Brian Walton

Tons of smart people out there, that doesn't mean they are educated consumers. It isn't about using WAVES and not being educated, it is the WUP program itself that preys on the uneducated consumer. You are clearly educated enough to know you didn't have to WUP, there are lots of people that buy into WUP when coverage expires for no reason other than to be "updated" which doesn't mean things like better compatibility, new functionality, etc to a broad base of users....they do it becuase they are used to software updates that provides those things. I've had more trouble with WAVES than any other plugin maker. Our definitions of unreliable are perhpas different things. When they are working, they are fine. The install, authorization process, and scanning of shells is anyting but a 100% uptime guarantee. I have friends that are "sponsored/have an artist deal" with WAVES.

Yeah, J37 was a hard one for me to give up, I do like it. I use a combo of things. Airwindows Tape isn't the same but surprisingly good when I add it with other things in my chain. Toneboosters Tape is good, but I find I have to compensate for the high end roll off. Honeslty I think there are some better options on the market - IKM for example but haven't seen it go on a real sale outside of the bundle which I don't need all of the different tape machines. NLS was the other hard one to give up, sound is good and the workflow is better than some alternatives for sure. I can't say any that feel like a real 1:1 replacement, but I have found other ones that I think are good enough and use depending on the sound and the project. Plates sounds very good, but so process intensive, I just gave up on it. The Exponential Audio stuff covers most of my baisc reverb needs (though you have to buy two of them or you are also stuck in the 1 seat model), and Arturia EMT Plate whcih was free at one point - is no slouch on that similar concept front. I actually like WAVES Sibilance better than the De-esser. Haven't found a single De-esser that does everything on every source so I use a combination of them. Some are dirt cheap (Hornet), ToneBoosters CM, Airwindows DeBess, Flux Bitter Sweet come to mind.

Only WAVES plugin I didn't find a reasonable replacement for is Omni-Channel. I fully agree they have some good sounding and useful plugins. Curious which one(s) you are clinging to? WUP is a percentage off of the retail price not the sale price, so I've found instead of doing WUP, it makes more sense to just buy another seat for the same plugin on sale if you can't get out of the WAVES system.

Were you actually pulling that down from their servers? I have a decent connection but the download took at least 20 minutes....I think they were getting slammed pretty hard. I'm fairly confident they don't have servers taht can handle 1Gig downloads from a single source connection. With the new sounds I was surprised the install size didn't grow that much. Haven't tested stability yet, but the new featues are most appreciated. (an upright bass would have been killer)

Only thing I'll add is if WAVE Central updates and you add a new pluign to the stable, or they release a new version (v13) and you update. I had v9 plugins die when I added v10. On one computer all v10-v12 worked fine. THe other machine had one v12 plugin that no longer worked. No other hardware, OS or Software changes. Just simlply that WAVES Central and the install/authorization system is not 100% reliable. Yes, there is no reason that they shoulnd't keep working, but I've worked with more computers than the average person and can confirm I've had a bumpy track record with WAVES that I have not had with any other plugin maker. Any change at WAVES has some risk. If you are on WUP they will help sort it out, if you are not, you are on your own.

Yep, they give out quite a few free ones over the years. I've moved away from purchasing them and generally using them in projects. Isn't worth it. As for the number, every professional recording session I've been in uses less than 35 different types of "in the box" effects. Its nice to have an play around with hundreds of plugins (which I have), but there are less than 35 that are actually used on every project "in the box."

I'm an educated consumer and understand the procedure just fine and own 35 WAVES plugins.

Haven't run a test, but when my ears hear "warm" that is usually an indicator something isn't transparent as it is coloring the sound . The question would be how does it compare when it is off? If it is warmer than that, well...that isn't transparency you are hearing is coloration. These plugins should just be a notch filter EQ at 60z and then the corresponding harmonic frequencies. The more transparent ones will simply isolate those key bands (and not the surrounding ones). 60z isn't really in the guitar spectrum, but the harmonic ones are.

So you throw away $240 every year, when you could just buy plugins from someone else? WUP provides no actual value, outside of the plugin scaling that they should have implemented years ago (and is very poorly done, I might add) they haven't provided any real updates in a long time. Certainly nothing worth paying for each year. The system preys on the uneducated consumer and the unreliability of their own product. I've got my licenses on a USB stick. Moving them to a different computer every time I want to use it is a legitimate time wasting hassle, I don't have the extra USB port on the other computer when it is actually being use for music production, so I still have to launch WAVES Central, connect to the internet, transfer the seats to the computer, shut down the computer, go about my business then reverse the whole thing to get them back on the main machine.

Confirmed it works with the free Player. Sounds very nice, though I'd expect most people to use external controls for all sound tweaks other than the velocity curves and the options are limited and those that are there are I'll say limiting. I'm not someone with a crazy amount of pianos...sure I have a few. But given how space intensive they have gotten over the years, I tend not to install that many.

All are fugly and limited to one install. Sure, they sound ok....but as I look down the list most of it is a "nah, I'd never use it" or having something else that was cheap/free that is just as good and not locked to a single machine. But like I said in another post, maybe if you are new to the pluign world it is a good value. Otherwise I tend to think it is throwing $5 for many of us.

Not sure on the system resorces but never thought that one was crazy. It has its own module so it isn't like loading Neutron and having multiple effects going. The RX plugs have individual plugs.

They are all "old" X-hum, you don't already have Izotope RX Elements?

Hoenslty I wouldn't spend $5 on any of those. Maybe if I was starting out and didn't have a number of plugins.

A number of reports suggest the old 32bit RS124 comp actually sounds better than the new one.

Nah, WAVES has to go above and beyond to earn my money. It isn't free for the taking when they have a proven track record of not treating paying customers well.

Note the Royal Compressor you can currently get at PluginBotique as a freebie (i.e. $5 by buying something else) is theoretically also based on the RS124. Might want to run a test to compare before just blind buying the thing from WAVES, consdiering the RC one doens't have restrictive authorization schemes and prone to Waves Central failures, and show stopping shell scans in Cakewalk.

CLA the same guy that doesn't even use his own "signature plugins?" I've been around enough collaborations between the the "expert/artist" and the company that is doing the product development to know the product developer still needs good ears to interpret the jive the expert/artist speaks in. It is great that we have wonderful tools and an internet of both experts and hobbyists that can call out snake oil or genuinely useful tools. But most plugins don't have a world renown engineer behind them....and those that do also have a pile of money being paid to do so. I also know Grammy winning engineers that are very good at what they do, but don't have the ability to discern very minor changes in sound, such as the ratio or attack and release times in a compressor in the context of a mix. If a plugin maker doesn't have good enough ears to discern certain characteristics and changes in sound then, yes, I'd say that kind of matters if they have a goal of creating something that basically sounds like something else. The problem with audio is there is a ton of snake oil. You can make a simple one knob plugin that simply compresses and adds eq at a certain frequency range and as long as you pick a frequency range that is in a non-harsh range you have a plugin someone will think is magical as it can bring out or emphasize something in the mix. Look at the Aphex Exciter....that thing was considered magic and yet you push it a little to far and it the most awful thing you will ever hear. All you have to do is simply change the sound and there is someone out there that will like it, even educated people. edit: look at all the TS-9 or TS-808 pedals sold and the high prices for originals. Anyone with half way decent hearing knows those things can destroy good guitar tone. What they can do is cut through a mix by re-equing the guitar signal and adding not exactly world class harmonics/distortion, and compress so the guitarist doesn't have to control their own dynamic playing. But people buy them because they read everyone uses them and SRV had one, and they are the only thing in his rig they could afford.

X1 was pretty buggy. By X3-E the platform felt quite solid. I agree the move to a dark theme in SPLAT was a move in the right direction, but the Skylight interface was alreaedy better than other things on the market with X1 visually. Things have only improved since then. I'm thankful we can change our themes as it is interesting how taste changes over time. I was using an all dark theme for years, and recently started using a custom "middle gray" theme a good portion of the time and I never thought I'd get out of the dark theme space again.

It depends on how they created the emulation. Some use the actual unit, others are emulating a schematic, etc. No matter which way it is done, I don't think anyone expects it to be the exact copy of the best unit in existence. I also don't think the people creating the plug-in have ears like Ken Fischer did. So the idea that these plug-in creators are even capable of creating something that is the greatest audio processing unit of all time is equally unrealistic. I appreciate the notion of going beyond a clone of the hardware in this digital age. I don't want to have unnecessary limitations, etc. But I also don't have unrealistic expectations that these coders have better ears than the giants of the audio world. We have reached a point where the audio tools for many effect processing tasks in box are good enough in the right hands. I did not believe that was the case 20 years ago. If I buy a 670 on the internet, I don't expect it to be the best one ever made, nor do I expect a plug-in to sound exactly like it. I don't even expect two guitar amps that came off the same assembly line to sound identical. But they will have more similarities than dissimilarity as part tollerences even on sensitive circuits yield "minor" differences in tone, sound, and responsiveness. And typically it takes a controlled environment and A/B to call out and really notice the differences. Which plug in makers can tell you what comp or eq was used on some random album track that was recorded by someone else by ear alone. I'm going to bet not one single person can do it with even 80 percent accuracy.

You literally don't need any other EQs, just knowledge of how to use them. I have EQs that were not free and they are not any better than the Quad Curve with Flyout and generally not as convenient. For a general purpose will work on every track EQ, the Cakewalk one is hard to beat.

2020, they say it is ready to go but with the Black Friday sales for support reasons wanted to wait until the sale is over before dropping the major update.

No clue, and I'd imagine tryign to measure the attack and reelase time accuratly in something that is normally captured in ms...would take a bit of wizardry to figure out. Indeed, it is a use your ears situation...which is good and bad. Even trained ears can struggle with suble adjustments of this stuff. You take it to extremes and you can hear it, but less extreme you end up spending more time wondering if what you are hearing is what you are hearing....(at least in my case).

normally you set an attack or release time in milliseconds. On Turbo Comp you have 0% - 100% as values to adjust those controls....no actual "time" fuction, percentage instead. 0% is less time 100% is more time, but no idea what time value it correlates to.

Indeed, it woudl work on some but not all. Given how complicated the plugins are, I'm sure they could make it so those get grey'd out when not applicable when a comp has a fixed attack/release/ratio or one that is outside the bounds of the settings. I mean they just seem to crave complexity as it is. Using the plugin makes me realize all the more how myopic my worldview is having an arsenal of compressors in hand...knowing full well none of that really matters and that the consumer of the final mix isn't going to notice a difference unless I do something flat out wrong.