Waves v9 Problem

[jochicago]

The level of amazingness that a Waves plugin needs to hit for me to think about buying it has become unreal.

This year I've spent no less than 10 hrs of full-on work fiddling with Waves authorization issues. They work on one DAW but not the other, or they work and then they stop working. Tried to upgrade plugins to recent version means reinstalling, then new problems again. Always something.

Every time I touch the Waves authorization system something breaks, then I'm deleting hidden holders and reattempting installs ad nauseum. They also leave so much crap all over your computer on tons of folders.

I get it about copyright protection, but they made a mess of it. Honestly, at this point a VST purchase for me would have to be a full fledged console emulator with a dial that switches the modeling from modern to classic SSL, API to Neve, and it would have to be $1.

[ATS]

no problems at all with Waves here. Much easier to deal with than most brands for me.

[lfm]

It's your personal system configuration and setup, not Waves.

Incorrect. It was set up on a new Win 10 Pro build. 9.92 would not install under any circumstances. 9.6 did work. Then there was the case earlier in the year when their latest build of Waves Central would not work for anyone, and no older version would work as it would self-update to the new broken version. Took about 72 hours to fix that as I recall. Here's the Pro Tools Expert report on it if you don't believe me - https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/produc ... ion-issues

I even had someone on Waves' staff concede that more resources needs to be put into Waves Central. At a bare minimum it should be smart enough to know that v9 licenses should not be updated to v10 if the user does not have a license. That right there would solve so many problems from people on this thread who never bothered to read the detailed instructions and never realised the carnage that would follow if they didn't keep that "update existing plugins" box checked. Happened also to a colleague of mine who was in despair - he too then decided to abandon Waves.

It's terrible UX, and it means forums like KVR get overrun with threads with titles like these. Entirely avoidable if they made Waves Central more robust.

The process works if you follow the directions and requirements.

There are certainly issues with Waves Central - the only thing that kept me buying more Waves since 2014. Buying a new plugin - you have to update Waves Central.

Last time I used it - after 4 rounds of emails with support and following suggestions, even support gave up - and I got a link to the offline installer - and all went fine. This was after getting free update to Element synth v2 for all v1 users.

In my case I could tell when it's going wrong - it started 32 threads with parallell downloads - and it could not keep track if what was successfull and what not. A lot of products were missing, and asking for folders on disk I have no clue what they meant.

So part is Waves servers that runs real slow - and Waves Central thinks it's slow internet and start more parallell downloads stuff. It takes 20 minutes to download just about any amount of products.

I've had Waves support remote controlling my computer doing this as well - always Waves Central stuff. sitting there on phones 20 minutes. That is dedication from support I never saw elsewhere - so kudos to Waves for that part.

So v10 is here - and thought now I get the latest of v9.xx. Started Waves Central and it told me to upgrade it. So I did - just to find that it only supports v10 stuff and a link to offline installer for v9. This is how it goes - not properly thought through. They build walls to old customer base - instead of making it simple for everybody buying more.

Waves Central is brilliant is how it work with not having to remember all products you bought so you have to put checkboxes in this. In my case it's 22 products, some single plugins, some bundles. So great thinking in what it does - just takes products on your account and install them. Doing it manually - some plugins and bundles are so similarly named it's easy to pick the wrong one - and you are in for yet another run. It was something with "ultramaximizer" something that is both a bundle and single plugin.

I used Waves Central to easily ship licenses to the cloud, and then down on another computer. Worked real well. So licenses part work well - install products seems to be the part with larger downloads and parallell threads poorly designed. As a retired programmer with specialised in communications - this my verdict - rookie programmer not having done much communications programming.

Not enough effort into making it flawless. You should not have to follow any instructions - it should work for legacy stuff too - end of story.

Finally - I love Waves stuff - wouldn't do without it. But there is a high wall against me buying again - just knowing I have to use the Waves Central. I currently have it uninstalled even.

Thinking of moving licenses to a usb stick - but think I will be sorry if I tried.

[noiseboyuk]

In general, if you follow the instructions - especially the critical one about not ticking the “update existing plugins” box if you have any v9 on your system - you’ve a decent chance of having no issues. The regular installer is pretty easy to use when it works, so I’m not disputing folks’ good experiences. None of it negates the poor experiences though. The issues are:

1. Waves Central should manage the co-existence of v9 and v10 better, so as not to unintentionally break stuff.

2. The offline installer is more cumbersome than the regular version. There’s no automatic way of just installing the plugins you have licenses for.

3. Even those who don’t fall foul of (1) and (2) may find occasional glitches. Historically those have included all customers for periods of time when Central has been on a broken build.

[jancivil]

winxp for me. no longer supported or fked with by MS and thats jolly good by me. it runs my EXT2 daw fast, not connected to the internet so fk you and your virus warnings,
therefor, all my beloved plugins will never stop working.
no cloud managers, no BS, just trouble free music making.
sucks to be a mac user and always have sht break with every OS update...
sorry, i just gotta laugh at people having to deal with that AND pay as
much money as they do for it.

One day your computer will stop working. I locked down a system once, the computer died.

And yeah, it would suck to be that if it was a fact, which it is not. I haven't had anything I wanted to use completely broken by a mere update of the OS. It could happen in a special case, but I have not experienced it.
I mean I once updated the OS from 10.6.8 to 10.8.5 in order to use something which you'll never use. I was actually not forced by the OS but by the plugin; not even that, I wanted a library which needed the plugin. I could have stuck with the status quo. Doesn't matter, because the machine died following a normal life expectancy. Funnily enough I have never used an anti-virus or worried a lot about being connected. Well, since I moved off of XP and a Pentium 4 in 2005.

It makes actually more sense if you keep to actual points and things which make some type of sense. It's not that superior a look when you just chime in to insult people you don't relate to or understand. It's the same old trip for you, people that want more out of the experience than your remain-in-the1980s sound you can make supposedly with all free plugins that run in a 16-yrs old OS are stupid.

I don't worry about Waves, it's a choice. I don't chime in where I don't have an actual dog in the hunt typically. No worries, though, amigo. I just think sometimes you need to be checked with that quasi-Luddite shit.

[TheSynthScientist]

Yes, it is pretty easy when you know how...

I agree with this statement for most copy protection but it does get frustrating just keeping up.

[ThomasHelzle]

...And if after all that enlightening talk you still think the Waves update plan, the whole Waveshell thing, the unstable copy protection and Waves Central are crap, you are absolutely right.
Thankfully there are alternatives...

Cheers,

Tom

[Arcvidean]

Waves Central installed versions take so long to initialise in Cubase 8.5 you can go out for a walk until it's finished, I have to use an older non Waves central version for it to work properly and then I haven't got VU meter.

Arcvidean.