cubase dongle questions mac/pc

[supernova777]

im trying to find info on the cubase 3.0x version dongles.
does anyone know what they looked like?
was it the red printer port dongle?
i know the red ones are for v3.5 / v3.7 and i think also for v4.0
but are they for v3.0, v3.01, v3.02, v3.03, v3.04, v3.05 aswell?

after being in contact with a rep from steinberg they suggested i try the blue dongle to run older versions of cubase
saying that theres a chance it could work. im trying to use the blue dongle from Cubase VST 5/32 given to me by jerry (thanks jerry)

was the real cubase 3.05 dongle the same but red? or was the red one introduced with 3.5 / 3.7?
im having trouble finding anything on legacy cubase because theres so many new versions of cubase that come up in google results so i cant see any dongle pics

blue dongle pictured here:


atari dongle for 3.x is also red, does this mean all 3.x versions use red?

[supernova777]

http://fr.audiofanzine.com/sequenceur-generaliste/steinberg/Cubase-3-Score/

found this pic of cubase score 3.0
same dongle as 3.5, red parallel dongle

[MacTron]

found this pic of cubase score 3.0
same dongle as 3.5, red parallel dongle

Those parallel/printer dongles aren't for Mac. The good news is no dongles are needed for those Cubase for Mac versions at his time (2.x, 3.x, 4.x )... AFAIK...

[supernova777]

really?> thres no cubase dongle for any version of mac?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.atari.st/HLhSD2brIt0

according to the comments on this thread
black dongle = cubase 2+
red dongle = cubase 3+
blue dongle = cubase 5+

V2 dongle only works with V2.
V3 dongle only works with V3 and Score 2.
Score 2 is the later improved V3 with a better score module.

im trying to find a pic of the black dongle
i think my friend used to have one

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/cubase$20audio$20xt$203.05$20dongle/alt.steinberg.cubase/r-_2Rlj9eDM/XzZflTiKXQoJ
this poster claims he bought cubase audio 3.05 in 1997 and it came with a red dongle

[supernova777]

does anyone have the cd from this package?
it has a legacy installer on it that im after (of the previous version before 3.5, the 3.05 versions - cubase score 3.05)
like i said the steinberg rep told me that the blue dongle works for some older cubase versions.. i dont have any of the pc installers of v4 or v3.7 or v3.5 to test this theory tho but perhaps v3.5 VST is the version that will run with the cubase 5 vst/32 blue dongle  becuase it is is "VST" aswell? dont quote me on that ! i havent confirmed but thats what i was told by the rep

in the meantime, while looking, i found a dongle crack for v3.05
and the installer for "cubase audio xt 3.05"
but the dongle crack is for "score"
im trying to run it having installed "Audio XT" (the installer  file is like 8mb believe it or not)
and its saying "score dongle detected. install cubase score"
so if i could just get the score installer then id have a matching installer+crack
and working version that can work on win95, win98, win98se + winME

again please excuse the offtopic for a short period
i just really want to find this and then i can post this info elsewhere afterwards

needed to get a working installer/crack matching pair any one of the following SPECIFIC versions:
-cubase score 3.0 installer
-cubase audio xt 3.03 installer
-cubase audio xt 3.01 installer
-cubase score 3.05 installer
-cubase audio xt 3.05 crack**

[DieHard]

As Mactron Mentioned, no dongles at all EVER needed for Mac version VST 5 and below...

On Mac, from what I remember, version 3 was authorization Floppy (decremented installs) and 4 went to a CD with a challenge and response code needed after install, version 5 needed an original Copy protected CD (which we successfully imaged for backup purposes).

On the PC, I always loaded it with the dongle that came in the package for clients... so I never tried swapping versions with dongles; I do know that VST 5/32 will only run on a 5/32 dongle and that the standard 5 dongle will not work; lastly I remember on the Cubase forum that many were "transferring" their parallel licenses to USB, so I think you can setup a master USB dongle if you manage to get at least one of the original Parallels for each version.

[supernova777]

pictured above: CUBASE VST 3.02 for mac (3.0 came out in may1996, 3.02 updated dec 1996 i believe)

here u can clearly see how the 3.0 cds also include the "cubase audio XT" version which provide extra support for digidesign/akai/yamaha hardware (audioMedia III, session8)
its the same for windows cds.. all 3.x cubase versions included, 1) cubase standard 2) cubase score 3) cubase audio XT  installers on the cd...

[DieHard]

AFAIK… By version 3.5 the rerelease dates for PC & Mac versions were too "out of sync" to be on the same cd

[supernova777]

AFAIK… By version 3.5 the rerelease dates for PC & Mac versions were too "out of sync" to be on the same cd

3.5 was actually the last time they were sort of in sync from what ive researched (from teh wizoo mac book)
click the link to my other post i detailed this very clearly! the mac 3.5 came out aug 97 and the pc 3.5 came out oct 97
it was what happened after 3.5 was out (fall 1997) till the release of cubase 4.0 for mac (june 1998) that they got really out of sync
i think u are speed reading diehard;)

and the vst 3.5 arent on the same cd at all
there are seperate vst 3.5 discs for both mac + pc
but they all have the 3 different version product installers (for either mac or win)
same as detailed on the 3.02 cd itself pictured above
making the 3.x cds all very similar, with the exception of 3.7  for pc which was the pc's version of 4.0 which lacked alot f the upgrades that 4.0 had on mac, which is why they never made 4.0 for pc! i think they referred to 3.7 pc version as "vst/24" for pc??

ie: the pc version of 3.5 will have the 3.02 cubase audio xt version on it that im after (to get a working crack/version)!

[supernova777]

also i got in contact with my old friend who had cubase that i used back in 1997 and he swears
his dongle was actually green.. which is a cubase 2.x dongle for pc - i found some really ancient forum posts
but no pictures of this, i also saw talk of a black cubase dongel for early 2.x version but i think that might be for atari only

or maybe the green dongle is for score versions (for pc obviously)

[supernova777]

On Mac, from what I remember, version 3 was authorization Floppy (decremented installs)

from spring 1996, way before floppy-less powerpc macs!
in the beige 600 series days
before the advent of the g3
did the beige g3 have a floppy drive?

[DieHard]

did the beige g3 have a floppy drive?

Yes...

Sorry if the Cubase info is incorrect, I am going by memory and that was a long time ago; I can just tell you that by the time VST 4 came out, it was like an "arms race" with the PC and mac camps trying to get ahead of each other. So probably safe to say there were never any Dual VST 4.0/5.0 (mac and PC) install disks ever made.

PC users have had to wait almost two years for many of the improvements which graced version 4 of Steinberg's popular sequencing package on the Mac platform. Now, however, they've leapfrogged straight to version 5, a major upgrade which incorporates all of those improvements and more.

THIS article explains More...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep00/articles/steinbergcubase.htm

[supernova777]

i have read the article. i have read many many articles.. i have detailed information.
im not going by memory, im going by having recently put in a serious effort to know the details once
and for all... and im sharing that info here with the world.. as i do with pretty much everything...
so that someone else such as myself, can have an easier time of locating this information then i did.
because it was not so simple to dedeuce, cross referencing articles + Books to come up with a clearer picture then any one given article seems capable of portraying..

its easy to imagine that the cubase programmers were always focused on the mac first, following the initial atari release of course.. 1st of all they were focused on atari, then somehow mac got added to the mix.. then they got really determined and made a pc version... pc being last on the totem pole of priorities clearly..
then after the 2.x releases they focused back 100% on mac which is why cubase vst was originally made for mac (cubase vst 3.0 may 1996) and pc was still lagging behind in development, as it always had been for steinberg.. they only incremented the main version number when there was significant changes to the engine i guess.. which is why.. cubase for pc lagged behind the 4.0 release (but they did manage to add alot of features that made 3.7 on pc almost equivelent to 4.0 on mac)
but they entirey skipped 4.0 because they never made it equal to the 4.0 vst release for mac which had a ton of new features.... the features detailed on the article u just linked (That i also have linked many many times;)

FEATURES NEW TO PC v5.0 (BUT ALREADY IN MAC v4.0) (the absence of which was the reason cubase 3.7 was still in 3.x level of versioning, rather then 4.0)
15,360 ppqn internal resolution.
Folder Tracks.
Marker Tracks.
Long Track Names.
Transport Bar display options.
User-definable Toolbar and key commands.
Extended Inspector.
Improved drag and drop.
Enhanced Toolbox (including Range Selection tool).
New Controller Editor.
Grooves and Logical presets can be saved to disk.
Window Sets.
Dedicated MIDI Track Mixer

looking at this list.. these are not small updates at all but huge additions to functionalty and had these features been implemented on pc *in time* there would have been a pc 4.x edition for sure
the funny thing is tho.. when pc eventually caught up..the version of 5.1 vst/32 on pc actually got given a few small advantages ... rewire2 + also (due to being for pc) compatibility with directx plugins aswell but this was already in v3.x of course.. ive been trying to find out exactly which pc cubase version was teh first to support directx but i havent found the answer as of yet.

small recap of timeline facts:

• May 1996 Cubase VST 3.0 (mac) released (FIRST VST version ever for mac or pc)
• July 1996 Cubase 2.8 (win pc) released (no vst support)
• Aug 1997 Cubase VST 3.5 (mac) released
• Oct 1997 Cubase VST 3.5 (win pc) released (finally a VST version for pc 17 months after mac)
• Oct 1998 Cubase VST 4.0 (mac) mac surges forward by leaps + bounds past the pc
• Dec 1999 Cubase VST 3.7 (win pc) still lagging behind trying hard to keep up with the mac version

so this list is very confusing and would be conveyed more simply with 2 seperate timelines

maybe there was a cubase vst 3.0 version for windows but im pretty sure there wasnt? im pretty sure im getting this fact from the cubase for mac wizoo guide book from 1998 (authors name is Ralf Kleinermanns) the early windows versions of cubase were more like updates to 2.x, this is exactly the version im trying to get working for my windows box atm its called "Cubase Audio XT for windows 3.02" notice the lack of "VST"..

"Audio XT" versions existed for both mac + pc, and was their flagship product prior to the advent of "VST" versions.. and was all about the extended hardware support for digidesign (dae/tdm) (prior to asio)

again this is all my interpretation of what i have read... so its possible i have made a mistake.. but im pretty sure this is accurate! this info is definately not on wikipedia so clearly.. i actually made a few edits + updates + corrections to the info on wikipedia just last nite ! LOL;)

[DieHard]

Great work with the Cubase history, I had a few friends that were using 2.x on the PC and I ported most of them to Mac

compatibility with directx plugins aswell

I think that was actually a weakness on the PC and one big reason I disliked the PC version was directX plugins… I preferred the "Native" plugins on the PC since the DirectX plugins did not support Automation… a HUGE negative, while the native plugins did.

Automating Knobs and sliders on reverbs, delays, and other FX was a creative bonus and added many more possibilities with exact same Plugin on the Mac side over the DirectX plugin on the PC side.  The other reason I chose Cubase for Mac was that I tested some very fast PCs against some very slow macs (PIII Dual 800 against 500 APG G4s) and the G4s always beat the PCs when it came to latency… playing virtual instruments via a MIDI controller was always so frustrating on PCs, damn VSTis triggered horribly; even G3s played MIDI drum machines with almost zero latency.  This held true for most DAWs, not just Cubase back in the day, especially when comparing the stock sound manager in a Mac against a standard PCI sound card. The ASIO II drivers included with Pro sound cards was a closer fight, but the mac was always faster when it came to triggering VSTis.  This was obviously not the programmers fault, I think Windows itself, just had to many layers of APIs to make calls to before actually getting to the hardware layer.

[supernova777]

thanks diehard... its confusing to peice together small bits of info together to form a larger cohesive clear vision.. im really surprised that noone anywhere on the internet has been able to document this type of stuff.. (the http://www.vintagesynth.com site's synth timeline comes to mind when i say this, but as far as i know he never included the daw software info) then again if i was to find someone elses documentation or timeline project now after having done all the work of trying to figure out all the versions it would definately  be a homer simpson "DOH!" moment

re;directx plugins.. good point re: no automation
i didnt think of this (as i said im getting my facts from researching past articles.. not from world experience, my only oldschool cubase experience was with cubase 3.x on pc during the years 1997-1998 and i didnt configure the system, it wasnt my studio, i was only about 18-20 years old in awe of my friends studio + gear) it may have even been cubase 2.x, we definately didnt use any plugins for instruments.. we used a real juno 60, tb303, ensoniq mirage sampler, and some other real drum machines, i think alesis + boss, we had no tr-808:)

i do remember using plugins "destructively" process-rendering rather then realtime effects of incoming recorded signals... my friend played keyboards + i did the drum parts but i really did use these directx plugs to great effect to sharpen up the drum samples .. combining samples..
i dont remember if it was in cubases' wave editor u spoke of recently or if it was in "sound forge" or "cool edit pro", possibly both, i remember using the mix/paste function to combine + layer drum samples to beef up kicks etc

of course g4's didnt exist at this point.. either did B&W g3s... it must have been a pentium II intel PC we were using at the time... probably 300mhz MMX or something .. as i said in my earlier post i really think that the programmers were alot more enthusiastic about programming on mac, i think the overall approach to programming mac apps even way back then was more object oriented? and yes everyone knows how troublesome pcs were in the mid 90s.. install apps in the wrong order and files were overwritten without warning... bam! BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!

[supernova777]

screenshot source is from http://web.archive.org/web/19980214231508/http://midi-classics.com/p7897.htm a backup dated (feb 1998) but maybe published before then

before version 3.x vst the cubase diamond appears grey
the fact they changed the dongle to red (square/diamond shape)
coincides with the icon changing color from grey to red
coincidence? probably not! cubase marketing department !

but this pic intrigues me aswell because in the wizoo book it basically eludes to their being no vst version for pc until 3.5 ...

checking the earliest archive of the steinberg site (dec 1996)
http://web.archive.org/web/19961227200105/http://steinberg.net/
i find this page: http://web.archive.org/web/19971222065508/http://steinberg.net/products/demos/index.html
it shows
Cubase Score 3.0 for Windows
Cubase Score 3.02 VST for Power Macintosh
windows version clearly not showing vst title..

but yet this screenshot above shows VST in the titlebar..
maybe this screenshot above is 3.x, x being somewhere between 3.0 + 3.5?
im trying to find out which is the first pc version to have this title of "VST"

[DieHard]

The Steinberg FTP archives kind of confirm what I remember...

They have the PC (pre-VST) versions as 2.6 and 2.8 (I installed this one for many clients... never 2.6) and 3.05 (including audio XT version)

See Here.. ftp://ftp.steinberg.net/Archives/Cubase_preVSTversions/PC/Cubase2x/Standard/

They start "VST" on the PC at 3.6
See Here: ftp://ftp.steinberg.net/Archives/Cubase_VST/PC/
Yet, 3.5 was also called the "Cubase audio VST package" - maybe that is your pic ?
See Quote from: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/nov97/cubasevst.html

Cubase Audio XT v3.05 has all the features of Cubase Score v3.05, but adds extended support for the following legacy digital audio I/O recording hardware systems: the Akai DR8 and DR16, Digidesign Session 8 and Audiomedia III, and Yamaha's CBX5. Although ASIO drivers are being developed for Audiomedia III, it is unikely that the other devices will be capable of VST support. The current Cubase Audio VST v3.5 package consists of Cubase Audio XT v3.05 (with continued hardware support) and Cubase Audio VST v3.5 (which is functionally identical to Cubase Score VST and does not support the hardware). Got it?

Here is a cool read me on Audio XT and other 3.05 versions, also designated "Pre-VST"
ftp://ftp.steinberg.net/Archives/Cubase_preVSTversions/PC/Cubase30/cubas305.readme
so it appears, just to confuse us, that the "Cubase Audio VST Pacakage" included Cubase 3.05 which was designated "Pre-VST"

I was shocked to see all these babies still avail via FTP... you should probably download the entire Archive ASAP, you know they will delete the files and Structure soon (I just filezilla-ed the whole damn VST and Pre-VST archives)

[supernova777]

3.5 is supposedly the first vst windows version 
they dont put the original versions on the ftp
they just post the updates (neither do they explain that thats what they are doing)
that is the 3.5 -> 3.6 update, thats why its listed under vst versions
3.6 was just an update to the actual boxed 3.5 version
(that was in the pic i posted at the top of this thread?)
here ill post the box pic nice + clear again in high res

[supernova777]

i just noticed this is the exact pic from the cubase v3.5 box above..
must have been scanned from the cubase box ??

[Metrophage]

I have what appears to be a Mac Cubase dongle. It is red with ADB connectors and says "Cubase Audio" on the side. I have never tried to see what versions it would run.