Man, Waves keeps working on making me want to dump them

Steinberg Lounge
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I’ve complained in other threads about my increasing irritation with Waves, as have many others. Specifically, the subscription only thing really made me angry. They backed off, of course, but still. I’ve been considering dumping them since I use less and less of their plugins.

Well, they are trying to give me another reason, and I suspect it is related to their stupid subscription crap. I fire up Nuendo for the first time in over a month today… and Nx Abbey Road is showing it is in demo mode. WTF? I go and have a look in Waves central, and all my licenses are not here, they are on a “disconnected device”.

Ummm… No Waves. This is the same computer, with the same harddrives, with the same OS install, etc. The only thing that has happened since the last time I ran things is software updates, and I got a new graphics card.

Now if their licensing is so flakey that replacing one piece of hardware will break it, that should be noted so you know to deactivate first. Nothing else has issues, mind you, Steinberg is happily licenses, Fabfilter, NI, etc. They are all perfectly happy this is the same system that it has been, only Waves is throwing a fit.

I can fix it with the license recovery, of course, and I’m going to do that, but they only let you do it once a year. What do you want to bet if it happens again their solutions is “oh just subscribe, then you never have licensing issues!”

Personally, I think if it does happen again, that’ll be it for me and Waves. They have stuff I like, some of their compressors have nice presets, S1 is real easy to use, Codex has some fun sounds, but I can likely find something else that’ll replace them with a bit of work.

1 Like
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I’ve had the same thing randomly happen as I have all my licenses on a USB stick so I can transfer to my laptop without having to ‘update’ every year. Usually the USB still works on the other computer so I just revoke the licenses and reinstall them. It’s worked so far.

I’d like to be rid of them too, unfortunately, the three I use often (WLM meter, Clarity Vx Pro and Maxxbass) are really good plugins.

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I only own one of their plugins, Clarity Vx, and had the same thing happen-- I got a new graphics card and it thought my machine was completely different and I had to burn the reset.

I’m sick of all these oppressive licensing schemes and companies that treat paying customers like criminals. I won’t ever buy a Waves plugin again.

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I’ve got a bunch of Waves plugs & can’t remember when I last used one.

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I can’t remember exactly when it became fashionable to dislike Waves. Around the time it became fashionable to love Fabfilter, I think.
I’m in the minority on the internet I suppose since I use Waves plugins in every single project I sign off on. I think they’re brilliant. And the two times I needed customer support, they were quick and most helpful.
Oh, and contrary to many others, I find their WUP to be totally fair as well. Apart from the small side step where they tried to move to an all subscription plan, I have nothing but good things to say about the company and their products.

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For me fashion has nothing to do with it, I’ve just been getting progressively more tired of them. I always wanted Waves plugins back in the day when they were stupid expensive and had played with them in a studio. Finally, they came down enough in price, and my earnings improved enough, that I could and did buy a small pack of them. I liked them.

However as time goes on I like them less and less. Some of it is just finding new plugins that are better. Like when I first saw Waves L1 is was amazing, and I don’t know if anything else did what it did. However now I find that L1-L3 just aren’t that good. IK’s Stealth Limiter is just better to my ears, and easier to use. Same deal for most of their other stuff, I just find there are other plugins, including ones built in to Nuendo, that I like better.

Then there are the annoyances. Some are minor, but still. Things like the wavesshell, rather than just having the plugins direct, which causes issues with some things. Or the fact that they can’t be resized freely like most modern plugins. Not dealbreakers, but annoying and something I don’t have to deal with for other plugins.

Finally there’s the licensing and that is what really has me mad. The rest of my audio stuff falls in to one of two categories:

  1. Permissive, machine based licensing. Steinberg is a good example, you get 3 licenses to use as you need, and if something happens to screw one up you can revoke it easily as often as you need. I’m sure if you do it too often they’ll take issue, but there’s no problems. Or NI, who doesn’t really have a preset limit, they just keep an eye on what is going on. They also are good about not freaking out when a single hardware component changes.

  2. iLok. I don’t love it, but it works and works well. No issue with worrying about licenses getting lost because of hardware or reinstalls, they are on the dongle, and I can move the dongle to my laptop any time I need easy. For that matter, most of the software comes with more than one license and it can also do machine/network activation.

Then there’s Waves: One license only, and if anything changes it appears to break and you get only one recovery per year. So I have to remember to deactivate it if I’m going to make any computer changes, which is not always something I’m thinking about. If you don’t want that, have to pay monthly.

It is just grinding on me, and I find the number of their plugins that I have that are go-tos has shrunk to basically 2 of them, and the number I even use even is only maybe 4-6.

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If your WUP is up to date you get 2 licenses to use simultaneously.
I only had an issue once with my license after some hardware changes. I called support and they released the license right away. YMMV of course.

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I mean sure, you get a second license with WUP, but that’s again a subscription. It is $240/year to keep that second license. You can argue that isn’t too much money, but my point is I don’t have to with other vendors. Steinberg is happy to let me use it on 3 computers, no subscription required.

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I see your point.

You’re only allowed to use it on one computer at a time, however.

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Which is all I need. There’s only one of me. I just want to be able to have stuff on my desktop and laptop.

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I moved to a new DAW and most my Waves licenses dont work. They are installed but not activated. I assume it means I need to upgrade as I dont WUP.

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I would contact Waves for support. Your licenses do not expire but the version you own may be incompatible with your current OS.