Why no one is talking about Waves StudioVerse ?

[paramita123]

I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like being able to turn any plugin you have into a multiband one is pretty useful, no? I have loads of plugins I'd love to do that with.

All the ads and AI and cloud stuff gives me pause, but if you can hide all that stuff, this seems like a pretty cool thing.

That's exactly that, you got it ! Turn into a multiband with big bonuses.

So for example you could have first a gate, then turn your fav compressor multiband or even choose different compressors for each band, then have an EQ, saturation, and here is your channel strip!

Also great for making FX chains eg eqing reverbs pre send, adding modulation to a delay etc..

[simon.a.billington]

I find it handy to keep my channel strips free for the mixing process.

While anything I do as a musician or sound designer can either be done in the instrument or consolidated into Studioverse FX. Well that's the idea anyway. It also makes it more portable should want to copy the effects to another instrument in the session.

[rj0]

I like Waves plugins. I just don't like WUP (or Waves installers, constant issues, gave up), which appears quite alive. WUP and the plugin installers have killed my interest in Waves.

Email today from Waves indicating sale where I can save 25% on WUP.

[simon.a.billington]

I like Waves plugins. I just don't like WUP (or Waves installers, constant issues, gave up), which appears quite alive. WUP and the plugin installers have killed my interest in Waves.

Email today from Waves indicating sale where I can save 25% on WUP.

Waves have a bit of a unique model where they "sell" their maintenance independent of their plugin. While you do get the first year thrown in, people just can't really expect that anyone could afford to provide continuous support indefinitely for just $30. They'd go bust!!

Other devs don't do this, instead they charge you with the upgrade cost which is why it's $80-150 or more. If they didn't they could probably afford to sell their plugins for $30 too.

Though, while I understand the reason for WUP, it's still annoying. But then, no-one Ikes to pay maintenance costs to a plumber or electrician either.

[0degree]

Waves have a bit of a unique model where they "sell" their maintenance independent of their plugin. While you do get the first year thrown in, people just can't really expect that anyone could afford to provide continuous support indefinitely for just $30. They'd go bust!!

This "unique model" forces people to pay for the same plugins over and over again. The only reason why windows users are not affected most of the time is due to backwards compatibility but if they wanted to stay up to date they would have to rebuy the same plugins indefinitely. Their "updates" bring almost nothing - see the recent "HiRes" fiasco

Other devs don't do this, instead they charge you with the upgrade cost which is why it's $80-150 or more. If they didn't they could probably afford to sell their plugins for $30 too.

Where did you get this nonsense from? I recently paid 29$ for Imposcar update and roughly the same price for Largo 2

Though, while I understand the reason for WUP, it's still annoying. But then, no-one Ikes to pay maintenance costs to a plumber or electrician either.

WUP is a blatant cash grab and anybody with at least half of the brain understands it. I like their plugins but they should get their shit together and actually make some effort to update/improve their stuff instead of charging people for nothing

[WackyZoundz]

Paying money to be allowed to train an AI so it can create more useless presets?

[simon.a.billington]

Waves have a bit of a unique model where they "sell" their maintenance independent of their plugin. While you do get the first year thrown in, people just can't really expect that anyone could afford to provide continuous support indefinitely for just $30. They'd go bust!!

This "unique model" forces people to pay for the same plugins over and over again. The only reason why windows users are not affected most of the time is due to backwards compatibility but if they wanted to stay up to date they would have to rebuy the same plugins indefinitely. Their "updates" bring almost nothing - see the recent "HiRes" fiasco

Other devs don't do this, instead they charge you with the upgrade cost which is why it's $80-150 or more. If they didn't they could probably afford to sell their plugins for $30 too.

Where did you get this nonsense from? I recently paid 29$ for Imposcar update and roughly the same price for Largo 2

Though, while I understand the reason for WUP, it's still annoying. But then, no-one Ikes to pay maintenance costs to a plumber or electrician either.

WUP is a blatant cash grab and anybody with at least half of the brain understands it. I like their plugins but they should get their shit together and actually make some effort to update/improve their stuff instead of charging people for nothing

Look at plugins from iZotope of IK Multimedia, or UAD or Acustica Audio. There's plenty of devs who charge more than $30 for an upgrade. That price point is more common for a smaller dev, with smaller overhead fees.

Bigger companies who've made bigger investments charge more. A simple 5 person team, say each getting paid 50k a year, already costs $250,000 just in wages, never mind the outlays in rent, electricity, computers, project costs in itself. What if you have 10 people, or 50??

You're not paying for the plugin over and over again, you're paying for the maintenance of it, as I have already established. You're paying for the people who work on it, they need to eat too. You simply can't expect to pay $30 once, and have free maintenance for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years... 30 years?!?!?

I'm afraid to say, these things cost. They will ALWAYS cost while in a consumer driven capitalist environment. You wouldn't work on something free for the rest of your life, you shouldn't expect others to

Nothing breaks backwards support like adding new features to plugins. In order to honour their backwards compatibility, which is rare in any developer, it would seem they opt to put those new features in new plugins that they only charge you the same other companies charge as an upgrade price. $30 right?!? You said it yourself it cost around $30 for an Imposcar and Largo upgrade.

It's just a different way of doing things, that when you do the maths works out cheaper in the long run than the money you tend to spend on other "big" developers.

[aMUSEd]

Is the skipping plugins issue fixed yet?

[0degree]

Look at plugins from iZotope of IK Multimedia, or UAD or Acustica Audio. There's plenty of devs who charge more than $30 for an upgrade. That price point is more common for a smaller dev, with smaller overhead fees.

And there's plenty of devs who charge less and even the big ones sometimes charge less for an upgrade so argument dismissed

Bigger companies who've made bigger investments charge more. A simple 5 person team, say each getting paid 50k a year, already costs $250,000 just in wages, never mind the outlays in rent, electricity, computers, project costs in itself. What if you have 10 people, or 50??

You're not paying for the plugin over and over again, you're paying for the maintenance of it, as I have already established. You're paying for the people who work on it, they need to eat too. You simply can't expect to pay $30 once, and have free maintenance for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years... 30 years?!?!?

Wait what? So now I have take into account that Waves is a big company and somehow I have to accept paying for the same plugins because they are big?
Maybe they should downscale in this case and drop the WUP?

But on a serious note - as a consumer I don't really care

Nothing breaks backwards support like adding new features to plugins. In order to honour their backwards compatibility, which is rare in any developer, it would seem they opt to put those new features in new plugins that they only charge you the same other companies charge as an upgrade price.

What are you talking about? What new features? Most of their plugins haven't had any new features for at least 10 years. So as I said you're paying for the same plugins over and over again

[heyheycnv]

Waves offers a free 2nd license for any plugin or bundle covered by the Waves Update Plan

Every year you have to pay just to have a second license. That alone makes me walk away from Waves. That has nothing to do with how big they are or keeping up with Windows or Mac. Keep deactivating/activating or use a USB drive. That's their gift to paying customers.

[whyterabbyt]

What are you talking about? What new features? Most of their plugins haven't had any new features for at least 10 years. So as I said you're paying for the same plugins over and over again

If they've not had new features, dont pay for WUP. Simples.

[sjm]

Think of WUP primarily as a Mac tax. It's there to pay for the maintenance that is required every few years to keep the plugins running on MacOS. If you use Windows, you don't need it, because of the lack of new features in the updates. And if you own a Mac, you knew the implications when you bought it and decided that you were willing to shoulder that burden.

Personally, I think that's fine. I prefer it to other vendors where Windows users need to subsidise MacOS compatibility updates when we'd rather have new features.

The 2 licenses thing is more of an issue. You can choose to buy 2 licenses if you don't want to pay for WUP, not sure how economical that is, but probably works out cheaper over the long run if you are indeed doing WUP each year.

[kidslow]

and btw, just so you know, there are free alternatives, like Kushview, and IL's Minihost Modular, plus lots of commercial ones from Bidule to Metahost.

Thank you for sharing those alternatives ! Very interesting, Kushview Element looks pretty powerful.
I guess some people will like the flexibility of patching, other people might prefer the simpler UX with StudioVerse.
All cool free stuff

Thanks for pointing out the overlap with Kv Element @whiterabbyt. That escaped me at first. Been pondering your point for a long minute, but it all clicked today when I realized Element can also give me a lot of what Bitwig Grid says it offers.

Been using Element for years, primarily as a little sketchpad plugin-host standalone outside of the DAW for installing and testing plugins and chains and whatnot before I will take the idea to the DAW and flesh it out. Been in touch with the developer Michael Fisher over the years. I paid for it when there was a license, and he's struggled to find the best platform to reimburse his efforts, but has been very loyal to early patrons. I salute his work ethic and for making it open source. Definitely a labor of love and not of commerce You could literally not find a piece of software so functionally overlapping and yet completely opposite to Waves in the underlying gestalt.

I'm on the paid program and he is regularly pushing updates for 1.0.0 through the nightly channel. Stable as. Most of the idiosyncracies have been ironed out, but not all. I use the 0.46.6 version on another computer with few issues.

- the audio FX gives you multiband for all your VST3
- it makes saving complex FX chains easy, with functionality that the DAW may not have
- macro functions for easy tweaking, if you use chains often this can be a real time saver
- the instrument plugin allows for instruments + FX, so you can build and recall your super-instruments easily, I find this amazing! For example some synths lack good FX, you can using StudioVerse make your killer patches with multiband and parallel and have deeply customised sounds.

I can do all of that in Element and more. Way more. Basically take a mashup of DDMF metaplugin (hated the UI), combined with this Waves Studioverse (hate the company), plus potentially some aspects of the Bitwig Grid (ambivalent) that I've yet to fully grok. I'll have to explore that.

Kushview Element is an essential part of my kit at this point. It's not that I can be using it more, but I certainly can be using it better.

Onward.

[simon.a.billington]

Look at plugins from iZotope of IK Multimedia, or UAD or Acustica Audio. There's plenty of devs who charge more than $30 for an upgrade. That price point is more common for a smaller dev, with smaller overhead fees.

And there's plenty of devs who charge less and even the big ones sometimes charge less for an upgrade so argument dismissed

Bigger companies who've made bigger investments charge more. A simple 5 person team, say each getting paid 50k a year, already costs $250,000 just in wages, never mind the outlays in rent, electricity, computers, project costs in itself. What if you have 10 people, or 50??

You're not paying for the plugin over and over again, you're paying for the maintenance of it, as I have already established. You're paying for the people who work on it, they need to eat too. You simply can't expect to pay $30 once, and have free maintenance for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years... 30 years?!?!?

Wait what? So now I have take into account that Waves is a big company and somehow I have to accept paying for the same plugins because they are big?
Maybe they should downscale in this case and drop the WUP?

But on a serious note - as a consumer I don't really care

Nothing breaks backwards support like adding new features to plugins. In order to honour their backwards compatibility, which is rare in any developer, it would seem they opt to put those new features in new plugins that they only charge you the same other companies charge as an upgrade price.

What are you talking about? What new features? Most of their plugins haven't had any new features for at least 10 years. So as I said you're paying for the same plugins over and over again

You're not paying for the same plugin, you're paying for a new and improved version off the same plugin, otherwise known as big and performance fixes. Thats what you pay for. Thats what other devs also charge for. It can't be done for free, not for that tiny amount you paid once 10 or 20 years ago.

Other devs don't do it for free, and you also wouldn't work for free.

Yeah some devs charge less not many, and they are small devs and their plugs are usually far from backwards compatible. What about that s&*tstorm that brewed up a few years back when everything went VST3 except many of these smaller devs who just bailed on their users. There was so much being shared hurt amongst users.

Unfortunately, that's an all too common problem amongst smaller indies. You take more risk when you invest in them. Nothing is truly risk free, but smaller devs are particularly vulnerable to big changes in the industry. Some survive, some go under, some simply abandon their users.

If you get serious enough about what you're doing you start to realise that reliability is a worthwhile investment and I'd rather pay little more just to have that security. Many would. They would be able to recall a 20 year old project and it will still work on their current machine and just be the same as when they left it. Maybe that kind of security is not for you and, then fine, but that doesn't make it any less valuable to others.

[simon.a.billington]

Waves offers a free 2nd license for any plugin or bundle covered by the Waves Update Plan

Every year you have to pay just to have a second license. That alone makes me walk away from Waves. That has nothing to do with how big they are or keeping up with Windows or Mac. Keep deactivating/activating or use a USB drive. That's their gift to paying customers.

Actually, that second license may have been free for a few years now. If I recall correctly.