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Important Waves Upgrade Information


Larry Shelby

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Waves no longer allows dealers to "build upgrades".  You have to go
to your Waves account, and select the Upgrade that you want from
what's available, and then select "Customize".  At the bottom of the 
customize page is an option to "buy from a dealer", which will then
request your email address and then send you a "code" which you must
supply to the dealer so that they can do the upgrade.

Just an FYI...

Edited by cclarry
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8 minutes ago, TerraSin said:

Are they really trying to lose customers because this is how you lose customers. Seems like they have made a lot of boneheaded decisions the past year.

I have to agree with this.  Everything that they have done has made their product less attractive.
It was bad enough that they charged WUP, but then they added charging for Transfers...and A LOT.
Now you have to jump through more and more "hoops", which basically makes their products 
"not a good investment", when all is considered.  I'm sure the intent is to "increase revenue", but
THIS is not the way to go about it IMO.  All they are doing with all of these things combined is
pushing customers away...especially with all the other incredible plugins out their competing with
them.

I'm not knocking the plugins...they're very good, but something that may be "very good", but overtly
MORE costly than comparable plugins that don't have all the added "baggage", renders them less 
attractive, not more so.

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I knew sales  ain't gonna last for too long, so I've got basically everything I wanted/needed from Waves. Guess, that's what most other users, professional and hobbyists, have done throughout the last couple of years. Most of us stopped buying cheap plugins in bulk because we already  have what we wanted.     Now the trend is changing from "sell more for less" to "sell less for more". Same money but more opportunities for future sales.

I just wonder what to expect next?  What  will the new breed of home and project studio owners be willing to buy and how many different versions of the same hardware they would want, granted they've never seen it or worked with it.  I mean, when I started out, great gear like tube amps or high end guitars wasn't rare but you couldn't afford to get, say, 2 or 3 different consoles, ten or more different amps, you get the point. Yet we were conscious of the existing equipment, cherishing a dream to use some outstanding products  one fine day.

Young musicians today  start off with computer based virtual studios and plugins. They have a very vague idea of the real gear the plugins are modeled after. Would they care about collecting virtual amps, or comparing emulations to the real deal? I'm not sure. I believe the music creation software market as we know it is approaching its last days. New generation of musicians and producers will most likely embrace AI based software solutions, like iZotope's RX, Ozon and similar stuff.

My point is, if you are late to the party, don't start collecting plugins. Use whatever you have and save your money for better software.

 

 

 

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Tell me if I am wrong. Software will NEVER be stagnant in any way shape or form. Sometimes the changes are purely cosmetic, sometimes the changes are necessary updates, improvements to glitches. Changes are going to happen though because they need revenue.

Some customers unrealistically expect eternal use of a plugin free. If you saturate a market that means you can't sell any more unless you collect revenue through improvements, bug fixes and revisions. This is why I see plugin ownership as an ongoing periodic expense. I wait as long as I can between changes though which is why I'm not in a hurry to load the latest Waves portal.

The home mixing engineer can slide by this if they download free plugins and/or use the ones provided by their DAW(s).  This isn't to say a plugin you bought and never updated won't work in 10 years. It's more like an insurance policy. Similar to small local businesses, these companies will go the way of the dodo bird if they don't have any support. Waves makes great plugins. 

May I ask what you are replacing Waves with ?

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 Wave is one of those who try to make more money off existing users while some need to make more off new users.  It's odd at times when a new license costs less than the WUP.   Gold/Maxx  is a $119  WUP.    Their loyalty is mixed.  Nice deal on upgrades but so so on WUP.  Even at half off I'm not sure I'd go for it.

 Their restrictions to one machine is getting outdated.  I have iLok software you can use on 2 machines.   Yup just what I want to do is use another USB port with a homemade dongle.

 The license friendly developers are Izotope, Melda, and IK.   I never have to pay for an upgrade on Melda.  Their plugins are rocket science but they don't crash and never get rejected by a DAW.   

 They have the largest inventory and I imagine something like Waves Central is their only solution so far to handle it. Some had issues with older versions being removed or new plugins not recognized by a DAW. 

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Is Waves intentionally doing things that may cause things to break and force people to wup as the only fix? Because they can update their brains out all they want but I guess I don't see why that has to render older versions broken, as almost happened to me w/ my v. 9 plugs during the one before last WC update which forced me to get Waves on the phone. I guess it comes down to whether or not they want to drop support for whichever legacy versions, leaving you w/ either wup or no more plugin. What's the oldest version of their plugs that Waves currently supports? I feel like they barely support v.9.

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5 hours ago, arnoldoo said:

I bought my waves knowing I will never sell them. I hate them for that, wup and waves central, they are in the top 3 worst resale/upgrade audio company, fighting the number one with IK (love-hate relationship). 

This is more a side comment as a bystander over the years for many plugin discussions...  I tend to read posts just to take mental notes of software/companies, especially the ones that tend to pop up more frequently with issues. Overall, I have steered clear of those, and wanted to let the folks who take the time to explain "why" with their opinions that it has been (and continues to be) appreciated.

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7 minutes ago, Christian Jones said:

And I'm curious; are there any Waves plugs that any of you can't live without and which no equivalent currently exists elsewhere? 

FWIW love waves tune (and i have melodyne  studio - revoice - etc) - also Rcomp is my quick go to.

I’m not sure “equivalent” really applies - I mean a compressor is a compressor is a compressor, right ? ?

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1 hour ago, simon said:

I’m not sure “equivalent” really applies - I mean a compressor is a compressor is a compressor, right

Plugs like OmniChannel channel are pretty unique. Yeah you can always put piecemeal together, but in a single plug it may be one of the only plugs out there that doesn't really have an equivalent as far as convenience and ease of getting a great sound from it afaik. Actually, if there is something like it or better from another manufacturer I'd like to hear about it. But I can't think of much else at the moment that waves does that no one else does. 

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I'm glad I recognized Waves for what they are (a trap) relatively early on. To their credit the fact that their plugins were really annoying to use to an extent that I at some point realized I began feeling irritation from the mere thought was a great aid in deciding against falling into their continous "bargain" lures. 

And because somebody will want to ask; I found their GUI's to be trashy both in logical arrangement and functionality. Buttons that had misalignment between hotspots (areas) and their graphic renderings, miniature fonts and dials that were probably dope on 800x600, sluggish knobs with awkward velocity curves when adjusting them with mouse, and overall general feeling of bit rot.

Good sounds though. But nothing more precious than my time and sanity.

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For a budget analog alternative consider Plugin Alliance. Same price range and tactics: overpriced just so they can pretend to have discounts all the time, which effectively means the plugins are affordable and fairly priced but the bastards just stop selling them at the fair prices arbitrarily, so if you want any you have to keep both eyes and ears open for the "bargains" all the time. The money subtracted from their full prices on sales you will be paying back by giving them more attention than your own mother.

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Waves has a place to d/l the installers for v6 plugins, and up.. I don't  think they officially support any version other than the current version. 

Love Waves plugins. The sound is top notch always. GUI is really dated on a lot of the plugins. But they are more than usable.

Some of the new plugins are really unique. Other new plugin they put out are just updated plugins that can be found elsewhere. 

Waves plugins I don't want to do without:

AR Plates

RS56

Torque

Smack Attack

Schepps stuff

C1

L3

Vitamin 

SSL stuff

Edited by Grem
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7 hours ago, Christian Jones said:

And I'm curious; are there any Waves plugs that any of you can't live without and which no equivalent currently exists elsewhere? 

Abbey Road and Greg Wells bundles plus Scheps OmniChannel. 

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