Jump to content

Waves Discontinues Perpetual Licenses (UPDATE: They have gone Subscription Only)


Martin H.

Recommended Posts

22 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Not here. I did the update to waves central, did a complete uninstall, and the na fresh install (of V14 only since I own the whole kitandkaboodle). Everything is as it should be on Studio One.

I may try uninstalling tomorrow. I did a repair in Central and that did not help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only good news here is that i hope people realise that when we speak out , and even youtubers do it  , it has an impact ....

Is the funny scotish guy released a video on it ?

  • Like 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Lionel said:

The one benefit for Waves and this whole debacle…

They forced us to register our unregistered plugins(else we’d lose those plugins). Meaning they cleaned-house on all the unregistered serials and they’ll most likely make money sooner than later with those potential future WUP’d plugins.

I bought a Waves bundle during the last BF/CM sale… I really despise them for making me have to register sooner than I had wanted.

Stay classy, Waves.

My point exactly. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Marina said:

Where are now the Waves advocates of our forum to tell us the tale about the Angry Minority ™

Yes, he's gone silent since his estimated angry 20% of the userbase were actually listened to. 😊

I will say, I can forgive Waves management for the move now that they've changed course and issued an apology. For management to pull a take-it-or-leave-it move like that and then admit that they screwed up is unusual. I have respect for a good apology and making amends.

Of course, despite having licenses for many of their products, I've only ever obtained them via freebie offers, never spent a dime except for one round of WUP.

After my latest system rebuild, only two remain installed, MetaFilter and Elements 2. I found one cool preset in Elements 2 and used it on a song and I have a thing for rhythmic filters.

It's funny, 5 years ago on the old Cakewalk, Inc. forum, people recommended Waves plug-ins so often that I put a joke in my sig that if anyone ever recommended one to me I would "relentlessly troll them" or words to that effect. On the current forum, which started about 3 years ago, I don't believe I've ever seen someone outside the Deals sub recommend one. Instead, I've become the annoying one, recommending MeldaProduction ad nauseum.😄

That suggests to me a decline in popularity/loyalty of Waves' stuff. Maybe their policies (single seat per license, having to buy WUP in order to get updates) finally wore people down. Especially the single seat. These days, everyone seems to have a tower system in their studio and a laptop to haul around.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I still have my Waves Gold AND Diamond boxes.  I briefly tried the Gold before getting the Diamond (along with the APA shown below) but, in the fun of losing just about everything, the two boxes got lost in storage and I only found them again last year.  I started thinking "Woo hoo!  I can sell the Diamond box 'cause it's still new and un-opened!"  Nope.  Wrong.  After many back-and-forth emails with Waves (which included requiring me to break the seal), I did finally get the product registered without having to send in the box (one of their requests), but it's something like $150 to transfer ownership! 

For just the Diamond box, I paid $1,650!  😮

During my bankruptcy, I was "required" to sell pretty much all of my music gear (I was "allowed" to keep $300 worth according to the rules, but I did manage to hide quite a few things with friends or storage).  That said, thanks to a bad eBay auction, the nice, never-used, Waves Audio Processing Accelerator shown below went for all of $340 to some very lucky ****!  You can see the price I had to pay on the box... 🤬

That's almost $4,000 that I'll never see again! 🙁

Waves-APA44-M-2.jpg

I still have the Gold and Diamond boxes and would really love to sell them so I can blow the money on frivolous stuff like back-rent...  But, a $150 transfer fee?  Really??? 🙄

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/28/2023 at 1:15 PM, Sergio said:

Exactly! Nothing wrong with software subscriptions. But at least they should give a way for existing customers to keep their investment from all those years. As I said before I never WUPed or even planned to WUP but an upgrade to a Mercury bundle was always  in my plans.

Well... back to my original plan. I'll upgrade to Mercury at the right time. I don't see any reason to stop using the plugins I paid for while they are working fine on my system. And since I started buying waves years ago I never had a plugin from them not working on my (Windows) machine. YMMV.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Yes, he's gone silent since his estimated angry 20% of the userbase were actually listened to. 😊

I will say, I can forgive Waves management for the move now that they've changed course and issued an apology. For management to pull a take-it-or-leave-it move like that and then admit that they screwed up is unusual. I have respect for a good apology and making amends.

Of course, despite having licenses for many of their products, I've only ever obtained them via freebie offers, never spent a dime except for one round of WUP.

After my latest system rebuild, only two remain installed, MetaFilter and Elements 2. I found one cool preset in Elements 2 and used it on a song and I have a thing for rhythmic filters.

It's funny, 5 years ago on the old Cakewalk, Inc. forum, people recommended Waves plug-ins so often that I put a joke in my sig that if anyone ever recommended one to me I would "relentlessly troll them" or words to that effect. On the current forum, which started about 3 years ago, I don't believe I've ever seen someone outside the Deals sub recommend one. Instead, I've become the annoying one, recommending MeldaProduction ad nauseum.😄

That suggests to me a decline in popularity/loyalty of Waves' stuff. Maybe their policies (single seat per license, having to buy WUP in order to get updates) finally wore people down. Especially the single seat. These days, everyone seems to have a tower system in their studio and a laptop to haul around.

A strange coincidence, probably he was mobilized to be around for their crisis management.

I didn’t know about these audio forums back in the years when Waves had no WUP. Audio production is a hobby for me only during the last 3 years. My first impression when I registered here was that the community was upset about Waves update policy, so I stayed away from their plugins, because well, I’m a hobbyist and I prefer to own the copies of software that I paid for.

Melda seems like a good actor among sharks just like the few small developers. Let’s see what will its acquisition by Image-Line bring long-term. I hope that it’s simple offline authorization will stay untouched.

  • Like 1
  • Great Idea 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Bapu said:

Not here. I did the update to waves central, did a complete uninstall, and the na fresh install (of V14 only since I own the whole kitandkaboodle). Everything is as it should be on Studio One.

Kudos to Waves technical support, I got an email this morning within 12 hours of submitting the ticket with a simple "re-scan in Studio One" which I had already done and a detailed process if that didn't work.  Basically an reinstall with a bunch of other manual clean-up instructions, then re-install. Its all working fine. I am on V14 exclusively so this had the further advantage of removing several redundant Waves shells which has sped the VST scans up considerably.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Vernon Barnes said:

Kudos to Waves technical support, I got an email this morning within 12 hours of submitting the ticket with a simple "re-scan in Studio One" which I had already done and a detailed process if that didn't work.  Basically an reinstall with a bunch of other manual clean-up instructions, then re-install. Its all working fine. I am on V14 exclusively so this had the further advantage of removing several redundant Waves shells which has sped the VST scans up considerably.

Vernon,

I have a bunch of old shells and currently on V 14.  Could you post the clean up instructions?  thanks!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm really hoping they roll back Waves Central as well - frustrating to have use various offline downloaders if you want to install older version.  Plus it looks like the latest version installs even more monitoring stuff (spyware!) to see if you are properly subscribed or not.

Everything about this entire episode has been a clusterf*ck really.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Vernon Barnes said:

Not sure if it the best way to remove old shells, I suspect there is a simpler way but I have PMd you.

The easiest way that I have found to remove old shells is uninstall them via Waves Central > Settings > Maintenance > Uninstall [select].

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...