade from LE to Artist to Pro in 3 steps - And every step was a low action price. Nice.
 
Anyway - I never found the USB eLicener inconvenient, and it never gave me any problem. I also stored other licenses on that key. Oh, and Cubase Pro is bundled with some nice synth's too. Retrolouge is already mentioned, but I also love Padshop Pro, Groove Agent and Halion Sonic SE. I think people that work a lot with MIDI will find Cubase a nice DAW to work with. The ease of using and editing MIDI in Cubase was the main reason to switch for me (that - and the Control Room).

KVR just confirmed:
 
"At Sweetwater USD 255 + USD 35 for the eLicenser dongle"
 
So $290 total

Yeah this is a great offer,  I'm so glad I didn't fall for that $199 subscription offer back in October, this is only $130 more than that.