Most Yamaha music instrument and audio interface products come with a free license for the Yamaha/Steinberg Cubase DAW Windows and Mac OSX software.
The Cubase AI installation process is obnoxious and lengthy, but this tutorial should help save you time and decrease anxiety.
(I installed a Steinberg UR22C today for a Yamaha MX49 on High Sierra, but Cubase is not device-specific and is quite backwards-compatible with older versions of Mac OSX.)
The steps are:
1. Find your Cubase AI license key and serial number of the device
2. Be prepared to spend the time to download 15 GB plus 2 hours for the software installation. You should have 45 GB free disk space – note this could be a problem on 128 GB disks unless it’s a new computer.
3. Plug in your computer and disable the screensaver or system sleep function
4. Follow the Cubase download instructions, which will involve creating a Steinberg account, doing email verification, and dowloading the download helper (about 100 MB). Save the license activation code (32 hex digits) using Textedit
5. open the download helper and choose Cubase AI full install
6. it will start downloading 15 GB and will show the download rate. You can pause it and continue reliably if you need to select a faster wifi connection
7. after downloading it will start “Verifying.” Wait up to 30 minutes for this to finish. If it takes longer, quit from the installer program and look in the Downloads folder for a 15 GB file and open it in the finder. A window will open that you can click on to run the program installer.
8. It worked if you see a big green checkmark and the message “The installation was successful.”
9. Drag Cubase icon to ribbon
10. Open Cubase icon. It will start eLicenser and do start license activation. Paste in code from #4.
11. Open Cubase icon again. Test Cubase. If successful, you can delete the 15 GB dmg file from Step #8.
12. Click on the download button or link for Mac (10.12 – 10.15) and Yamaha audio firmware updates as needed.
13. Restart.
14. Open Cubase and select the audio driver for your audio interface. Note that you can switch audio interfaces during a Cubase session.