POLL: Waves Central

[do_androids_dream]

I wish people would take the time (took me all of 10 minutes..) to actually learn how WC works - where it puts things and where to point your DAW to find the relevant .dll. Most of the problems I've ever seen on forums comes from user error.

[Aloysius]

Normal People: 24

Have no strong views either way: 12

Haters: 16

[noiseboyuk]

1 positive poll option, one neutral one, 3 negative ones. 'nuff said?

yeah I noticed that too

I'm curious (again) - would it have been a better poll with varying degrees of enthusiasm being offered? What purpose would be served? The proposition being tested is that that Waves Central causes significant problems for people. It's not a "on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you like Waves Central?". That wouldn't result in any useful data imo, it's just people having a moan or not. The useful data - if there is any - lies in a) seeing what proportion of people are dissatisfied and b) of those who are dissatisfied, how much is that actually affecting purchasing decisions.

I think the implication that because there is only one thumbs up option there must be some inherent bias is kinda daft. As indeed the results would seem to suggest.

[Harry_HH]

I choose an alternative, which is missing in the above list:

No major issues - once you have first suffered because of the stupid implementation, and learned things through the hard way, and now waiting for what Waves finds out next to make our lives difficult.

[Aloysius]

How many waves plug-ins do you have?

1) Is it much more than any other company?
2) If you had the same amount of single plug-ins from another company which required you to input a serial number into each and every plug-in would you find that to be a bit long winded like this sentence or would you think to yourself you know that waves plug-in manager is not that bad by comparison?

[noiseboyuk]

How many waves plug-ins do you have?

1) Is it much more than any other company?
2) If you had the same amount of single plug-ins from another company which required you to input a serial number into each and every plug-in would you find that to be a bit long winded like this sentence or would you think to yourself you know that waves plug-in manager is not that bad by comparison?

Only speaking personally of course:

1) Probably more, but not much more.
2) Most companies bundle, so it's no biggie. iZotope and NI are two that spring to mind, and authorisation for both I've found very simple. The time spent fighting with Waves Central involved vastly more time than authorising with any other developer.

[Aloysius]

Not good.

[Deep Purple]

If threads or polls like these would be in any way representative... they're not. They represent a tiny portion of the customers.

It's a shame more people don't recognize this fact - a sample size that's small really doesn't give you any useful information at all, and any conclusions drawn from it are at best flawed.

[noiseboyuk]

I'm under no illusions that these exercises are pure science. Neither do I consider them entirely useless. Currently its 72 contributors, which isn't too shabby as an indication of active KVR members, and KVR members is all the poll can ever hope to represent of course.

[AdvancedFollower]

It's not the fault of the users. As computer users, we're taught to make sure we always have the latest versions of drivers and software, so we receive all the bugfixes and compatibility updates (and in the case of Internet-connected software, also security updates.). It's easy to forget that you should make an exception to this rule for Waves.

I entirely agree Waves Central should detect those situations - particularly as it has access to the licence database. But there is a big mismatch between studio world (where updating at whim, particularly mid-project is a very, very bad idea) and consumer world that has contributed to this situation.

True, but studio software is still computer software, and in practical terms no different from other software, consumer or professional. It's still just computer code. Bugs and glitches get discovered that could potentially lead to crashes and/or lost work, and you need to install those updates to make sure your setup is as stable as possible. You might not realize you suffer from those bugs and glitches right now, but the faulty code is still there, just waiting for the right conditions that trigger the undesired behavior.

[Gamma-UT]

Bugs and glitches get discovered that could potentially lead to crashes and/or lost work, and you need to install those updates to make sure your setup is as stable as possible. You might not realize you suffer from those bugs and glitches right now, but the faulty code is still there, just waiting for the right conditions that trigger the undesired behavior.

And the new version may well have new bugs that do trigger in your project that the old version didn't. This is why people in professional environments with deadline pressures do not update mid-project if they can help it.

[Harry_HH]

nm

[simon.a.billington]

I wish people would take the time (took me all of 10 minutes..) to actually learn how WC works - where it puts things and where to point your DAW to find the relevant .dll. Most of the problems I've ever seen on forums comes from user error.

Yeah I’d agree to this too. It’s not always true, but I have seen this happen a lot.

[Deep Purple]

It's the same with a lot of software - just because you know how one manufacturer's software works, it doesn't mean that another's works the same; and if it doesn't then is that really a good reason for an internet post to whine about it?

[noiseboyuk]

It's the same with a lot of software - just because you know how one manufacturer's software works, it doesn't mean that another's works the same; and if it doesn't then is that really a good reason for an internet post to whine about it?

I have zero sympathy with this argument when it comes to Waves Central. My big beef is best summed up in this cartoon - I've posted it in all the other Waves Central threads, may as well do it here to complete the set:



The reason why I keep posting this is that Waves Central isn't a normal piece of software. It's a piece of software that puts Rat Poison next to the breakfast cereal for rats. And it's labelled it "Yummy Rat Food".

Again, I haven't personally been caught out by it, but I have colleagues who have, and read about it weekly on KVR. It shouldn't be possible to disable your entire rig by having a button marked "update existing plugins". In a world where we're always encouraged to stay up to date with latest versions, it's an entirely innocuous setting (IIRC it defaults to on, but this may have changed?). Even if Waves can't be bothered to program it properly, they could at least add a pop up that says "please check you have current v10 licenses for all your plugins or else you might experience problems. Are you sure you wish to proceed?" But no, and its been many many months of no.

Blaming the users, every time this incredibly predicable thing happens, is itself dumb imo. It is Charlie Brooker's Magic Noose:

https://youtu.be/JyQKi1e3GSY