Thieves

[amosuz]

Hi I am a technician in a school and have 30 cubase dongles but two have been stolen is there any chance. of getting

new dongles from cubase or are we stuffed? I have seen blank ones at dolphin music could I buy those and copy

dongle to dongle?

[paulears]

Welcome to the wonderful world of dongles on Cubase. You can buy as many empty dongles as you like, but they get authorised on line, so it won't work.

 

I've actually got three dongles, and you can transfer the licenses between them, but you cannot have the license on more than one - you cannot make two working dongles out of one - so basically you have to buy a new cubase!

 

What we did in my college, was to buy USB 3m extensions, and then put the dongle on the end of this, and then bury the main length of the cable, with the dongle, into the plastic trunking, so none of the dongles are removable without removing lengths of trunking lid. On a few machines, we installed a usb card that had an internal usb socket on it (and a firewire too) -so the dongle was inside the machine. This, rather sadly, is a very common theft in colleges, not so much schools.

 

Whatever happens - Steinberg will charge you for a new copy - price depends on your license type.

[timtheenchanteruk]

just a side note to this, as steinberg were pretty helpful to me:

 

IF you have a note of the licence number of your cubase AND you have the serial number of the key they will replace it, if not you cant get a new one.

we simply remove one of the card slot covers and loop the cable inside the machine then tie/cable tie it to somthing in the machine, not had many go missing since we did this.

 

our IT guys are speaking to steinberg at the moment to see if they have or will do a central licensing solution, one of the other programs we have in school has an app on a licencing server, similar to the KMS, this has a single dongle plugged into it holding 25 licences, the software is installed ion 50+ machines, but can only run 25 instances at once.

[paulears]

That's interesting - I was talking to a college only last month where Steinberg had said no - but it seems they have changed their policy and as long as the USB-eLicenser (they've changed the name too) is registered, all is no longer lost! That's good.

 

Hopefully, this also means that they probably also have an on-line key de-activation facility to kill the dongle of the scroats who pinched it! Now that would be good.

[tolley1466]

I'm pretty sure you can buy just new dongles. Here - link.

[Doug Siddons]

I'm pretty sure you can buy just new dongles. Here - link.

 

Does that mean I can borrow a copy of logic install it on my computer and get it licensed and working for £18? I don't think so.

[MarkPAman]

 

Does that mean I can borrow a copy of logic install it on my computer and get it licensed and working for £18? I don't think so.

 

Not Cubase either!

[Doug Siddons]

 

Does that mean I can borrow a copy of logic install it on my computer and get it licensed and working for £18? I don't think so.

 

Not Cubase either!

 

Yup thats what I meant! (the emarassed emoticon has disappeared)

[J Pearce]

We had some broken dongles and they replaced the licenses but we had to buy new dongles. If they've been stolen you may have less luck!

 

We sign our dongles out as we have multiple computers capable of running cubase but only 8 dongles. Students have to leave name and tutor group with me to get a dongle out.

[MarkPAman]

We've got a few dozen dongles for Cubase 4 which we no longer need as we've completed our change to Logic. I think they are all part of educational multi packs, but if anybody's interested I could look into how they could be legally sold on.

[PJG]

We have done the same as timtheenchanteruk from the out set and not lost one yet. We have had problems with things like blue tooth dongles with people thinking that they are pen drives that have been left behind so remove them. I know of some schools where this is an ongoing problem.

 

 

[Russ83]

As other have said, for fixed machines get the dongle cable tied inside the case and out of sight. If you have to move to different computers and can't afford to put a dongle in each machine then fasten some bright ribbon through the loop hole and label each dongle with some tape and a number.

 

You can register each dongle on My Steinberg so you have an easy inventory of all serials and licence numbers and you can also add your own reference (i.e. the number you wrote on each dongle). If one goes missing or gets damaged you can request Steinberg to terminate that dongle and transfer the details to a new one**.

 

**I've never had to do this since we labelled and secured all our 50 dongles last year but according to website it is that simple!

[AHYoung]

why not fit the dongles internal to the machines using a pci usb card such as http://www.amazon.co.uk/Port-Card-Cardbus-External-Internal/dp/B002DMU864/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1299615318&sr=1-2

[T.Colwill]

We've got a few dozen dongles for Cubase 4 which we no longer need as we've completed our change to Logic. I think they are all part of educational multi packs, but if anybody's interested I could look into how they could be legally sold on.

I'm looking into some recording softwear for the music dept, what version of Logic do you run? I was initially looking at Cubase but this dongle malarky could make what is already a hard task (getting the IT guys to allow stand-alone comps) even more anoying.

 

Tim

[timtheenchanteruk]

you don't need standalone computers for Cubase, ours are all domain connected, and run Cubase, Sibelius and FL studio with no problems, exept we cant use RangerRemote in there as it and Sibelius dont get along.

 

as long as your not trying to use thinclients, Cubase is fine on any sensibly specced PC on a network, gone are the days of requiring a stripped back PC for audio editing (unless your getting into the loads of tracks, loads of VSTs)