Waves V12 is here, now with resizable GUIs

[drsyncenstein]

It's very easy, you just have to figure out the strategy. But if you can't even figure out how to use Waves Central, like most people bitching about WUP seem, then you're probably not going to.

I'm not bitching, this is Waves businessmodel. And it's pretty unique in the pluginmarket.
So what's got the installer\updater got to do with it?

[rasmusklump]

What is waves business model?
To pay for a version update?
When you go from cubase 11 to 12 you have to pay. From wavelab 10 to 11 you have to pay. Komplete 9 to 10 you have to pay, ultra analog 2 to 3 you have to pay.
Sure there are companies that don't charge, but waves are far from being the only company charging.

[oneshotdeal]

What is waves business model?
To pay for a version update?
When you go from cubase 11 to 12 you have to pay. From wavelab 10 to 11 you have to pay. Komplete 9 to 10 you have to pay, ultra analog 2 to 3 you have to pay.
Sure there are companies that don't charge, but waves are far from being the only company charging.

I own and use a lot of Waves products, but this is nonsense. Best case, they're charging for maintenance, not upgrades. Worst case, which is reality for 90% of "upgrades", they're basically charging a yearly subscription fee without making any changes to the product.

[robotmonkey]

Waves release notes for all versions: https://www.waves.com/downloads/release-notes#v9
Not a short list.

It's true that their version upgrades are not always comparable to other developers. For example, V10 was completely pointless and short-lived, IMHO, while V9 was in production for six years and had many significant changes under the hood, including full AAX support, full VST2.4 64bit support, full sidechain support for relevant VST2.4 plugins, full SoundGrid support, full support of new OS X versions and so on. And on top of that all the bugfixes and imprvments for all the hundreds of plugins Waves has in it's catalog. All of that was free.

I completely skipped V10 except the couple of freebies I accumulated during this time. V11 brought significant GUI improvements for RenMaxx plugins so I finally decided to upgrade my Gold and RenMaxx bundle. Cost me about 35$. I also paid WUP for couple of plugins during the WUP sale and used the voucher you get to upgrade another couple of plugins to a bundle, effectively bringing them up to date regarding WUP. I also got a bunch of new plugins due to this. So when V12 was released I was able to get everything to V12 for free. I still have couple of plugins on V9 and they still work as well as they did 10 years ago.

[robotmonkey]

What is waves business model?
To pay for a version update?
When you go from cubase 11 to 12 you have to pay. From wavelab 10 to 11 you have to pay. Komplete 9 to 10 you have to pay, ultra analog 2 to 3 you have to pay.
Sure there are companies that don't charge, but waves are far from being the only company charging.

I own and use a lot of Waves products, but this is nonsense. Best case, they're charging for maintenance, not upgrades. Worst case, which is reality for 90% of "upgrades", they're basically charging a yearly subscription fee without making any changes to the product.

You DO NOT HAVE TO PAY ANYTHING YEARLY! Stop spreading this nonsense. You can literally skip paying WUP for 5 or more years and nothing happens.

And I do get it, that if you're on OS X you might be our of luck sooner. But on Windows, not an issue.

[Reefius]

Once Waves can do proper resizing of their plugins without them being all blurry, I might be tempted to upgrade. But until then it's just a waste of money.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Can someone tell the kids to stop repeating themself?

They’re never gonna give you WUP, always gonna let you down
Never gonna turn around and just support you (for free)

[canadian_moose]

Once Waves can do proper resizing of their plugins without them being all blurry, I might be tempted to upgrade. But until then it's just a waste of money.

Agreed. I recently got the Puigtec EQ’s and was pleased to see the resize option until I used it and saw a blurry mess. Shame.

[drsyncenstein]

You DO NOT HAVE TO PAY ANYTHING YEARLY! Stop spreading this nonsense. You can literally skip paying WUP for 5 or more years and nothing happens.

And I do get it, that if you're on OS X you might be our of luck sooner. But on Windows, not an issue.

You are correct that you do not need to pay every year. Unless you need the second license.
And WUP price increases for each year you do not renew.
So i can understand why people get irritated by these kind of posts.
I'll give this a rest though.

[simon.a.billington]

Although, have just tried keeping the dimensions of the images the same, but upping the resolution to something around 150dpi??

As long as we stay inside a computer and don't print anything or otherwise reproduce an image in a physical form, there is no such thing as "dpi". I keep running into this all the time, when someone requests a "300 dpi JPEG" or something, which doesn't mean a thing by itself. The only thing that matters and exists is the pixel dimensions of the image. This is worth a read: https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com ... f-png-file

They are working on a solution at the moment, as was stated earlier. The thing is they have a hell of a lot of plugins to go through.

Sure, I understand. I'm just a little impatient, and slightly irritated that I, an end user who shouldn't need to know or worry about this stuff at all, can spend an hour or two and already get pretty far in fixing what should be the responsibility of this big company with a lot more resources. But yeah, what can we do, other than wait for their fix.

Well yes and no as there is a certain number of pixels that is squeezed into a square inch of a display. Retina displays have a higher DPI than standard displays for example. Displays are rated in DPI too.

The issue becomes through is when cheap-ass companies make bigger monitors, but don’t up the resolution to match. So yeah we begin to have resolutions that don’t fit into the whole DPI model because these companies try to trick users into thinking bigger is better. It’s not just a monitor thing though as TVs do the same thing.

So yeah while agree with you in a technical sense coming from the Apple platform the DPi model has been a pretty consistent reference to to by. It’s not until you get into cheap third party options that it start to break down.

Though cheap or not, it’s still a factual consideration.

If you look at the way MacOS and XCode stores it’s images it uses higher DPI versions to support Retina display, at least from memory. So for example, you’d have a regular 72DPI image and a 144DPi image, possibly another size or two in between. The OS handles the scaling, So in an essence DPi exists on the Mac platform, at least its the way they handle image projection.

[Ploki]

displays are rated in PPI (pixels per inch) but in essence it's DPI yes.
For rasterized images, there's only @2x and normal image embedded in the code.
Generally, if you wan't it resizable AND sharp on a retina display, the @2x images should be sharp at 200% so default 100% scale is like having a @4x image.

If you don't care about sharpness above 100%, using @2x image for 100% scale is fine, and everything below will be sharp.

There's no sizes in between that i saw on macOS. There are more sizes for iOS (@3x as well i think), but nothing between normal and @2x - that scaling has to be done on the fly.

[drsyncenstein]

Pixels or dpi, larger monitors. Those are not the real problem. The issue is that lots of Waves plugins are more than 20 years old, and that they failed to adapt these to modern standards in time. And with the rest of the market moving on gui-wise they started to stand out in a negative way, so came up with a paid kludge? The disappointment is about kludge and paid.

[Cancel Culture Club]

Pixels or dpi, larger monitors. Those are not the real problem. The issue is that lots of Waves plugins are more than 20 years old, and that they failed to adapt these to modern standards in time. And with the rest of the market moving on gui-wise they started to stand out in a negative way, so came up with a paid kludge? The disappointment is about kludge and paid.

It could be that Waves has prioritized the sound of their plugins over the looks. I believe they've also prioritized the new release of innovative plugins over redoing a bunch of graphics for classic staples.

While they continue to win TEC awards for things like Abbey Road Saturator and constantly release quality new plugins like NX Ocean Way Nashville. They've also recently released things like, OVox and CLA Epic. While also maintaining and updating things like their Soundgrid networking environment, that is directly connected with the eMotion LV1. Everything with modern graphics with great detail being on the sound and function of the plugin, first and foremost.

They've already released an updated version of the Renaissance series of plugins, maybe more are scheduled in the future. And they've already given the ability to make your GUI bigger, not perfect, but it works, unless you just like complaining for the sake of complaining.

The future looks bright for Waves and their ability to innovate above most all other companies that have spent the last decade copying what Waves has built from the very beginning, starting with the very first Parametric EQ plugin ever invented.

They deserve a lot of respect for setting the ground work for what has become an over crowded and saturated marketplace, filled with a lot of marketing hyperbole and subscription bargain blowouts.

[drsyncenstein]

That's one way to look at it.
You could also say that they once were on the cutting edge of DSP technology and have been milking it out for a very long time. Up to a point where for the majority of their plugins it would be hyperbole and marketing to claim that they are better than the stock plugins in a DAW.
It would be great if they'd innovate, or they could just let the old plugins die off.
But this whole thread started because we're asked to pay for something that is considered standard and then when you upgrade, what you get for the money is not that great.
Not because their plugins sound bad.

[Cancel Culture Club]

That's one way to look at it.
You could also say that they once were on the cutting edge of DSP technology and have been milking it out for a very long time. Up to a point where for the majority of their plugins it would be hyperbole and marketing to claim that they are better than the stock plugins in a DAW.
It would be great if they'd innovate, or they could just let the old plugins die off.
But this whole thread started because we're asked to pay for something that is considered standard and then when you upgrade, what you get for the money is not that great.
Not because their plugins sound bad.

I also believe some people have grown into the mindset that things should be free. Well, things are usually free because, they're some sort of method of attracting attention or helping to persuade a decision. In laymen terms, it's a marketing strategy used to bring in new customers. But, there are some cases of companies giving back to the community that has supported them.

As for expecting Waves to spend the whole year bug fixing and coding for around two hundred plus plugins for free (sorry no free updates for life) is not a working business model. Not only are some people dissatisfied with a purchase for around $29 for something other companies sell for upwards of a hundred. They are also upset that the rest of the updates won't be free, forever.

Which leads into the fact that some people feel the need to keep everything updated to the latest version, no matter what. The fact of the matter is, Waves plugins are designed to work side by side each other, from version to version. Most of the updates and upgrades are minor, unless something becomes appealing like resizable GUIs. Then all the sudden it's Waves fault because your WUP ran out.

Then moving into their confusion with the entire WUP verses Upgraded bundles fiasco, but I digress, because you can simply read for yourself on their Web Site. I'm not an employee or a spokesmen for them, I just read the current events and stay up to date with their plugins, because I use them everyday without a single hitch for over a decade.

Well, there was that one time I moved my SD out of my computer before deactivating the licenses in the cloud, but I didn't sit there and blame Waves for breaking my machine. I simply read on their web site that I could simply use the free once a year backup license usage, for cases just like this. Anyways...

We live in a world where there is a lot of confusion between updates and upgrades. They give you a year of free incremental updates, which to be honest are very minor unless you run into Operating System issues, like on a Mac. Meanwhile, expecting a free Upgrade every year or two just doesn't work for any company out there. Still don't know how FL Studio pulls it off...

Moral of the story, you probably got a great deal on the front side, with the low sticker price of $29, maybe try to be a little bit more reasonable when comparing to the other side...