MusicMan

I've been collecting the freebies, but not installing them due to thinking I needed their control centre too 🤣

That was a huge step in the right direction. It was definitely a blocker for more sales too and it's easier to recommend IKM more now after that. The lack of proper upgrades is probably IK's biggest downside currently for me. Their installer could use some work as well, but it mostly works. Everyone always hates and freaks out about the T Racks processors being installed that they don't own, but I seem to be one of the few people that didn't mind that.. it was easy to randomly drop into one of those plugins and check them out whenever. Caveat being disk space and plugin versions. As long as they don't use a lot of extra space, or force you to install VST2 and AAX and leading to even longer scan times again (Softube = epic fail there), then it's not too bad. I'd never buy Volume from Softube, apart from them not recognising that I already own so much of the bundle, but also because they would waste at least 10GB of disk space by installing VST2 and AAX for everything in the bundle, without a way to opt out.

Yep, it's the worst I've seen in the audio plugins industry ever. Even if other companies went subscription only, it wouldn't be so bad, as you would likely have free compatibility updates for a while and things would keep working. Waves knew that their plugins would break for many, that they wouldn't provide any free updates once your current WUP expired and would've left those users with no alternatives but to subscribe, or not use their plugins they already paid for. Total disregard towards their customers.

Yeah there's definitely some people it hits harder than others. Mac users frequently complain as OS upgrades more commonly break their Waves plugins, so they need to pay to get the updates to even get them working again. I'm on PC, so like you, I never have needed to pay WUP. But they're also a bit shitty in that they only grant two seats if you have active WUP. So if you have a studio computer and a laptop, without juggling licenses, or USBs, you're sweet out of luck. Even McDSP has passed them by, with allowing more than one activation now and that's saying something! Apart from the subscription fiasco though, Waves just don't care what customers say. That's part of the reason they were ignorant enough to even try to move the goalposts to subscription only. For the most part I've replaced all my Waves plugins with alternatives that don't require WUP, still get updates and allow more than one activation and there's no ongoing costs. But I do still like a few of the Waves plugins. And yeah individuals are always possible to WUP, but once people upgrade using the Waves enticing upgrade offers and hit Mercury, there's no real upgrades, so I'm pretty sure to use any of them with active WUP, even if they only want a few is either pay the WUP cap price of $240 or buy the plugins again. That's their ploy.. is basically people go, oh it's cheaper to upgrade to the next bundle than paying WUP as it renews WUP and they get some new plugins, but then they get to a stage, where WUP is $240 every time from then on (unless discounted / reseller / etc. but it's still bad)

Waves looks after you by offering cheap discounts on the bundles until you upgrade to the largest ones and then you're locked in to paying the max WUP I believe, as you can't WUP the individual plugins, only the total bundle. Someone can probably jump in and correct me if that's not right. So if that's the case, they're probably still better than IK, UA, Softube, etc. in that regard, but leave lot to be improved.. that and they gave everyone with perpetual licenses the middle finger by trying to go subscription only, which meant that users who didn't pay an ongoing fee would never be able to WUP again.. Glad that play crashed and burned 🤣

I see this a lot as well.. new customers are so often treated better. When a company does that. I just stop buying from them. There are a lot of great developers out there that don't do that, so I just start spending my money with them. Even that Total Studio Max offer from IK I didn't bother with, as I own the majority of it. If the upgrade for me was half that price due to owning almost all of it, I may have bitten. But the deals pass, new things turn up and often I'm glad that I didn't fall for that no loyalty trap and I get something new from a completely different company that often adds more variety than I would get by buying from the same companies that don't reward my loyalty. Often they re-use algorithms, so you don't get as fresh / new sounds. UA, Softube.. These guys don't have any reasonable upgrade offers generally.. I'll never upgrade to Softube Volume for that reason. Signature 2 from UA I won't even consider. The thing is, by the time they work it out (if they work it out), I've been buying more stuff and even if they offered it for a reasonable price, I might not need / want it any more. That's happened a lot too. Some companies have held on to prices that were too high and while I was waiting, I found alternatives that were often better and then when they've dropped the prices, I haven't even bothered to buy, so they've totally lost a sale altogether. Greedy developers, or no loyalty developers often lose a lot of sales.

That's a shame. I don't think I necessarily would be considering upgrading it, but I would've been a nice perk to have the option.

The price isn't bad, but I thought it's been in some of the cheap bundles where you get quite a few of things with it for not much more money from memory. Not a bad product and if you need something now, it might still be worth it.

Welcome back Lars!! 🙂 Insane price.. I decided I'd skip TS4 as I already own almost all of it.. but that price is making it harder to resist...!

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Well that was the gift that kept NOT giving... at least for me.. no big deal, although it would've been nice grabbing something..

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Very similar to me! I gave Tai Chi Lite a demo last year I think it was and it didn't wow me and I didn't buy it. I gave it another demo this year and felt the same. It wasn't terrible, but I have plenty of reverbs and it didn't add a lot in terms of sound and features. Then I tried the full version and I understood within minutes what people were saying and why they liked it and bought it. I grabbed Cinematic Rooms Pro which is amazing and I knew that was an insta buy for me in seconds and a few others as they stacked with EDU discounts plus loyalty so the prices were really good. If you buy the lite versions, or cheaper ones and then use the loyalty codes on other products to get the full versions, it's drops the prices down quite a lot.

I've been sitting it out this year and suspect that they might not have as many, or any freebies. It really didn't work that smoothly for them and seemed to cause quite a few issues including support calls. Unless they rethink how they can do it to ensure everyone gets one, or at least cover a few timezones, I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. They're always generous and I'm appreciative of that though and hope the sale does well.

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I get their point, but I think they may have shot themselves in the foot a little. Especially in the deals section. It was a thriving forum, where people were discussing all different DAWs and sales and that brought up a lot of recommendations for their products, which to an extent would've kept on carrying over to their new paid offerings. Less visitors to this section now due to their policy means lots of missed opportunities and less discussions and awareness about their new products and helping people understand their offerings which aren't the most clear for those less familiar.

As long as I don't open it during a sale, it's often really pretty quick for me. However if they're giving away a freebie, releasing a new collection, Black Friday sales etc. sometimes it's unstable or really slow too! With freebies, I'll often do whatever I need to do to claim it and then I don't even bother trying to install it until the following week, or so. That approach seems to spare some hassles.

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The costs of the upgrades for Apple are pretty comical. You could build an entire AMD, or Intel system with just the fat on top that Apple charges to upgrade to 8TB SSD! 🤣 The stock spec for RAM and storage should be much higher for the price of the unit to start with. They're often targetted towards multimedia, so the base spec is very low. I've personally never had a Windows update hose a system. I have had Apple updates render a whole heap of plugins and instruments incompatible though. Unfortunately in cases where the developers are no longer in business, there is no solution. It's either new Apple OS, or keep using your older plugins.

I believe it's 60% off according to this:

I'd have to check what I paid as it was a while ago, but I think the sale price might be 60% off. But... you can take 20% off that price with this: Melda Production (Code MELDA57625915 will get 20% off for new customers) And if you sign up for their newsletter first, that gives you a $10 credit, so you can buy the upgrade for $8 instead of $20!

For some reason I quite like DRC even for some simple pulse/square wave sounds, among others. Its easier to get really warm analogish sounds compared to Pigments. FRMS seems pretty good too, but I haven't used it much yet. I picked them both up with the sound packs on deep discounta while back and have no regrets 🙂

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I really quite like both of these. I did the same in the last few days as well. $15 is a bargain for them.