Why is Steinberg's activation process so utterly rubbish?

[SecretSam]

New laptop.

11th gen i5, 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Woo hoo!

Ableton installed and activated in less than a minute - check.
Sibelius installed and activated in less than a minute - check.

Buy an upgrade from Wavelab Cast to Wavelab Elements
Installed and activated? Nope.

But I now have both Cast and Elements on my computer, plus a download manager, an install assistant, an eLicenser, a Steinberg Library app, a Steinberg Media app, and an activation manager. And despite all of this corporate crapware, both versions of Wavelab are denying that I have a licence, even though it displays in the eLicenser, and the activation codes are on the Steinberg site.

Needless to say, the only human sales support is during office hours, and tech support is basically a list of irrelevant FAQs. "FAQ" is a close approximation to the noises I was making.

I'm going to delete all this shit, write off the small cost of the upgrade and start again with a wave editor that isn't delivered by idiots.

The only good news is that I nearly bought Dorico and decided not to. Dodged a bullet there.

[checks the date ...] Good heavens, it's the twenty-first century already. Who would have guessed?

[RichardT]

That’s a shame - btw, I think Dorico is brilliant!

[SecretSam]

Well, one of us has to be lucky. And I'm glad it's you, because I am a nice person. Sometimes.

[OneWorld]

New laptop.

11th gen i5, 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Woo hoo!

Ableton installed and activated in less than a minute - check.
Sibelius installed and activated in less than a minute - check.

Buy an upgrade from Wavelab Cast to Wavelab Elements
Installed and activated? Nope.

But I now have both Cast and Elements on my computer, plus a download manager, an install assistant, an eLicenser, a Steinberg Library app, a Steinberg Media app, and an activation manager. And despite all of this corporate crapware, both versions of Wavelab are denying that I have a licence, even though it displays in the eLicenser, and the activation codes are on the Steinberg site.

Needless to say, the only human sales support is during office hours, and tech support is basically a list of irrelevant FAQs. "FAQ" is a close approximation to the noises I was making.

I'm going to delete all this shit, write off the small cost of the upgrade and start again with a wave editor that isn't delivered by idiots.

The only good news is that I nearly bought Dorico and decided not to. Dodged a bullet there.

[checks the date ...] Good heavens, it's the twenty-first century already. Who would have guessed?

I’m keeping a donglified version of my Steinberg products on a separate hard drive. I have new Steinberg products to install. If I get any monkey business I shall write them off, the products I have work quite well, I can’t think a good reason to to make trouble for myself

[The Elf]

I also found the license change a bit of a trial, but I managed to get through it.

Read and re-read every installation instruction, and beware when they use jargon for ‘product ID’, ‘activation code’, etc. IME they are quite loose with these terms, and it lead to confusion for me.

[orange]

FWIW the very latest version of Wavelab Pro (11.2?) doesn't support the elicenser. It's the first version of Wavelab Pro that doesn't, so for Pro you definitely need a valid licence in the Activation Manager.

I'm not sure if it's the same for Elements/Cast - but if so you might need to use a 'voucher' that magically appears in your mySteinberg account - then apply that via the download assistant > elicencer ( which gets updated)

Then activate the licence in the Activation Manager

And yes - it's almost funny, the 23 different bits of the giant Steinberg software puzzle that need to perfectly align to install and use any of the applications.

so yes
The Steinberg Download Assistant (?)
The Steinberg Activation Manager
The Steinberg Library Manager
The Steinberg Media Bay
The Steinberger eLicenser application
The actual dongle
Your online mySteinberg account with vouchers

All of which don't really talk to each other very well, if at all.

It's fine if you go through it step by step but really Steinberg...sort it out !

[N i g e l]

YAMAHA Steinberg...sort it out !

FTFY

[orange]

YAMAHA Steinberg...sort it out !

FTFY

In all seriousness, I'm not sure that the Steinberg <> Yamaha relationship is as effective as you think.

Notice the complete lack of Yamaha controllers in the new Cubase MIDI remote for example.

[N i g e l]

hmmmm,

The Y/S relationship must be about 20 yrs old, so I am always surprised that its not further on.

Im not a cubase user but currently Im evaluating HALion & Groove agent [which was a freebe with a YMAHA product] and I am surprised how involved the install & licensing process was.

[SecretSam]

And what's particularly stupid about all this is that there are perfectly functional cracks of wavelab 11 out there..

All of the corporate paranoia about licensing methods doesn't actually achieve anything.

[Zukan]

I went through hell getting Cubase activated. Took over a month until they felt like allowing the code to be registered. 2 support tickets raised and still waiting for a response.