Brian Walton

There is no reason VSTs should stop working anytime soon. However, WAVES doen't have the most reliable install and authrization process. If you move, add, change there is always the chance something will break. Waves won't support you to get things operational again if things break unless you pay them. MAC OS does tend to break things with updates. Windows only users can have 10 year old VSTs that still work fine. I would not WUP unless something is flat out broken and even then you should determine if buying new on sale is actually a better option.

Correct. Lots of people seem to just be giving Waves money for the sake of giving them money. No need for it if your environment is working. Only buy WUP if enough things are broken to justifty the cost.

That is easy when things actually work, like most VST providers. However, WAVES is the only VST maker I've ever needed legitimate customer support to get them to actaully install and authorize properly. v9 + v10 still do not properly co-exist on my machines so I just treat v9 as abandonware. While software instaliation isn't my specific area of expertise, I manage a fleet of computers as part of my day to day job, so I'm not exaclty a novice in the area.

I'd just go to VST settings, and change the Scan Options to Manual, then you scan only when you add something new. There is always the chance that if you do the update you will switch to a more annoying v9 shell failure (what I have to deal with everytime I scan the plugins) where it fails 3 times due to v9 (which do not work at all). Grass isn't always greener. Only advantage there would be customer support might actually walk you through it if you pay them to get you to v11 across the board. If you do WUP, you don't have the option to get Aphex v10, which would put you into both v10 and 11 territory unless you went all in with WUP of everything to 11. ☹️

The question is does it work for you in v9. It does not for me. If it works there is zero reason to "update" it.

Wonder what we get for free this year....that is the only thing is interested in from Waves after the lame v11 announcement. ?

I would say $26 is the limit thanks to discounts from Audio Deluxe and similar. However, this one and only this one might deserve a $3 premium depending on one's patience.

I'd be shocked if we don't see it at $30 in less than 2 months time.

Will have to see what the future holds, but confirmation they will look into velocity: https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=533832&start=120

Bought it, spent 5 min with it, confirmed it is CPU hungry. Will prob have to be in the first couple tracks and then "freeze" it on my machine.

Those that did not have Sonar Platinum of some sort before are missing a number a vsts and vsti that people still pay a premium to get with other DAWs. I generally think it is crazy, but I also have all those extras b/c I paid hundreds for Sonar Platinum. Bandlab is an amazing free package, it is light on pro instruments. The pro channel is fantastic, but it does lack the extra mastering limiter, eq, comp and a few other extras one expects in a paid product. It is still the best looking daw, thanks to themes. I'll say it again the only core feature they really lack are chord tracks and arrangement tools for easy composition. One could argue the midi tools in cubase are easier to use, but cake does have tools. I think they should charge 0.05 for it so it makes it into retail stores and catalogs, then see how the market reacts. Hmmm Cakewalk for five cents or protocols for.....

Also didn't want something I already had but haven't seen current version of nectar elements free before Are you sure you are not thinking about neutron?

Thanks. Hate linking something with such negiativity, but seems to be a fair bit of it surroudning Oracle: https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=490018 It was most likely AAS Lounge Lizard. I have a couple other rhodes style emulations or samples but it is virtually always my go to. Haven't tried Union yet, but obviously with the price point I'm considering it. I bought Nectar Elements when it came out at some reduced price (likely $30), surprisingly it is the only Izotope elements plugin that is "meh" for me. Would certainly pay a few bucks for it but is the only one in the Elements line I felt $30 was actually more than I wanted to spend on it.

Haven't used Oracle, but the reviews are honestly suprisingly poor (not the ones on plugin boutique). I have Nebula, I tried it out a couple of times but not sure if it ever actually was used on a project. Unrelated, I've used both Firefly and Glitch on final projects. Other bus comps are better than Firefly but the fact I can install it on multiple machines I own can make transfering projects much easier than some of the alternatives. Glitch was indespensable in getting this "lead/melodyish track" I thought my guitar take was pretty much mundane and worthless without it.

Only waste your time. This usually predicts a future update, maybe an early release is in the works.

Can't predict the future but historically it has gone on sale for $29 with regularity. Best value in a WAVES plugin, IMO $29 or less is the pricepoint. I think I got it for 26 or less.

I like a handful of WAVES plugins quite a bit. However the "new version" and WUP program is complete and total insanity. Charging the sale cost of a plugin simply to get support for a pluign that should work in the first place is crazy. The updates do not provide additional features, any obvious updates to stablity, etc. It seems v11 is basically for MAC users due to a new operating system so WAVES decided to make a new version instead of making v10 compatible thus the whole user base is impacted. The fact the WUP price will cost you more than you can get in a re-sale of the plugins is also absurd.

They do have v11 plugins for everything I looked at, which likley means they did nothing to them, but will not support the prevoius version. I registered an old serial number I recieved about a year ago, it registered as v11.

All my v9 plugs turned to worthless when 10 came out. They still don't work. v11 is not "good news" in my book. The updates never really change anything for Windows users except to make old versions suddently not work out of the blue. (checked my WUP cost out of curiousity, it will cost a few dollars less to "WUP" than I paid for all of them in the first place, all to give me zero new features and the support ot make them work - which shouldn't be required if the plugins and authorization just work as they should)

Hopefully a future article on Chord and Aranger tracks in Cakewalk. ? In the meantime + 1 on drum maps or the current version of take lanes.

Current version has to authorize to the server (or go into demo mode) something like every 6 months. I don't know the code written into it, but I'm betting that scenario would not work. Also you mentioned saving your projects as Cakewalk Bundles. I'm far from an expert there, but if you are a doomsday theorist, saving in a fully closed proprietary format probably not the best route. Maybe save each project with stems both processed and unprocessed. Those could be imported into any other DAW. The fact I've opened Cakewalk projects from 17 years ago gives me some confidence in what they are doing.

Check in your ilok account after some time. I got the same annoying message, but it actually showed up despite the error.

The whole premise of unpredicatble is the fact we won't know. Only old versions of Cakewalk that authorized locally off-line by using a serial number and registration code that did not connect to any server to authorize are the only way you can assume to be able to install Cakewalk should something outside of anyones control happens. Of course there is no guarantee that version will work on any future state of Windows, etc. That is actually a better backup than you will get from most other DAWs as they majority (such as current Cakewalk state) requires the company to be in business to authorize. At least there was a period of versions where Cakewalk didn't and therefore if you own one of those versions, you might have a small amount of security. Not sure about backwards compatibility though. I'm only opening with current versions of Cakewalk these days, including projects created many years ago.

Requires a UA interface to run, so that is also apples to oranges, especially considering the price of any of the non entry level options a production house would want to use. I agree that I'm not sure Harrison has the clout to charge that and get a bunch of takers, the market will quickly dictate if I'm off base.

They make no qualms about who it is designed for. If you are running a large format video production house, $1500 is in the realm of Izotope RX Advanced which you already also have. Would be interesting to know if they did open the market more to say $200 per seat if they would actually make more money or not than with the strategy of only going after studios/production facilities.