Toffo

Thanks Heath. Any other thoughts on this one? I’m not expecting a silver bullet but if it makes a positive difference it may be worth a try at this price.

I tend to agree. It’s hard to pass up at this price considering the sheer number of plugins you get and the fact that they all work and sound fine. But as kitecrazy said it’s just everything else around them that’s annoying. - Waves hell, I mean waveshell is an annoying implementation. There’s a reason why other developers don’t do it that way. - Having x copies of the same plugin in your list is just annoying (mono, stereo, vst 2, vst 3). - WUP, whether you need it or not, is annoying. Not WUPing and being on version 9 of the plugin while everyone else is on 14 is annoying. Owning Horizon but not really owning today’s Horizon because you bought it 8 years ago and they’ve added 20 plugs to it since is annoying. - Tiny non-scalable interfaces on hi-DPI screens is annoying. I own Mercury and do use some of it, but I tend to go for a non-Waves alternative where possible. And that’s the crux of it. Alternatives. You start small with Waves but after a few of those can’t-resist deals you’re hundreds of dollars in the hole because it’s worthwhile to upgrade bundles rather than to WUP. On reflection maybe you would have been better off picking the more expensive alternative at the start. Or maybe you wouldn’t be. I don’t know - it’s your decision, but make an informed one.

Actually, let me rephrase. There are expensive suites out there like Helix Native, or the Neural DSP stuff, S-Gear, ML Sound Lab, ToneX for example. They are 30-40+ times the price of Audio Assault on sale. Are they 40x better? Of course not. AA amps are absolutely usable but just not at the level of the others I just mentioned. So you might think "well of course they're not as good, they're much cheaper," but my response would be if you're only paying $5-10 for an amp sim then is it worth spending any money at all? With the likes of NAM, Amped Roots Free, AmpliTube CS, ToneX CS, Tonocracy, Emissary Ignite and a few others available, my thinking is it's not worth spending money unless you're looking for something really high quality (the sellers in the first paragraph) or if you're looking for a very specific sound in which case Audio Assault is worth a look. Still, none of that has stopped me from saying "Installed!" in the past 😁

I’ve bought quite a few Audio Assault amp sims and my experience is you get what you pay for. Some people love them though.

Bought! Three things pushed me over the edge (in case Arturia is listening): 1. All the positive talk about them in this and other forums, I appreciate a company with a good reputation. 2. Free upgrade for previous owners of Pigments. I’m not a previous owner but I like the policy. 3. I do own other Arturia products and there was a message to login to check my price. So I did, and a sizable discount ($99 to $49) was already applied which made it an instabuy. Nice work, Arturia. This is how you get people to part with their money in a crowded market.

The authorisation's been working great here for quite some time.

@Peter - IK Multimedia I've been a big critic of this paying for downloads thing and honestly think it was costing you more in bandwidth as all your users would download everything "just in case." So credit where credit is due, this is a fantastic change. Thank you! For those asking for refunds on unused downloads, please let's not go there. They've already given everyone something for free that they used to have to pay for, and Bapu hasn't lost anything by not using those 7-8 download credits. So you can't argue that you didn't get something that you paid for. If they want to credit people as a gesture of goodwill then fine, but this move shouldn't need to cost IK anything in refunds.

Excellent, thank you both.

What I meant was more does Plini X use the Plini licence from iLok, or does it create a new licence separate from Plni and specifically for Plini X? Anyone who has both, can you comment? I've got Abasi, Cory Wong, Gojira, Granophyre, Nolly, Petrucci, Plini/X and Tone King Imperial; and Plini and Petrucci are my two favourites. I play mostly progressive rock and metal. Their stuff is not cheap but it's pretty pretty good.

This says it's a free upgrade for Plini owners but does anyone know how that works? I got my copy of Plini in an informal group buy that we did with @Zo on this forum a few years ago and so Plini doesn't appear in my Neural DSP account page, only in my iLok account. But I downloaded Plini X and it seems to be working fine. I can't tell if it's just the 14 day trial or if it's picking up on my Plini code in my iLok account. I'm happy to contact support but wanted to check here first.

Great post, thank you.

The OS is nearly 10 years old. While I agree they should still allow online authorisation until it literally can’t work, I don’t think it’s fair to expect them to continue to make core changes for an OS this old. If coding changes to the authorisation system were needed to keep it running on 8.1, I wouldn’t expect Waves to make those changes. Ditto if supporting 8.1 will introduce security vulnerabilities somehow. I don’t know if code changes or security issues are relevant here, I’m just making a general point.

I don't see it this as a win-win for Waves at all. Their reputation was mediocre before this. Now it's in tatters. They say any publicity is good publicity. This might apply in the case covered by Oscar Wilde's quote: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about” but it doesn't apply here. Waves were already talked about. They didn't need the extra exposure, and they certainly didn't need this kind of exposure. A lot of the customers they've lost over this debacle will be lost for good.

I will never buy a subscription to Waves or any other plugin company. It is too important for me to be able to open a session 1, 5 or 10 years later without needing to worry about am I subscribed to this plugin company anymore.

I compared MPS 5.2 with the Everything Bundle and these are the differences. Everything Bundle includes (over and above MPS), with RRP in USD brackets: - RX 10 Advanced ($1199) instead of RX 10 Standard ($399) - Dialogue Match ($599), Stutter Edit 2 ($199), Visual Mixer ($0) and Relay ($0) So it’s up to each individual whether an RX upgrade, 2 extra paid plugins and 2 extra free plugins is worth it.