Brian Walton

Market changed dramatically in the last 20 years. 20 years ago the market was truly insane. I'm thankful I never got trapped into a bunch of 3rd party purchases which would now be basically worthless. There are plenty of other top notch plugin designers offering $29 price point (and better) deals on plugins that sound as good and do not have the authorization limitations OR the install woes that WAVES has. Financially they are clearly a marketleader in the money they have made. The sfotware deployment system is far from it. I jumped on to the WAVES train at the $25ish level and have quite a few....even so, I'm managed to find alternatives to distance myself from using them moving forward with a few expections. Omni-Channel is a good value when on super sale and I honeslty haven't found anything with that functionality and sound quality at a similar price point. Basically everything else has solid alternatives that I was personally using.

I have mine on a USB stick as well, however moving the seats back and forth in this manner is really no less of a pain than the transfer via the cloud would be most of the time. When I take the other computer somewhere, I don't have room for the extra USB hub, I need those seats authorized to the machine. So effectivly I can use the hub to move the seats, but I'm still having to authorize them using WC and transfer. And the scanning process is also a big time waster when using the computer with or without the USB or WAVES seats, etc.

Well, I don't install new plugins every single day, but adding 5 minutes to every time I launch Cakewalk to scan all my plugins is absurd. When I install or remove plugins, a re-scan is part of the process. Rescanning all my plugins for no reason whatso ever is a time waster. Yet another problem with the one seat system, wasted time of rescanning.

Was interested until 32bit vst2 only came up. Oh well.

The rescan you can disable.

I agree but at this juncture, they have the model of confusion that generates money (even people in this deals forum are clueless and buy WUP for basically no real world reason). Once they make it clear that the next version doens't actually provide any type of upgrade, they are less likley to see revnue. (this v12 with pluign resizing is about the only "upgrade" they have really ever done.

I'm far more concerned with the fact every single time I've upgraded to a new version WC has broken my plugins. 9 -> 10 all version 9s no longer worked and since I wasn't on WUP for 9 support would not provide assistance....so 9s left to rot 10-11 (smoothest thus far) but the scans and authorizations did not work properly on all computers. 11-12 most worked fine, but Berzerk does not work on one of my machines after the move to 12 (and I have more than one license for it). Other computer seems to work ok. Then we have the 1 seat per purchase rule which means the plugins basically cost double what every other company charges for those of us that use more than one machine and don't want to be botehred every single day transfering the seat back and forth. The extra space and install path is annoying, but not on the same level of magnitue that breaking and lack of support provide along with treating customers like criminals with one single install.

https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/elysia_niveau_filter.html

Agree but $37 is too much to pay for one. Boz's T-Bone frequently goes on sale for $19. And there are free options on the market as well (ex. https://matthiaskock.de/wordpress/tilteq/2017/07/21/tilteq/)

One of the best themes I've tried. Normally I'm on the dark spectrum, but this one is going to be the "go-to" alternative for something brighter. Love the flat buttons/layout and color palette is excellent for a lighter theme (and yes, I'm a huge fan of grey).

Even if it was half that ....really steep price to effectivly get a re-sizing ability and a preset system that should have been included years ago. WUP is the worst. My upgrade pricing is also at that $240 price point and there is no way I'd pay even a sizable fraction of that. Those that I did upgrade as they were still in the "free" time frame didn't all go smoothly. and now I have to work through problems and plugins that don't work.

In typical WAVES fashion, I updated a number that were still under WUP, some worked and Berzek Distortion no longer thinks there is a license for it despite what Waves Central states is authorized to my local computer.

I was thinking the last Bandlab release suggested the updates to Cakewalk would no longer need that broken update system known as Bandlab Assistant. Or was that just a dream we all shared?

Do they still include v10 in the new Waves Central or is that now relegated to the v9 and prior MASSIVE 3+ gig offline installer package. Wondering how mad I need to be with this failure of an update program.

It is a good question, from my perspective it is a combo of time and maturity. There are quite a few products (such as those you mentioend that are mature in a featureset). However, we also have a number of up and commers that have limited development teams and also limted time on the market. Many of these even experenced people haven't heard of. https://www.slant.co/topics/1835/~best-daws For me, I would think that anything under 8 years of development is going to have a hole somewhere. Studio One has been around for 11 years, but they also had devlopers of Cubase and the VST spec on board.

A new DAW is going to be limited and lack maturity. Cakewalk is still the only DAW I care about. The others I'm sure are fine for someone else.

Actually the list is of the favorite/best DAWs by the readers. I'm quite certain Live is more popular in terms of usage than Studio One. Personally not a fan of the GUI, but it is a good alternate DAW choice since it is effectively designed to work differently.

The painter program is on another level. However just throwing money away if she never used Rebelle - which is a fine program.

I wouldn't get too caught up in which piano they sampled, it may or may not actually sound like what you have in your head as the S&S sound. I'd download this for free as a starting point: https://www.meldaproduction.com/MonasteryGrand If it doesn't sound like you want after you tweak it with various mics and settings, then move on and try another. another options that are free and of high quality: https://vst4free.com/plugin/2294/ http://ivyaudio.com/Piano-in-162

Lots of different approaches out there. If I'm trying to avoid Mud then I'll put Phoenix (which can be super transparent) on a bus and then send things to it at various levels. Then specific sources might get a different reverb if required (via track or bus)....but this step always leads to more mud - though sometimes you have to deal with it as a trade off. Some Reverbs will also let you roll off the low end of the reverb trail, that also is helpful to get rid of mud. The kind of reverb and the settings can have a huge impact on "mud" Phoenix is fantastic for that kind of transparent sound (but you know when you turn it off) thing. I like reverb as an effect though and have no problem sacrificing some mud to get some texture on most of what I do. But if I'm really going for the it was recorded raw type of mix, the above is the route.

Something that actually sounds like natural reverberation applied to a source. Very few really sound like that, have full tweakability and don't muddy up a mix as you apply it.

Every type of effect has a limit, but I think there is plenty of room for improvement in the reverb space. Very few are world class and process efficient.

As Izotope tried to bring reverb to the market, they noted the list of people that really understand and can create reverb at the higest technical levels via algorhythms are few and far between (thus landing with Exponential Audio - i.e. Lexicon). There is room for improvement and capabilites in the reverb realm, play around with the Exponential stuff and there is a very clear difference between that and reverb plugins of 15 years ago, including those of Lexicon. We do have more nice options at the market than ever before, but the cream of the crop are still few and far between in my opinion. We see a trend towards "effect" as I think that is a bit easier to pull off. The ones that really blend with the source and sound like natural verb is fairly rare. and thus why there was a push towards convolution in recent years...which has its own limitations. Then add to that "AI" to help music creators get something that fits the source/mix and that is a very new advancement and I think there is a lot that could be done in the area as tech continues to advance.

Agreed. Though I'm not 100% content with just Phoenix...there are times when I also want some character....and that is what R4 is for. (hoping they run another cross grade offer so I can get a 2nd seat at a time when I have some funds to spare).

I haven't used this one, but my Waves verbs basically went in the trash can after picking up the Exponential Audio ones. (Abbey Road plates is good, but way to much of a resource hog). And I do use other Reverbs other than the Exponential Audio ones. Point being, if this thing was basically built on EA tech, I'd imagine the intro price (who don't own an izotope plug to get the upgrade) is one that might potentially be in line with - if you don't have anything else - it would be a replacement for multiple "$29 plugs" (and if it is Izotope - will authorize to multiple personally owned computer unlike that crippled WAVES system) That being said, I'm with you, unless this hits $29, I won't bite either based on what I already have.