FREE - Waves Flow Motion FM Synth from Sonic State (June 22nd to June 24th)

[Starship Krupa]

19 hours ago, John Maar said:

I've been Waves free for over 4 years. 😇

Clapclapclapclapclapclap.

18 hours ago, Fleer said:

Wish I had the guts. 

Keep coming back.

[John Maar]

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Clapclapclapclapclapclap.

...

I joined the W.A. (Waves Anonymous) simple 3-step program:

1) Accept the monetary loss.

2) Uninstall all Waves plugins and associated garbage.

3) Never buy another Waves plugin or register another free Waves plugin.

No 12-step program needed! No meeting attendance required!

Your plugin scanners will thank you!

Edited June 19 by John Maar

[Starship Krupa]

My fascination for how companies do what they do is piqued by Waves' story. It is kinda sad to see how they've alienated so many once-enthusiastic customers.

Half a dozen years ago, it was so common on the Cakewalk forums for people to recommend a Waves plug-in that I had a snarky comment about it in my sig. If someone was having a problem with a mix, the first solution that came to mind was using a Waves plug-in. It was so widespread that I got eye-roll-y about it. That is some excellent mind share.

Now they don't ever seem to get any love at all. Nobody has anything good to say about the product. It's almost as if people don't like to admit that they use anything by Waves.

I've only ever snagged their freebies, and there are fewer of those still installed than not installed, but Berserk, Magma Lil Tube, MetaFilter and Silk Vocal are really good stuff.

[husker]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

It's almost as if people don't like to admit that they use anything by Waves.

I think @Bapu and I may be the only ones left here.  I actually really like the Waves plugins.  They seem to be very stable and work well.  There are several that I absolutely love - the Abbey Road series, Flow Motion, Waves Brauer Motion, OVox, etc.   They're great.

There is some fair criticism to Waves - the attempt to move to subscription didn't go over very well, but that is just the way of the world right now.  Heck, even Cakewalk is doing is now.    I'm in IT, and subscriptions are basically taking over the world.   It sucks.  The global leader in the virtualization market announced last year that they are basically forcing everyone into subscription - take it or leave it, and don't ask questions.    You can't even buy maintenance or support for your existing licenses anymore.   Its brutal in IT right now.   If Waves would have kept a subscription only option, I wouldn't have bought it, I would have dropped them.

I don't care for the Waveshell either - its rather hokey, but I've never really had any issues with it.  I have complaints about quite a few companies installers, so that isn't new.  

WUP doesn't bother me really at all either.   I'm just a hobbyist, but one of my first purchases was Waves Gold.  I've slowly upgraded all the way up to Mercury, and I've actually only ever purchased WUP once.  I feel bad for those who are forced to buy it (mostly Mac users), but I don't feel bad for those who claim to not know about it.   Before you buy anything, do a bit of research.  It does bother me that people claim that WUP is a subscription - it isn't.  It's maintenance, and is not required.  

Waves does seem to bring out quite a bit of negativity in people (outside of the gentle ribbing about WUP that happens here), but I'll go on record that I like my Waves plugins.   Me and @Bapu, sitting here in the corner.

[Fleer]

I actually wanted to like Waves, even though I always loathed WUP. 
So I collected lots of their plugins over the years, including bundles like Abbey Road, Pianos & Keys, CLA etcetera. 
Easily some 100 or more, mostly from EveryPlugin’s Koby. 
But I didn’t activate the serials, as I waited for the right time to start using them. 
Then, all of a sudden, they started talking subscription and forced me to activate them all. 
Which I did. 
Next, they aborted their subscription plans. 
And now all those plugins are out of WUP and I’m out of luck. 
Wrote them about it, they couldn’t care less. 
Thanks Waves, but no thanks. 
Go WUP yourselves. 

[husker]

16 minutes ago, Fleer said:

I actually wanted to like Waves, even though I always loathed WUP. 
So I collected lots of their plugins over the years, including bundles like Abbey Road, Pianos & Keys, CLA etcetera. 
Easily some 100 or more, mostly from EveryPlugin’s Koby. 
But I didn’t activate the serials, as I waited for the right time to start using them. 
Then, all of a sudden, they started talking subscription and forced me to activate them all. 
Which I did. 
Next, they aborted their subscription plans. 
And now all those plugins are out of WUP and I’m out of luck. 
Wrote them about it, they couldn’t care less. 
Thanks Waves, but no thanks. 
Go WUP yourselves. 

You are on a Mac, correct?    Do they actually work on your version, or would you have to WUP to make them work? 

[Fleer]

11 minutes ago, husker said:

You are on a Mac, correct?    Do they actually work on your version, or would you have to WUP to make them work? 

No, they often stop working when updating MacOS. And I love updating MacOS

[kitekrazy]

Great plugins - lousy licensing.  I think they are the only effect plugins I have that basically need to be tied to one machine unless you want to go the "improvadongle" route.

They lead the league in the race down to zero.  

 

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, husker said:

I'm in IT, and subscriptions are basically taking over the world.   It sucks.  The global leader in the virtualization market announced last year that they are basically forcing everyone into subscription - take it or leave it, and don't ask questions.    You can't even buy maintenance or support for your existing licenses anymore.   Its brutal in IT right now.   If Waves would have kept a subscription only option, I wouldn't have bought it, I would have dropped them.

As I said I'm fascinated by the doings of companies, especially music equipment ones. I have every book ever published about the history of Fender (which is actually quite a few) and have read plenty of others from the library.

A misstep I see over and over again, when missteps are made, is when differently-clued management assume that what works in one business will work in another one, or all of them. It happens over and over. A company is bought or in some other way gets new management, and the new management doesn't understand the specific market, tries to apply general business school principles or things that worked great at the last company they managed. It even happens with different divisions in the same company.

One of the brands that Gibson killed (or at least failed to resuscitate) in the Henry Juszkiewicz years was Slingerland. Some of it was done well, they were aiming for the high ticket American made segment (a la Gibson guitars), and they tooled up for accurate Slingerland hardware, good shells, by all accounts they were excellent drums. But then when it came time to get them in stores, the people at Gibson didn't understand how things work in the high end drum world.

For those who don't know, high end drum sets have long been almost a custom product. Since the parts are interchangeable, and the finishes varied (and the stores more specialized), stores stock a few examples for the floor, then the customer orders what they want. The shells and mounts are usually from one manufacturer, but bass pedal, hi hat stand, throne, heads, about half the kit effectively can end up being from multiple sources. Different finishes, wraps, all of this makes high end drums custom affairs. It's as if when you went to buy a guitar, it was customary for you to specify what brand and model of pickups, tuners, and bridge, and then the dealer would order everything, put it all together, and phone you.

But Gibson apparently tried to sell Slingerland drums like they were used to selling Gibson guitars, where a Gibson guitar dealer is expected to purchase and keep in stock a variety of different models in different finishes. More cash up front to the manufacturer, more risk for the dealer. So if you wanted to be a Gibson/Slingerland dealer, they'd expect you to buy a whole bunch of product up front, which if you were unable to turn around and sell, you'd end up taking a bath on.

With the presence of Ludwig and DW already in that market and willing to play by the established rules, you can guess how well Slingerland drums, a brand that had already gone through a decline and extinction and was attempting to make a comeback, did in the marketplace. Or just look for Slingerland drums from that era. There are very few. You see someone playing Slingies and you're looking at a vintage weirdo like me.

I have worked at large and small companies who made software for consumers and businesses.

What I wonder about this "taking over the world" thing and its encroachment into music software is who is telling makers and sellers of music software to try going subscription (especially the so far rare cases of subscription-only)? Are they veterans of the industry (by which I mean the industry that markets software to musicians)? Are they people who came up at companies with mostly business clients?

I think Adobe pulled it off because they were able to leverage Photoshop. If you do pre-press and/or want to sell your photos, you use Photoshop. Which makes it kinda B2B, sort of. I think that if they hadn't been able to leverage Photoshop they wouldn't have been successful, I don't know if they'd even have tried.

Which is why I always raise the point, when people say words to the effect that the software industry is headed subscription-only: if that's true in the consumer market, then who's been able to pull it off? Waves tried and backed off, even Avid tried and backed off.

I think there's not just one software industry. There are programs that are purchased and used by both businesses and individuals, but those are different markets with different use patterns, different expectations, different accounting needs, etc.

It's easy these days to know who is buying your product, what their buying habits are, how often they use your product, etc. One obvious thing to do is ask them. I always like the opportunity to participate in a poll by the companies whose products I use. Every company already has their users' email addresses.

If the product is a DAW and the user has use analysis turned on, then the company can know how long between exports their users go and draw some conclusions based on that. If they go a few weeks between renders they're probably not a pro studio.

2 simple questions: "If program YYY and future updates were made available via subscription, how likely on a scale of 1-5 would you be to take advantage of it?" and "If program YYY and future updates were only available via subscription, how likely on a scale of 1-5 would you be to continue to use it?" 2 questions and they'll know which way the wind blows.

[Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann]

There are a few waves plugins that I use regularly and I quite like them: Aphex Aural Exciter, Puigchild compressor, and the artist series by CLA and Manny Marroquin. I also quite like the Nx series (I use the headtracker that attaches to the headphones). There are many others that I use depending on the project

There is a lot of fear and uncertainty floating around WUP and Waveshells.

For the most part WUP can be ignored, just install the version that you buy, enjoy a year of free upgrades, then don't bother paying for anything until an upgrade adds a feature that you want (or adds new plugins that you want to a bundle that you have) and the upgrade price is worth it. If you bought e.g., Ozone 7 you wouldn't expect that Ozone 8, 9 and 10 would be all free upgrades, would you? Waves ends up working similarly, and the "grace period" is 1 year, which isn't bad. Getting the upgrade price can be confusing as heck (if you use the default selection you'll likely pay a lot) but actually, once you unselect everything you don't really need, the price is quite reasonable (comparable e.g., to iZotope)

Yes, you may end up with these waveshell dll/vst3/aax files with a version and a suffix, and if you have many waves plugins your plugin scans may seem to take a long time for them, but it's just that many plugins are being scanned for each waveshell. Each version may be split into a few "bundles" (e.g., Waveshell1-version# Waveshell2-version# etc.) but it's just that each one wraps different plugins

For me, the two criticisms of Waves I'd point out are inflexible installations (paths cannot be customized, and you're out of luck if your C drive is short on space), and that many plugins don't use oversampling when they should. I do hear an improvement when running them inside DDMF metaplugin and using its oversampling options. It is a problem that is solvable (I know of metaplugin, maybe there are other vst hosts that can do it as well) but it's an annoyance.

[John Maar]

2 hours ago, Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann said:

...

For the most part WUP can be ignored, just install the version that you buy, enjoy a year of free upgrades, then don't bother paying for anything until an upgrade adds a feature that you want (or adds new plugins that you want to a bundle that you have) and the upgrade price is worth it. If you bought e.g., Ozone 7 you wouldn't expect that Ozone 8, 9 and 10 would be all free upgrades, would you? Waves ends up working similarly, and the "grace period" is 1 year, which isn't bad. Getting the upgrade price can be confusing as heck (if you use the default selection you'll likely pay a lot) but actually, once you unselect everything you don't really need, the price is quite reasonable (comparable e.g., to iZotope)

...

No, I wouldn't, if the time between major version upgrades was 2 years or more. For example, my first license for Studio One Pro was v2. I happily paid for the v4, v5 and v6 upgrades. Waves v9 was out for a long time, but then v10, v11 and v12 came in pretty quick succession. Pure WUP money grab. And some companies even charge for point updates (like Vn.5). I'm not going to mention any names, they know who they are. But i have also uninstalled their products and purchased competing products with more respect for the customers' wallets.

Which brings us to subscriptions. I absolutely understand and appreciate the value that subscriptions offer suppliers. It's very difficult to run a business when your income stream is neither regular or predictable. For me to sign up for a sub, it needs to offer value to me, not just to the supplier. I tend to avoid sub-only suppliers, but like having the choice of perpetual vs. sub. And how the sub license works is one major key. If I cancel the sub, can I continue to use what I have or do I lose it? And the subs that are cloud-only suck the worst, since you also lose access to all of your personal files.

[MusicMan]

4 hours ago, Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann said:

There are a few waves plugins that I use regularly and I quite like them: Aphex Aural Exciter, Puigchild compressor, and the artist series by CLA and Manny Marroquin. I also quite like the Nx series (I use the headtracker that attaches to the headphones). There are many others that I use depending on the project

There is a lot of fear and uncertainty floating around WUP and Waveshells.

For the most part WUP can be ignored, just install the version that you buy, enjoy a year of free upgrades, then don't bother paying for anything until an upgrade adds a feature that you want (or adds new plugins that you want to a bundle that you have) and the upgrade price is worth it. If you bought e.g., Ozone 7 you wouldn't expect that Ozone 8, 9 and 10 would be all free upgrades, would you? Waves ends up working similarly, and the "grace period" is 1 year, which isn't bad. Getting the upgrade price can be confusing as heck (if you use the default selection you'll likely pay a lot) but actually, once you unselect everything you don't really need, the price is quite reasonable (comparable e.g., to iZotope)

Yes, you may end up with these waveshell dll/vst3/aax files with a version and a suffix, and if you have many waves plugins your plugin scans may seem to take a long time for them, but it's just that many plugins are being scanned for each waveshell. Each version may be split into a few "bundles" (e.g., Waveshell1-version# Waveshell2-version# etc.) but it's just that each one wraps different plugins

For me, the two criticisms of Waves I'd point out are inflexible installations (paths cannot be customized, and you're out of luck if your C drive is short on space), and that many plugins don't use oversampling when they should. I do hear an improvement when running them inside DDMF metaplugin and using its oversampling options. It is a problem that is solvable (I know of metaplugin, maybe there are other vst hosts that can do it as well) but it's an annoyance.

There are a few downsides that you haven't factored in. If you have two computers, you can only use your Waves plugins on one when the WUP runs out. Unless you want to use a USB dongle which is a hassle, or deactivate from one machine and activate on the other each time and that simply is not required for the vast majority of plugins.

With Mac and people upgrading, the plugins do at times break with the update, especially any hardware updates. This seems to happen quite frequently for people.

With iZotope you're talking about version upgrades. I dislike, but don't object paying for major version release upgrades, but even iZotope still provides bugfixes and compatibility updates many years later. Waves does not provide anything as soon as WUP expires.

With Waveshells, in Acoustica Premium right as of now, not all of my Waves show up in there for me to use, purely due to their stupid Waveshells.

There might be other companies that fail to get things right, but I'm somewhat at a loss to think of one that gets it so wrong like Waves on so many fronts and still holds course 🤣

[kitekrazy]

They did another blunder somewhere around the turn of the century where there was 38 pages on the old Northern Sound Source forum will people committed not to buy anymore.

 The race down to zero became a result of that as well.

 RenMaxx are probably still the best to have.

[Solidos]

E-mails are now going out. I received mine.

[Nitrate Audio]

i got mine, have yet to try it. but free is free.