After 14+ hours since my last post of trying various product re-installs, manually moving/deleting vstsound files, resolving/re-resolving version dupes/conflicts, copying files from my old PC from at least 5 different Steinberg related locations in /ProgramData, /Program Files, /user/me/AppData, etc., I can now open a Project and have it play without errors. In total, I’ve spent about 29 hours from the point I started installation of Steinberg software on the new system, excluding other sound vendor software. Those took about 6 hours, most of which was waiting for downloads
What I’ve learned about Steinberg
- Fast Internet is a must
- Saving product installation files does not appear to eliminate the need to download products again
- Native Instruments, Spitfire Audio, Toontrack, handle re-installation WAY better, although I had to download some product again. Installation was mostly smooth and no issues within Cubase Pro.
- There appears to be no clear strategy for migrating to a new PC. Yes, I get that preset files also have to be transferred but from where exactly?
- If both Halion Library Manager and Steinberg Library Manager are installed at the same time, weird sh_t happens. A couple of issues were resolved after I removed the older Halion Library Manager. If it is a conflict, why doesn’t the new Library Manager remove it?
On a positive note, the load time for the project that prompted me to think about building a new system is now about 20 secs, down from 140 secs. God bless NVMe drives. And, Haliotron works now. Library manager still thinks a file is missing but it loads up in Cubase and plays.
STEINBERG, IF YOU’RE LISTENING…
If I were making a living off your products, I would be furious about how long the process took and how little formal guidance there is for it from you. I’m sure I made plenty of mistakes along the way but I shouldn’t have to be an expert. Hopefully, I won’t have to do this again for another couple of years but a tutorial, guides, or some tools to support the transfer process would be most welcome. I like using Cubase but maybe going forward, I don’t need to consider Steinberg VSTs or sound libraries, anymore. There are a lot of alternatives, and my new criteria for selecting products now is definitely going to be 1) library mgmt, 2) portability, 3) maintenance