Waves Over Priced? Maybe - Maybe not...

[munchkin]

Again folks, not trying to defend all Waves products - all I'm really saying is their 2 smaller packages (Bundle II and Native Power) are their best and most useable bundles for the hobbyist like myself.

And really - will you at least agree somewhat... (forget the Ilok for a minute) that their Musicians Bundle II at $150 featuring the Ren Eq, RenComp, Ren Vox, Doubler and Super Tap is probaly their best package for the money ($30 a peice).

God bless

You seem happy with your Waves products so is there any need to buy Voxengo or anything else? I think the point I and others are making is that if something works for you then keep using it but don't feel pressurised into using a brand name because others say it better.

Sound is subjective. An extreme example might be the dub reggae musicians who produced records in somewhat unconventional ways to the norm at the time. Phil Spectre and Joe Meek developed their own signature style that reflected the way they felt records should sound like.

I'm not saying that there aren't rules that help perfect a radio friendly sound but throughout the history of music all rules that have existed have been broken.

[pough]

but i think waves have the best guis in the industry... waves guis are simple, logical and str8 forward but technically often not the best

I can agree with half of that.

[bagginz]

Interesting discussion - and quite civilized for KVR, which makes for pleasant reading...

As I see it, at one time Waves were once the only plugs targeted at the pro-tools market that became available for native apps and so had a big head start over most of the competition.

Those days are gone and now they have been superceded by many others in both price and quality, but the Waves name still has weight.

They have a good reputation and still sell well, but personally I think that they have done themselves no favours by having an arrogant and uncaring approach to customer support (from personal experience) and no flexibilty with regard to bundles i.e not being able to choose which plug-ins to buy, not supporting VST for years, and of course the infamous Pace copy protection.

I do have to agree that the Waves GUI s are excellent and among the best in the business. ( the Waves C1's GUI has become the defacto compressor plugin interface for example)

Also, something excellent I find about their limiters L1, L2 etc. is that one is able to gang the input and output faders so that one is able to simultaneously turn down the output while pushing up the input into the limiter - give that louder always sounds better how else can one possibly make an informed evaluation about what is happening to one's audio without this feature? I was looking at Voxengo Elephant recently and the apparent lack of this basic feature made it a no-no for me.

Waves GUI s are also very pleasant on the eye which is not to be underestimated when people are spending countless hours staring at a plugin tweaking parameters. It makes working with a plug so much more pleasant. Also a very important but not much mentioned point is that the GUI has to look right for impressing studio customers. Studio customers want to see a plug-in that looks something like a serious piece of studio hardware and not a like toy.

So for Waves we have:

1. Pro reputation (founded or not)

2. Very attractive GUI's and functional that look serious.

3. Sound quality - N/A -been bettered

That is about it.


Let's take Voxengo as a comparison:

From what I hear and from a few of the demos I have tried of Voxengo stuff, the sound quality exceeds many Waves plugs. Also technologically superior (double precision enabled) Also there are more plug-in variations.

Also we have: customer support is fantastic as is flexibilty on purchasing which and whatever plugs. As well as the pricing which is extremely competitive. Plus many many "pros" on other sites use and thoroughly recommend them.

In short, everything is there for Voxengo to be the next Waves - except for the look of them

From my point of view Voxengo plug-ins interfaces on the whole are really quite ugly and unpleasant to look at. Really quite naff.

Aleksey, I truly believe that Voxengo is held back by the idiosyncratic nature of your plug-in design. I really think that you should have a word with your designer and come up with a new strategy for world domination i.e a total interface re-design with a view to making them much easier on the eye. You may remember that Waves did this very thing about 7 or 8 years ago. They used to be pretty basic looking but functional, but then went though a re-design to the present look.

BTW thank you very much for the excellent and free SPAN. It is a truly excellent tool and I use it all the time.

Cheers and best wishes,
Bill

[Scotrick]

let me offer this:

back when I was just starting out, a friend offered to help me by buying me a package of plug-ins that we were going to use together in our studio, he had a great job, I was too sick to get a job, so he agreed to pay for the effects, while I paid for the computer... anyway, we went to the store, and this was back in 2000 or so... and we ended up buying the Waves Gold 3.0...

brought them home and loaded them up, sent off for the authorization key by internet... and we were off and running... this was on a Mac by the way...

at the time, those plug-ins alone upgraded my sound by a bunch, because I was using Cubase and Cubase's built-in Reverb, as some of you know, is, well, a bit lo-fi. understatement...

as our studio expanded a bit, we also bought just the Waves rennaissance bundle... around 2001... and then every update I bought, every year... so I was on version 5.0 with both sets, until this year... when I turned on my computer and it told me that my Waves plug-ins had 'expired,'...

well, I went to the web-site, and it told me that as of some random date, all of the plug-ins HAD to have the iLok... so I went and bought the damn iLok... did I get my plug-ins working then? noooooooooooooo.

The web site then told me that my WUP had expired... so I couldn't access my account to use the plug-ins I HAD ALREADY PAID FOR... I called them... and explained that all I wanted to do was to use the plug-ins I already owned... while I would LOVE to upgrade to their WUP plan for my plug-ins, I couldn't afford to because I'm poor as dirt now, being a poetry student and all, and could I not PLEASE just use the plug-ins I had paid for and continued to upgrade for like five flippin' years?

and they said, 'uh, no.'

but I kept calling and e-mailing and calling and e-mailing and finally, out of the kindness of their motherfucking hearts they deigned to allow me to authorize my iLok for the things I already owned.

AND THAT'S WHY I HATE THEM NOW.

that's some great customer support, huh?

I know it's been mentioned here on KVR a bunch of times, but for those who feel KVR is full of fanboys who rail against the established companies, I think stories like the above are part of the reason I've switched to smaller companies who actually seem to care about their users and offer some loyalty, OR who don't offer squat but don't pretend to, and also don't charge a fortune for the privilege of getting screwed...

There. Rant Over.

[AVBunyan]

You can order Pristine Space and add Crunchessor to that - and it will cost $8 only.

Hey Aleksey, since we are on it - I've been playing with the Analogflux and the Voxformer - I have Pristine Space and Elephant now - what would it cost me to add either or both?

Thanks and God bless

[Aleksey Vaneev]

bagginz, Elephant has that feature - it has an 'inverse' lock of In Gain and Out Gain controls.

AVBunyan, when you purchase two plug-ins you automatically get 20% discount - very simple. If your order sum grows, discount also grows.

[Amberience]

let me offer this:

back when I was just starting out, a friend offered to help me by buying me a package of plug-ins that we were going to use together in our studio, he had a great job, I was too sick to get a job, so he agreed to pay for the effects, while I paid for the computer... anyway, we went to the store, and this was back in 2000 or so... and we ended up buying the Waves Gold 3.0...

brought them home and loaded them up, sent off for the authorization key by internet... and we were off and running... this was on a Mac by the way...

at the time, those plug-ins alone upgraded my sound by a bunch, because I was using Cubase and Cubase's built-in Reverb, as some of you know, is, well, a bit lo-fi. understatement...

as our studio expanded a bit, we also bought just the Waves rennaissance bundle... around 2001... and then every update I bought, every year... so I was on version 5.0 with both sets, until this year... when I turned on my computer and it told me that my Waves plug-ins had 'expired,'...

well, I went to the web-site, and it told me that as of some random date, all of the plug-ins HAD to have the iLok... so I went and bought the damn iLok... did I get my plug-ins working then? noooooooooooooo.

The web site then told me that my WUP had expired... so I couldn't access my account to use the plug-ins I HAD ALREADY PAID FOR... I called them... and explained that all I wanted to do was to use the plug-ins I already owned... while I would LOVE to upgrade to their WUP plan for my plug-ins, I couldn't afford to because I'm poor as dirt now, being a poetry student and all, and could I not PLEASE just use the plug-ins I had paid for and continued to upgrade for like five flippin' years?

and they said, 'uh, no.'

but I kept calling and e-mailing and calling and e-mailing and finally, out of the kindness of their motherfucking hearts they deigned to allow me to authorize my iLok for the things I already owned.

AND THAT'S WHY I HATE THEM NOW.

that's some great customer support, huh?

I know it's been mentioned here on KVR a bunch of times, but for those who feel KVR is full of fanboys who rail against the established companies, I think stories like the above are part of the reason I've switched to smaller companies who actually seem to care about their users and offer some loyalty, OR who don't offer squat but don't pretend to, and also don't charge a fortune for the privilege of getting screwed...

There. Rant Over.

I'm pretty sure what they wanted to do would have been illegal.

[AVBunyan]

AVBunyan, when you purchase two plug-ins you automatically get 20% discount - very simple. If your order sum grows, discount also grows.

Great - thanks Alex - let me play some more - I have the RenVox now but your Voxformer looks it has more features -

Would the Voxformer be good for shaping the sound of direct in electric guitars?

Boy - I told myself my plug buying days were over and here I go!

God bless

[sounddesigner]

bagginz, Elephant has that feature - it has an 'inverse' lock of In Gain and Out Gain controls.

AVBunyan, when you purchase two plug-ins you automatically get 20% discount - very simple. If your order sum grows, discount also grows.

Aleksey, what determines the discount, is it the amount of money spent on previous purchases,or is it just serial numbers showing the number of plugins owned already? And what is maximum discount size achievable?

[bagginz]

bagginz, Elephant has that feature - it has an 'inverse' lock of In Gain and Out Gain controls.

O.k good, thanks.

Cheers,
Bill

[Aleksey Vaneev]

AVBunyan, Voxformer is mainly designed for vocals, but as far as I know (and demo mp3 prove that) it can be used on guitars as well.

sounddesigner, only total order sum changes discount. Plus regular discount you have is applied on the total order sum. Max discount is currently at 35% - if you add $750 worth of products (and then you'll have to pay $487.50 only).

[bobby yarrow]

(I'm going to admit that, surprisingly enough, I bought the power pack based on this thread. I had been meaning to get IR-L, and getting the extra plugins for a few bucks more made it easier to live with. I have no need for any of them, including IR-L, and I doubt I'll use anything other than IR-L and the doubler much at all, but it still seemed like a good deal. If I didn't already have a ton of VST comps & eqs, it'd be an even better deal.)

[AVBunyan]

AVBunyan, Voxformer is mainly designed for vocals, but as far as I know (and demo mp3 prove that) it can be used on guitars as well.

Thanks - I figured it was designed for vocals but I was playing with it on an acoustic track and it was sounding interesting.

I'll experiment some more with a few vocal and guitar tracks I have - As usual I am not good at figuring out some of your knobs but I'll keep working at it to see what I can do - not your plug's fault it is me - I am old and slow

Thanks again Alex

[ATS]

(I'm going to admit that, surprisingly enough, I bought the power pack based on this thread. I had been meaning to get IR-L, and getting the extra plugins for a few bucks more made it easier to live with. I have no need for any of them, including IR-L, and I doubt I'll use anything other than IR-L and the doubler much at all, but it still seemed like a good deal. If I didn't already have a ton of VST comps & eqs, it'd be an even better deal.)

I just looked at that bundle and wow, seems like a lot of money at first but when you look at what al you get it seems worth it.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

(I'm going to admit that, surprisingly enough, I bought the power pack based on this thread. I had been meaning to get IR-L, and getting the extra plugins for a few bucks more made it easier to live with. I have no need for any of them, including IR-L, and I doubt I'll use anything other than IR-L and the doubler much at all, but it still seemed like a good deal. If I didn't already have a ton of VST comps & eqs, it'd be an even better deal.)

Isn't it true that you'll have to pay for WUP every year since now?