Waves Horizon 1 Day Sale

[Larry Shelby]

Waves Horizon 1-Day-Sale about 20% off
Runs alongside SPARK40 and $50/$90/$120 freebies.
https://everyplugin.com/horizon.html

w

[Craig N]

Yay the best price on Horizon yet. Got an even better upgrade price from Koby. Decided to bite the bullet. 

Now I need to start saving up for the upgrade to Mercury... that's still a big jump from here. 

[kitekrazy1]

10 hours ago, Craig N said:

Yay the best price on Horizon yet. Got an even better upgrade price from Koby. Decided to bite the bullet. 

Now I need to start saving up for the upgrade to Mercury... that's still a big jump from here. 

Better start saving for the WUP.

[bluzdog]

10 hours ago, Craig N said:

Yay the best price on Horizon yet. Got an even better upgrade price from Koby. Decided to bite the bullet. 

Now I need to start saving up for the upgrade to Mercury... that's still a big jump from here. 

Once you register it you get 3 freebies as well! It's usually cheaper to upgrade than WUP until the big jump to Mercury, which is way more plugins than anyone needs except @Bapu  ?

[kitekrazy1]

54 minutes ago, bluzdog said:

Once you register it you get 3 freebies as well! It's usually cheaper to upgrade than WUP until the big jump to Mercury, which is way more plugins than anyone needs except @Bapu  ?

So far that is not my experience.  I have Gold/RennMaxx, Dave Aude EMP pack, and WUP is more than half of those licenses.

[Fleer]

Wup that WUP!

[Craig N]

Everyone hates WUP but the conclusion I came to a while back after some research and giving a good bit of thought was that there are upgrade costs with most plugins and the way it works with Waves isn't really that bad. 

Eg

Reason (I just paid to upgrade from 10 to 11 to get high res support down the track - no idea if it will be any good). This is a DAW even though I only want to use it as a VST plugin nowadays and of course to get the VST rack I had to upgrade. Speaking of DAWs though they mostly charge for upgrades pretty frequently (Ableton, Cubase, Reaper every 2 versions). 

Native instruments Komplete I am trying to force myself to wait for version 14 and the upgrades are more expensive the more you own. No resizable UI in many of their older workhorse plugins despite paying for upgrades to get the new stuff. 

Plugin Alliance brings out multiple paid upgrades for the same plugins quite ruthlessly. 

Arturia finally made their Jupiter 8 sound good in a paid V Collection upgrade. Hopefully they give the Minimoog, CS80 and Prophet the same treatment in future.

IK Multimedia, Acustica and iZotope releases multiple paid upgrades. 

Many smaller operations charge for upgrades too. 

The companies that don't charge for upgrades often either never go back to fix up or improve their plugins (eg no resizable UI, or insufficient CPU optimisation, or bugs that go unfixed), or they release "new" products with the extra features that bear remarkable similarity to their older plugins. They will happily sell those old pretty much unsupported plugins to new customers though. I could name names but I don't really want to name and shame smaller companies. If they're still in business that's a start. There's never going to be an update if they go under. 

There are a few standout developers that add features and support their plugins over time with small or no upgrade costs but they generally have excellent word of mouth, such as TAL, u-he, Valhalla. Or they use it as a point of differentiation (and presumably sell to enough new customers to make such an approach viable) such as FL Studio. 

At the end of the day, companies need an income stream to stay in business and keep the plugins we use working as things change. New hardware (M1), new operating systems, higher res displays, higher sample rates, support for new DAWs, it's an ever changing landscape. 

So at this point I'm OK with the expectation of paying WUP from time to time. I'd joyfully pay it if they released better high res support such as vector graphics. Many of their plugins look pretty ugly. If they all looked amazing maybe they wouldn't get such a bad rap. 

Anyway that's the rationale for jumping into the Waves ecosystem despite having read countless complaints about WUP. Am I missing anything essential that could lead me to regret my decision?

[Brian Walton]

22 minutes ago, Craig N said:

Everyone hates WUP but the conclusion I came to a while back after some research and giving a good bit of thought was that there are upgrade costs with most plugins and the way it works with Waves isn't really that bad. 

Eg

Reason (I just paid to upgrade from 10 to 11 to get high res support down the track - no idea if it will be any good). This is a DAW even though I only want to use it as a VST plugin nowadays and of course to get the VST rack I had to upgrade. Speaking of DAWs though they mostly charge for upgrades pretty frequently (Ableton, Cubase, Reaper every 2 versions). 

Native instruments Komplete I am trying to force myself to wait for version 14 and the upgrades are more expensive the more you own. No resizable UI in many of their older workhorse plugins despite paying for upgrades to get the new stuff. 

Plugin Alliance brings out multiple paid upgrades for the same plugins quite ruthlessly. 

Arturia finally made their Jupiter 8 sound good in a paid V Collection upgrade. Hopefully they give the Minimoog, CS80 and Prophet the same treatment in future.

IK Multimedia, Acustica and iZotope releases multiple paid upgrades. 

Many smaller operations charge for upgrades too. 

The companies that don't charge for upgrades often either never go back to fix up or improve their plugins (eg no resizable UI, or insufficient CPU optimisation, or bugs that go unfixed), or they release "new" products with the extra features that bear remarkable similarity to their older plugins. They will happily sell those old pretty much unsupported plugins to new customers though. I could name names but I don't really want to name and shame smaller companies. If they're still in business that's a start. There's never going to be an update if they go under. 

There are a few standout developers that add features and support their plugins over time with small or no upgrade costs but they generally have excellent word of mouth, such as TAL, u-he, Valhalla. Or they use it as a point of differentiation (and presumably sell to enough new customers to make such an approach viable) such as FL Studio. 

At the end of the day, companies need an income stream to stay in business and keep the plugins we use working as things change. New hardware (M1), new operating systems, higher res displays, higher sample rates, support for new DAWs, it's an ever changing landscape. 

So at this point I'm OK with the expectation of paying WUP from time to time. I'd joyfully pay it if they released better high res support such as vector graphics. Many of their plugins look pretty ugly. If they all looked amazing maybe they wouldn't get such a bad rap. 

Anyway that's the rationale for jumping into the Waves ecosystem despite having read countless complaints about WUP. Am I missing anything essential that could lead me to regret my decision?

Those other plugin makers actauly offer real upgrade features when they charge more.

The only upgrade feature I've seen WAVES really do is the re-sizable GUI which was very poorly done and should have been done a long time ago.

They are also the only plugin maker that I've personally had major show stopping authorization/install problems with...more than once.  And if you don't have WUP, they won't lift a finger to help you other than pointing you to the cost of the "upgrade" to make your plugins work again.  

Honestly spending hundreds on those old plugins seems crazy to me.  Not sure what you think you are getting in that package that you can't get elsewhere with more computer autorizations available.  

 

Do you need 4 "maximizers?" as an example.

 

I haven't been around PA forever (was late to the party) but the upgrades seem to be a pretty big updates and the old versions still work just fine.  As long as you are not buying the latest of what they bring to market, the prices and authorizations are way better than WAVES.  And for comparisons sake, that Horizon bundle is filled with very old plugins.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Brian Walton

[Fleer]

Indeed, WUP just does WUP but mostly doesn’t add anything. And it’s much more costly than the price you pay ($29 or less) for those plugins. And if you’re on a Mac like me, they’ll stick it to you each year or so: no WUP, no new MacOS compatibility. 
Heck, I’ve got lots of Waves, but they’re all dead and buried until someone in Israel decides the fun is over and WUP is finally banned.

[MusicMan]

Waves is one of the few companies that will refuse to provide support if you don't have WUP. They also only provide one licence for each plugin unless you have WUP.

I love getting random out of the blue updates from the likes of Valhalla, all free and still developed. I'd rather support guys like that and boycott Waves so they change.

Plugin Alliance allow multiple installs, ongoing support and regular sales that are way cheaper than any WUP. They do charge for new versions, but they also make sure the old ones continue to work. The new versions like the others mentioned are generally full of new features. Not like Waves who just want more money for what you already have!

I wonder how many more sales Waves would get if they actually listened/cared about their customers and the market. I'd almost consider this offer just for a couple of the inclusions. But with their current practices, there are better options overall for almost, if not every plugin they make.

Support the Devs that care and listen ?

[sarine]

I was one of many who got suckered into spending on Waves because I thought I  was getting good deals. It didn't take that long to figure out how they operate and fortunately I didn't throw too much money into the well before I noticed the glitchy, unscaleable UI's and got fed up with their random layouts and visuals from one plugin to another. I sold what I could and walked away.

Yeah, some reverbs were nice (Abbey Roads and few others), albeit very demanding on CPU. They got some reverbs to sell alright.

I feel like Plugin Alliance (Brainworx, elysia, etc.) deliver what Waves might have - i.e. good DSP at dirt cheap prices - but at higher overall quality and in finer assortments (although I see them flirting with the same oversupply strategy that Waves uses).

I especially hated the total absence of any kind of visual integrity; using Waves feels like strolling through a flea market selling all kinds of junk you know nothing about. YMMV if you actually have a history with the junk in physical form.

The inverse is why I love Melda. It's like returning home and finding your room and all your stuff untouched.

[Fleer]

Yeah, only recently got into Melda (thanks to mibby) and now I know why it gets so much love. 

[Brian Walton]

57 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Yeah, only recently got into Melda (thanks to mibby) and now I know why it gets so much love. 

New Melda beta came out yesterday.  

The Turbo line of effects in particular getting an optional "traditional" hardware like GUI is the move in the right direction to get more users introduced to the platform.  Always updating the products.  Fantastic authorization system that doesn't treat buyers like criminals so I can put them on all of my machines and not have to think about did I transfer to this computer or not is wonderful.  

 

It is really amazing what you get out of his unassuming looking plugins.  You can look at some "unique" features of other products such as Vertigo Sound's VSM-2 2nd and 3rd harmonics added to different ranges.  Well MSaturatorMB offers similar functionality and perhaps arguably even more.  Granted I like both of the products a lot Melda tends to make me second guess a new purchase from another plugin maker perhaps more than anyone.  It just put a little more ownership on the end user to know what they want to do and how to accomplish it.  I likely wouldn't have thought about using MSaturatorMB in that way if it wasn't for the VS box.  

Since getting TurboReverbLE, I really wonder if I threw my money away on other verbs considering how much it has to offer and how good it sounds.  

 

 

 

[kitekrazy1]

4 hours ago, Craig N said:

Everyone hates WUP but the conclusion I came to a while back after some research and giving a good bit of thought was that there are upgrade costs with most plugins and the way it works with Waves isn't really that bad. 

Eg

Reason (I just paid to upgrade from 10 to 11 to get high res support down the track - no idea if it will be any good). This is a DAW even though I only want to use it as a VST plugin nowadays and of course to get the VST rack I had to upgrade. Speaking of DAWs though they mostly charge for upgrades pretty frequently (Ableton, Cubase, Reaper every 2 versions). 

Native instruments Komplete I am trying to force myself to wait for version 14 and the upgrades are more expensive the more you own. No resizable UI in many of their older workhorse plugins despite paying for upgrades to get the new stuff. 

Plugin Alliance brings out multiple paid upgrades for the same plugins quite ruthlessly. 

Arturia finally made their Jupiter 8 sound good in a paid V Collection upgrade. Hopefully they give the Minimoog, CS80 and Prophet the same treatment in future.

IK Multimedia, Acustica and iZotope releases multiple paid upgrades. 

Many smaller operations charge for upgrades too. 

The companies that don't charge for upgrades often either never go back to fix up or improve their plugins (eg no resizable UI, or insufficient CPU optimisation, or bugs that go unfixed), or they release "new" products with the extra features that bear remarkable similarity to their older plugins. They will happily sell those old pretty much unsupported plugins to new customers though. I could name names but I don't really want to name and shame smaller companies. If they're still in business that's a start. There's never going to be an update if they go under. 

There are a few standout developers that add features and support their plugins over time with small or no upgrade costs but they generally have excellent word of mouth, such as TAL, u-he, Valhalla. Or they use it as a point of differentiation (and presumably sell to enough new customers to make such an approach viable) such as FL Studio. 

At the end of the day, companies need an income stream to stay in business and keep the plugins we use working as things change. New hardware (M1), new operating systems, higher res displays, higher sample rates, support for new DAWs, it's an ever changing landscape. 

So at this point I'm OK with the expectation of paying WUP from time to time. I'd joyfully pay it if they released better high res support such as vector graphics. Many of their plugins look pretty ugly. If they all looked amazing maybe they wouldn't get such a bad rap. 

Anyway that's the rationale for jumping into the Waves ecosystem despite having read countless complaints about WUP. Am I missing anything essential that could lead me to regret my decision?

This was long and I skimmed through it.  My issue with Waves is their licensing sucks.  Waves is joyful that you are willing to pay.  Around the turn of the century the 2 worst reputations were Waves and Pace(iLok).   There's a reason why Waves does the $29 plugins and there are free plugin offers requiring iLok. 

 I have no issues with the quality of Waves but their licensing is so 1990's. All of the other developers you mentioned I have installed on 3 systems.

[kitekrazy1]

2 hours ago, Fleer said:

Yeah, only recently got into Melda (thanks to mibby) and now I know why it gets so much love. 

I love those bland GUIs. That means using less system resources.  Once you figure out how to use them you fell much more brilliant.  I finally have Melda everything.

[MusicMan]

5 hours ago, sarine said:

I was one of many who got suckered into spending on Waves because I thought I  was getting good deals.

It's a rite of passage and one that Waves rely on.. sometimes you need to stumble and fall before you learn to walk.. Waves is akin to stumbling and falling for newbies ?

I bought a handful, like you, not too many, but then luckily found so many better options and companies to deal with.

They won't get another cent from me unless they change ? Maybe not a bad thing.. I spend too much as it is! ?

[Doug Rintoul]

13 hours ago, Fleer said:

Indeed, WUP just does WUP but mostly doesn’t add anything. And it’s much more costly than the price you pay ($29 or less) for those plugins. And if you’re on a Mac like me, they’ll stick it to you each year or so: no WUP, no new MacOS compatibility. 
Heck, I’ve got lots of Waves, but they’re all dead and buried until someone in Israel decides the fun is over and WUP is finally banned.

WUP sucks big time for MAC users, not so much for Windows users. I would never paid for WUP and probably never will unless there is a show stopper bug or a must have feature upgrade. Unfortunately for MAC users, almost every time there is an OS upgrade, there has to be an upgrade for apps and plugins. Apple also really wants you to keep up to date with your OS and generally does not support software on older OSs. Just try getting GarageBand or XCode for Catalina if you don't already have it installed. The recent Moog give away was only available for Big Sur. I have a perfectly good Mac Mini on which Apple only officially supports Catalina. It can run Big Sur just fine but Apple decided to not release Big Sur for it.

Bottom line is if I were completely in the Apple ecosystem, I would avoid Waves like the plague. As a primarily Windows user, I could care less about WUP and Wave plugins can be a good deal.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Doug Rintoul

[Fleer]

Yeah, my 2012 MacBook Pro won’t do Big Sur either, so I ordered an M1 iMac. Will only be running native apps on that one, so for now that means:

Native M1 silicon software

 

https://isapplesiliconready.com

 

https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=157598

AAS

RME

Bitwig

Melda

Valhalla

FabFilter

Pianoteq

FL Studio

Klevgrand

AudioThing

SugarBytes

Xferrecords

Apogee (MiC)

MOTU M2 & M4

MOK Waverazor

[Grem]

I like Waves plugins. A lot of them are my "first reach for".

I just recently updated all my Waves to v12 through everyplugin.com. I have no issue with how they handle their program. They still have some of the best and easiest UI (even the old ones) I have. 

But I do have an issue with Pace. And as much as I like my Waves plugins, if they went to iLock, I would drop 'em in a NYS!! (New York second!)

 

 

[Monomox]

On 6/4/2021 at 5:27 PM, Craig N said:

Anyway that's the rationale for jumping into the Waves ecosystem despite having read countless complaints about WUP. Am I missing anything essential that could lead me to regret my decision?

We all have our pet peeves. Mine aren't even consistent. I sometimes hate installers, other times I love them, etc., etc. So you can't go by what others say.

If you've made the decision, good for you. Enjoy!