Yeah, they don't charge early unless you ask them to, and/or for promotional financing reasons (after discussing it with you). GearGuy is right. If they did charge you early without talking to you about it, it was an anomaly and an error, not their policy.

No offense taken. In the interest of lively discussion, here are few things I prefer about Sonar over Nuendo.

In Sonar:
-The ability to change the order of plugins (I understand this is changing in the new version of Cubase)
-The ability see all of the effects you have on all the tracks that will fit in your window in the track view.
-Markers aren't a part of a track.
-Buses are separated from tracks in track view.
-Ctrl+Home takes you to the beginning of your project.
-Track icons (silly, I know)
-64 bit

Things I prefer about Nuendo:
-The ability to name inputs (Sonar 6 allows this, but I don't have it)
-some other things that i can't think of right now...

You can switch the mixer view to show inserts (effects). I don't know what the "track view" in Sonar means, so I'm not sure how different that is.

Markers aren't part of a "track" per se in Nuendo, either. But they are all viewed together horizontal in the project window and can be hid or shown, like a track.

Not sure what Sonar means by "buses", but you can hide or show groups in Nuendo, and they are grouped together, apart from tracks.

You can assign many, many different keyboard shortcuts in Nuendo--there's probably a default keyboard shortcut to take you 00:00:00, but there's definitely a shortcut to take you to your left locator (which is usually at the beginning for rendering purposes).

Like I said, all the progs are so deep now, it's not what they can do, it's knowing how to do the things you're used to doing in another prog. There are probably few true feature differences at this point.

Speaking of workflow, I'm such a mouse guy now, that if you put a control surface in front of me, it would do nothing but slow me down. Talk about workflow preferences! Guys like me who never learned in front of an analog board are completely dependent on and comfortable with a mouse. I actually own an 01x, but I never got used to using it for tweaking/mixing, even when it was sitting right in front of me. Old habits...

I wan't ranting, and I never said anything implying that it bothered me that they charged me. I was only stating a fact. I buy from them all the time and am always charged for orders when I order them and not when they arrive or are shipped. I just assumed that was standard policy. Geez, I think you've had enough coffee.
As far as Cubase and Nuendo, I thought they were quite similar and produced similar results, which is why I bough Cubase. I can almost understand paying the extra money for the Nuendo name though, because I hate it when people ask if I use Pro Tools, and I reply that I prefer Cubase. Then I always get to hear that they got a free copy of Cubase with their interface/control surface/midi controller, and ask why I would pay that much for something I can get free with said interface/control surface/midi controller.fuuck dfegad dfegad dfegad fuuck

I think there are laws against this actually. Was it a true credit card, or a bank card with a Visa or Mastercard logo on it? This might make a difference.

This is from Sweetwater's website:

When will my credit card be charged?
Sweetwater does not charge you in advance for orders that are not in stock and ready to ship. In the event that your order must be split (i.e., one item is in stock and one is backordered) we only charge for the part that is shipped. Once the balance of your order is ready to ship we will apply charges for that. One important thing to note here is that every order at Sweetwater is reviewed and attended to by a highly-trained Sweetwater employee before your credit card is charged to make sure that each and every order receives the personal attention it deserves.

Ok, so there is somebody name "skygod" and somebody named "radiobox." OK, I was confused. I specifically responded in my first post to the off topic rant directly to "skygod." I am just now seeing that it was you that then quoted me back and posted the sentence about it happened to you. My apologies, the rant comment and the reply was all inted for the original off topic poster, not to you... read his original post and my reply will make more sense. As to why you would quote my reply to that one person is a mystery to me, but how about starting a new thread if you want to complain about a dealer? My advise and final word on this is that you should simply call them on telephone and resolve the situation. Lets keep this thread about Cubase and Nuendo... and good job bring the comments back to Steinberg.

Because the music industry is filled with idiots! Its the sheep effect and they are only acting out of their own lack of knowledge. Best advice for anyone is to have a PTLE (or even PTMP) system so you can simply say that you have ProTools and to get the job. Any modern DAW is going to sum and sound the same in the mixing process. Beyond that is all about the external gear such as mics, pres, convertors, compressors, montiors, etc and the plug-ins in if you mix in the box. A PTHD system does noting for you or the sound unless you have some good plug-ins or hardware. That is what the artists, etc miss-understand.

I think that's the main reason. If it's more expensive, people think it must be superior!

People coming from ProTools just did not want to feel dirty and unprofessional.
That's the truth!

I use Cubase SX 3 (an now own Cubase 4, although its a bit buggy on my system so I am back on 3.11).

I always feel like I have a small willy when I tell folks around here that I use Cubase. And all those guys using PT always seem like they are hung like "Tony the Pony"!!! It is funny because there are a lot of home folks using PTLE, and even they can pee in the public restrooms without worry. It just us Cubase guys that are stuck with the small willy syndrome!

There are of course some features that any given workplace may or may not need from Nuendo over Cuebase, but, for those who don't and still go Nuendo?

I think some might simply get Nuendo because they think the name is percieved as higher end.

Soundawg

It's not size that counts, it's how you use it...heh

LOL thumbsup

Hate to bring back an old thread but there was two questions not answered:

I know that Nuendo has some form of Automatic Delay Comp for using outboard processing, but does Cubase.

And....

Are the MIDI capabilities in Nuendo identical to Cubase?

Cubase4 here. Yes - it's had that feature since at least SX3. And afaik, Cubase has greater midi functions than Nuendo.

Cubase gets all the new features first - and all the bugs are ironed out by frustrated Cubasers. If you want stability, buy Nuendo and you will be blissfully unaware of all the activity going on in the Cubase camp.

Or if you are really smart - use Cubase, but avoid the latest versions. Stay well behind, and use a version that has had at least three major revisions. Version 0, straight out of the box, will be as buggy as hell. The first and second bug fixes will solve about 90% of customer problems, and the third is usually fairly stable.

I have a love/hate relationship with Steinberg. But their competitors are equally as crap, and when Cubase works, it works well.

I've been a loyal Nuendo user since 1.1, and each upgrade has been slightly cheaper or around the same price as getting Cubase, so I just upgrade and get the pro features.

I've had problem after problem with Nuendo, but what really did me in was that after the Intel Macs shipped, Steinberg announced that rather than patch Nuendo 3 for Intel Macs, they would include the update in Nuendo 4, which at the time was slated for Q1, 2007.

Since my DAW was now useless on my shiny new computer, and Nuendo 4 was nowhere in sight (they now state Q3 2007), I went PTHD. Had I trusted Steinberg, I'd be sitting on either a slow ass computer or with no working DAW. For $500 I can get Cubase or eventually the Nuendo 4 upgrade. Of course, I've already spent it on Digitranslator. More than worth it to be done with Steinberg.

Certainly they are both fine sounding programs, but man, they make Digi look like choirboys.