Cubase 5

[Jake]

Hi all,

 

Got a bit of a query for anyone who is familiar with Cubase 5.

 

Our Head of Music has bought in a "Cubase 5 Educational - 10+ Users" edition for £250.

 

Now..Cubase 5 comes with a USB dongle...thing is I kind of expected to see 10 dongles as it was supposed to be a 10+ user edition. However the package has turned up today, its a single box with 1 dongle in it. I havent tried to install it or anything yet but my suspicions have been raised.

 

I hunted around for a bit on the Cubase forums and various suppliers and I simply couldnt find anyone , anywhere talking about a 10+ User version, everyone talked about a single user version (usually costing around £200, give or take).

 

I got the weblink from the HoD for the product and found that they were selling 5+ user , 10+ user and 25+ user versions (with the 5+ being the same price as the 10+ and the 25+ being hugely cheaper for some odd reason).

 

Which has only further served to get my suspicions up that something dodgy is going on here....

 

So...has anyone had any experience of the Cubase 5 Educational edition, or heard of a 10+ user license, or if such a thing exists got any experience of how you would have it working on 10 PCs with just 1 dongle. (assuming you cant server attach the dongle)

 

Thinking about it , I'm thinking that the prices are bulk purchase prices, 10+ at £250, 25+ at £169 discount. Why they have then allowed him to order only 1 copy at the 10+ price I dont know, an oversight maybe.

 

Jake

Edited October 28, 2010 by Jake

[dhicks]

So...has anyone had any experience of the Cubase 5 Educational edition, or heard of a 10+ user license, or if such a thing exists got any experience of how you would have it working on 10 PCs with just 1 dongle. (assuming you cant server attach the dongle)

 

Last time I had anything to do with Cubase (about 6 months ago) you had to have a dongle for each copy you wanted to run - there's been a couple of threads on here recently dealing with how best to hide the dongle away (having it on an internal USB port seems to work quite well).

 

--

David Hicks

[Jake]

Last time I had anything to do with Cubase (about 6 months ago) you had to have a dongle for each copy you wanted to run - there's been a couple of threads on here recently dealing with how best to hide the dongle away (having it on an internal USB port seems to work quite well).

 

--

David Hicks

 

 

Yeah the more I think on it , the more I am convinced that what has happened here is that the website lists the item as 10+ users and a price but doesnt indicate anywhere that it is a price PER user, so the HoD has bought a quantity of 1 thinking that it covers him for 10 PCs.

 

Having said that, he actually needs 40 PCs worth anyway, so the 10 wouldnt have helped much anyway but thats a seperate issue. Looks like I will have to explain to him that he has paid £250 for ONE copy and will have to stump up the other £8,000 or so for the other 39 copies.

[powdarrmonkey]

Last time I had anything to do with Cubase (about 6 months ago) you had to have a dongle for each copy you wanted to run

 

Ack.

 

 

.

[TLARWise]

You may want to look here for a cheaper copy of Cubase 5 - Steinberg Cubase 5 Music Production Software DAW Education Version at Music Village Education

[Jake]

You may want to look here for a cheaper copy of Cubase 5 - Steinberg Cubase 5 Music Production Software DAW Education Version at Music Village Education

 

Hello hello...thats a much nicer price. Gets the price for 40 down to around 7k.

 

Thanks for that

 

(Steinberg have confirmed with me that there isnt a 10 user edition and that a single license is around the £250 mark normally, so that would appear to confirm that its a bulk price at the place where the HoD got it from. Well...thats not going to be too good a piece of news for him, just spent £40,000 on his two new music IT suites and I'll have to break it to him now that he needs to stump up another £15k for the Sibelius and Cubase that he wants )

[dhicks]

he actually needs 40 PCs worth anyway

 

Would Cubase Essential suffice for the classroom, with maybe three or four "studio" PCs with the full version of Cubase on available?

 

--

David Hicks

[Jake]

Quite possibly and its certainly an option I will be presenting him with next week. (along with an open source alternative)

[rad]

We have RM One PC's in our Music lab, well only 15 pc's and hide the USB in the back which is covered by the pack panel. I would certainly come up with a way to hide them inside the pc.

[MYK-IT]

We have 2 Music Suites that use Cubase and Sibelius.

 

As previously mentioned, to reduce costs you could always purchase Cubase Studio 5 edition.

 

We have Cubase Sudio 5 on all the student computers, and Cubase 5 on the staff's and Sound Engineer's Computers.

 

We purchased full (and upgrade) versions from Counterpoint MTC Ltd - UK's Leading Music Education Supplier

 

Cubase Studio 5 was £125.00 (ex vat).

[Jake]

We have 2 Music Suites that use Cubase and Sibelius.

 

As previously mentioned, to reduce costs you could always purchase Cubase Studio 5 edition.

 

We have Cubase Sudio 5 on all the student computers, and Cubase 5 on the staff's and Sound Engineer's Computers.

 

We purchased full (and upgrade) versions from Counterpoint MTC Ltd - UK's Leading Music Education Supplier

 

Cubase Studio 5 was £125.00 (ex vat).

 

Thanks , extra options to present to him are always welcome. What are the fundamental differences between Studio 5 and 5?

[Marci]

No mp3 encoder in studio 5, and no intelligent pitch correction...

Mainly stuff to do with audio, so if they're just sequencing with vstis, you may as well get studio, export as wav, and use lame or any other free encoder if mp3 output is required.

[Jake]

No mp3 encoder in studio 5, and no intelligent pitch correction...

Mainly stuff to do with audio, so if they're just sequencing with vstis, you may as well get studio, export as wav, and use lame or any other free encoder if mp3 output is required.

 

Excellent, Yup no problem, they can do without the encoder. Thanks, another option for the HoD to consider.

[Robbocop]

Sorry to be joining this thread so late. It sounds like you've sorted everything out but I'll just add a couple of things if I may. We're a Steinberg main dealer so we get asked about these things all the time. Yes, Cubase is sold on a per licence basis, and you're right that it should not have been possible for your dealer to sell you a single licence at the 10+ price break. Effectively you've been sold a cheaper product at the full single licence price, which is either a mistake or profiteering. Hopefully a mistake. Cubase Studio is our best seller for schools, who often buy a single copy of the "full" Cubase for a recording studio computer. Essential is half the price of Studio and is actually really good too. There's a comparison chart here Feature Comparison :  | http://www.steinberg.net/ which should tell you everything you need to know. All these products do need the usb key (eLicencer) and you do get one per licence. Please make sure you secure these, as Steinberg will charge you for new licences if you lose them! Full info on the eLicencer is here USB-eLicenser :  | http://www.steinberg.net/

[dhicks]

We're a Steinberg main dealer so we get asked about these things all the time.

 

Ooh, as you're here: can we buy, say, one copy of Cubase, install it on 3 computers and simply move the license dongle between machines as we need? Could pupils take a key home and use the software there?

 

Can we use Cubase over a remote connection - could we stick a bank of PCs in a cupboard somewhere, each with a plugged-in USB dongle, and connect via RDP? Does that work okay, sound-quality wise?

 

--

David Hicks

[Robbocop]

Hi David. I need to be careful what I tell you here so let me start by saying I'm giving you a personal opinion which you will need to check with Steinberg before you act Looking at Steinberg's end user licence agreement (EULA) Terms & Conditions*:**|*http://www.steinberg.net/ this part caught my attention:

If the software is protected by the eLicenser alone, you may install a license for the software on one or at most 3 computers which are in your possession. The software may be used only on one of the computers at the same time by using the USB-eLicenser. If the software (i) is protected by the Soft-eLicenser (alone or together with the USB-eLicenser) or (ii) has been sold to the first end user together with other software and/or hardware (hereinafter "OEM software") or (iii) the software can be used only for a running time of 30 days (hereinafter "Trial Version Software"), you may install and use a license for the software only on one computer which is in your possession.

The use of the software within a network is illegal where there is the possibility of a contemporaneous multiple use of the program.

Note that you can use the software only on computers which belong to you. That would appear to make students with their own computers ineligible. You'll have to decide whether it's possible for you to fool the eLicencer on your network and run more instances that you have licences for. If you can't, it seems that they are happy for you to run it across the network Or did I read that wrong? I'm sorry though Dave I really don't know how good the audio performance is when using RDP across a network. I know the latest version allows it, bidirectional too, but I haven't hear it for myself. I hope that helps a little at least and I'm sorry I can't really advise you how to proceed.

[SteveJ]

Just thought I'd mention, If you're looking for 40 Sibelius, it shouldn't come to £7k, more like £3k as they offer a volume license for £79 each for 10 or more copies

[Robbocop]

Sibelius has always been a pretty good deal for education. Basically the smallest multi seat licence is for 5 users and costs about the same as 2 singles. In other words, it doesn't make sense to buy more than one single seat. Once you own a site licence you can add extra seats any time you like in any quantity at a really low price. Much better than most music software licence schemes, I must say!