I had it with Wave Plug-ins.

[richard greenidge]

 

I'm the type of person that tries to upgrade my computer almost every year or less if something good comes out that would benefit my Cakewalk DAW. I usually checkout what's the fastest CPU or GPU by going here.  https://www.cpubenchmark.net/index.php   On July 8th I just happen to check what was the fastest CPU and it listed the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, for $499, topping out a Intel $8700 CPU. It was launched the day before, and was sold out in hours, I was lucky to Pre-order and get it because it takes almost 9 months to make a 7nm CPU, I had no idea. I ordered a 570 chipset motherboard when they told me it was coming last Monday. Monday morning all I had to do was put in the CPU that morning. Everything went fine, confirmed everything with Windows, all my programs worked without loading anything except Cakewalk by BandLab, but all I had to do was a quick re-load, and Cakewalk worked perfect. There were a few missing plugins when my song loaded, went to the websites of those missing, and there was no problem except as usual Waves. I have bought more Wave plug-ins, than any other. I cannot see me paying for something I already bought, I don't need a upgrade, it works fine. Then they have a limit of 1 download a year. I didn't remove anything from my hardrives or format it.  I changed my CPU and Motherboard. Nobody else does this. I have too many plug-ins from them to join their update program. I'm done with them, they do anything to get you to pay money for products you already bought. If I knew that years ago, I would have never wasted my money. I will not contact them because they need to change their policies. When you upgrade your computer it should be easy. I'm not going through that again. And nothing is more harder than installing a Waves plug-in. It's the only company that has a problem with me upgrading without trying to find a way to get a cut. Their upgrade program is the biggest ripoff. Not a flat fee to keep all your programs updated, but like $30 a piece. And if you have 20 plug-ins or more? Look for my post with the new Ryzen  3900X using Cakewalk.  

[razor7music]

I went through a Waves phase when they were having a major sale. I bought a bunch of Lord Algae ? stuff for drums, vocals, and a loud plug in. I used them on a few projects and might use them again, but since I've purchased other plug-ins that do that same thing, but have more granular control, I don't really use the Waves plug-ins all that much.

I did have an issue if I did a VST scan in CW that Waves would always prompt me that it couldn't find a file. All the plug ins seemed to work, so I just added the complaining plug-in to my exclusion list and the annoying prompt went away.

[Byron Dickens]

FYI:  In pro studios,  they don't tend to feel the urge to constantly update everything. 

[Toddskins]

I'm at least glad that you made your complaint public, so I can do more investigating.  I just watched a demo on their site yesterday for Abbey Road Studio 3 which seems really cool - a plugin for good heaphones that allow you to experience different vantage points of the actual Abbey Roads studio #3.

And I'm trying to narrow down a piano VSTi and Mercury Piano comes from there as well.

But if the company is a headache on how  things are managed for customers, I would want to know.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Toddskins

[richard greenidge]

Todd I had a lot of plug-ins from them over 50 I would think.  If you upgrade your hardrive, motherboard, or CPU, you may have a problem getting the plugins to work. They don't use the regular VST plug-in format files. And if you have to upload something they only allow you once a year. After one computer upgrade my new motherboard blew out, and I had to send them this and that to prove I had a RMA etc. No one else has that problem. They now have a update program, and after I put in most of my plug-ins to see how much it would cost me, it was over $400 a year. I have a few Abbey road stuff and I like them, but they are the only company that gives you a hassle for changing your hardware. They claim that once you buy their products you can use them forever, but not with any later patches. I'm not looking for the latest patches, I just want to be able to keep using what I paid for. They don't seem to care if you're able to use their product, they have  a yearly limit on how many times you can upload your product. They tell you if you want it, you have to pay or wait. Piano? I was using there Piano in the project I was testing my new 3900X CPU, and I had to go through a few Pianos to substitute the one I was using from them. I spent about a half hour deleting them (greyed out) from my preferred plug-in list. I used their loader after I upgraded my and after messing around, it finally said all my products were back in my C drive. But I never took them out that's what ticks me off. But it still didn't work.  If you buy from them, I would read everything. If you decide to upgrade, parts failure, then you may have a problem. I bought too many things from them to be treated like I'm some kind of software thief. I'm the type of person, where I don't want to talk to anyone, just give me what I paid for. If I'm going to be hassled or penalized for upgrading my system to work better, I would have never bought their products or anyone else.   

[richard greenidge]

Thanks Razor, I'm working around it. After I found the sound of a piano I sort of liked, I bought added some plug-ins from Soundtoys and I got the sound I really wanted. I'll work around the rest of the songs. The piano I use from Waves, which I now have a better sound can be see with my Favela Azul demo on YouTube, search; rioleo8  and my animations were made with iClone. Music with Cakewalk.  

[Tezza]

Authorization drives me mad. I recently upgraded my computer which took just 1 and a half hours to put all the bits in, yet it took 2 weeks to install and properly authorize the software.

I tried to update my Komplete Ultimate 10 to version 12, catastrophe because only can be done from the internet (despite me having the hard drive) and my internet is bad, then the third party plugins had some problems and "number of activations" had been exceeded also Steinberg UR44 reverbs etc, soft elicenser got wiped and had to get it reinitialized in my account. etc then Melodyne....

All of the problems I experienced related to companies procedures for protecting their software. It was the delays in them getting back to me, or being able to contact them at all to resolve problems that can only be resolved at their end, I couldn't fix them myself.

Making me rethink using third party plugins at all or at least reducing them.

 

 

[richard greenidge]

Tezza, I hope it is worth the upgrade. The last thing I was thinking about upgrading until I saw the price and specs of that new CPU. So far it looks great. When I'm running my music, the thread activity is lower than what I used to have when I was idling.  I just had to check if my Kontact stuff was working from the screenshot I sent on here, and it is. The only errors I think were from Waves. Good luck have a great weekend using your upgrade. 

[rsinger]

I like the sound of Waves plugins, but I don't like their licensing. I have a laptop and try to keep it configured like my DAW and Waves doesn't let you have two copies, you can put the license on a usb drive, but that's a hassle so for the plugins I like I've bought two copies. I replaced the HD/SSD on both systems and I unlicensed various plugins before swapping out drives and then relicensed them. I didn't have any problems.

[msmcleod]

4 hours ago, rsinger said:

I like the sound of Waves plugins, but I don't like their licensing. I have a laptop and try to keep it configured like my DAW and Waves doesn't let you have two copies, you can put the license on a usb drive, but that's a hassle so for the plugins I like I've bought two copies. I replaced the HD/SSD on both systems and I unlicensed various plugins before swapping out drives and then relicensed them. I didn't have any problems.

I have the same issue. And here's the real kicker... once you've got more than one of the same plugin, bang goes the cap on your WUP.

Waves wanted more than £1000 for my WUP.

[Alan Tubbs]

Funny, I was just visiting w a studio and the owner brought up waves from a few years ago where they would book an hour and check your system for cracked waves.  Then send bills and threaten owners.  Nice studio you got there, shame if a lawyer happened to it.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Alan Tubbs
Clarity

[rsinger]

8 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I have the same issue. And here's the real kicker... once you've got more than one of the same plugin, bang goes the cap on your WUP.

Waves wanted more than £1000 for my WUP.

Wow, I don't keep up to date so I wasn't aware of that. That's even worse. I have compressors, channel strips, exciters, and EQs and they all sounded good when I bought them so I'm not concerned with updating them. Synths and amp sims and Cakewalk I keep up to date.

[fret_man]

I have never had a problem with Waves. I recently built a new computer and all I did was 1) on my old computer, move my licenses to "the cloud", and 2) on my new computer, retrieve all my licenses from "the cloud". It worked without a hitch.

[Gerry 1943]

I purchased Wave plug-in once...never worked on my system and was told that Wave did not support Cakewalk.

That was it never Wave again.

 

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/26/2019 at 10:36 AM, fret_man said:

I have never had a problem with Waves. I recently built a new computer and all I did was 1) on my  old computer, move my licenses to "the cloud", and 2) on my new computer, retrieve all my licenses from "the cloud". It worked without a hitch.

This. Same with plug-ins that I have authorized via PACE/iLok. I had one experience similar to the OP's, but the next one was careful to just deauthorize or move all my licenses to the cloud before rebuilding my DAW computer.

This is critical, for anyone reading this thread, you must do this before changing your motherboard or system drive. I have moved my Waves licenses to a thumb drive so that I can take them anywhere or upgrade my system and not have to mess with anything and it works great.

Then, once your DAW system is up and running, you move the licenses back to your hard drive if you want, as I said with Waves, I just leave them on the thumb drive.

[richard greenidge]

SK, I moved my stuff to the cloud, and then I moved it back. It say's everything is back on my C drive, and it is licensed, but when Cakewalk went scanning for the files it asked me to direct it to the Waves folder where it does not acknowledge anything that it is looking for is there. I don't have the patience anymore. I'm 68, my next hour is not guaranteed. I have enough plug-ins from other companies, and the only problems have been with WAVES and their funny VST folders. I had enough. I won't have to worry anymore changing or hardware failure. If your hardware fails, you can't put it on a cloud, can you? I have software, if I go on their site, and want to use it on new hardware and didn't first remove it, it ask to remove from old system, and add to new. And I'm not limited to; "Once a year". I spent close to probably $2000 on Wave plug-ins all these years, I expect better and simpler plug-in installers. I like adding, and changing things to my computer. like the hard drives, they are mechanical and are subject to wear, and SDD Hard drives can only be written to so many times. I have the money to change them like it's the Airforce One, but I knew there was one program that made me weary. And with Waves gone, I can change my computer without any worries. Yes I may put something new in and it may last a few hours, but I won't have to worry if it does, I'll replace it without losing any plug-ins that I thought I bought to use throughout my life. It that's their EULA I don't like it, and we are finished. There is nothing more to say.          

[Jim Roseberry]

IIRC, Waves Central doesn't ping the Registry for your preferred/default VST Plugins folder location.

Every time I reinstall my Waves plugins, I have to manually move the WaveShell dlls.

That said, I wouldn't want to be without their SSL Bundle, H EQ, or Scheps Omni Channel.

If you ever need a de-esser to solve problems (string squeaks, sibilance, excessive cymbals), the pair in Scheps Omni Channel are amazing.

 

 

[Blogospherianman]

2 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

Every time I reinstall my Waves plugins, I have to manually move the WaveShell dlls.

That said, I wouldn't want to be without their SSL Bundle, H EQ, or Scheps Omni Channel.

I used to move the dlls manually and eventually got tired of that.  At some point I just added all of Waves default install locations to the plugin manager.  

C:\program files\common files/vst 3

C:\program files\vstplugins

C:\program files (x86)\common files\vst 3

Now I never have to move a dll, just rescan the plugins.

Maybe that would help the OP?  

On 7/25/2019 at 12:21 AM, richard greenidge said:

Then they have a limit of 1 download a year

Never experienced a limit on downloads from Waves either.  And their customer service is fast and friendly , which is important in this people business we are in.

@Jim Roseberry Yeah I certainly couldn’t part with my SSL bundle!! ?

[richard greenidge]

2 hours ago, Blogospherianman said:

I used to move the dlls manually and eventually got tired of that.  At some point I just added all of Waves default install locations to the plugin manager.  

C:\program files\common files/vst 3

C:\program files\vstplugins

C:\program files (x86)\common files\vst 3

Now I never have to move a dll, just rescan the plugins.

Maybe that would help the OP?  

Never experienced a limit on downloads from Waves either.  And their customer service is fast and friendly , which is important in this people business we are in.

@Jim Roseberry Yeah I certainly couldn’t part with my SSL bundle!! ?

https://www.waves.com/support/reactivate-recover-licenses 

It says on their website, recovery is once a year. Their customer service if I can remember was fast and I worked with no problem, I had to send them RMA numbers and proof of payments. But, I want to avoid that if that happens again. You spend days waiting for parts, put everything in and when it works, I have one, and only one company where some, most and maybe all (like now) where I seem to have a problem. The auto installer, tells me everything is there until Cakewalk looks for them the first time. 3 strikes you're out with me. Sept or October, a new CPU is coming out again by AMD, I want to have the option of buying it, but I'm intimidated by not being able to recover my licenses more than a year. I don't keep track of when I recovered last, other software companies I use don't have this restriction. Maybe they'll ask for a serial number the most. Here's the main question? Why should I wait for a year, what is the point in that? Like a kid on punishment. Then after the year is up, I can recover my license again. Bottom line, I don't agree with their EULA, so I'm cutting them loose.    

[marcL]

Since some years I have stopped using Waves plugins and I really do not regret! ? It is not just their WUP, it is also their weird shell stuff that I dislike! ? It makes plugin scanning much slower, because the DAWs cannot optimize. Also it does not let you reorganize folders ..., no installation transparency at all!!

Maybe Waves makes more waves than happy times! Or you have to breast the Waves if you use their plugins! Sometimes it is better to abandon a ship to the Waves!