About three months ago I did a completely clean install of Windows 11 Pro. That also meant reinstalling all the VST 3 plugins, and I have a lot of Waves ones, just because one time years ago they had this huge package for like $100. I’m not a huge fan of Waves plugins in general, but the L4 Maximizer one I really like. There are probably a few more I like. But lately, the engine behind all the Waves plugins has become a real piece of crap.
I built a very fast PC and whether I open Cubase Pro 15, Wavelab Pro 12 or any other application that loads VST3 plugins, 90% of them load so fast that I can’t even read what they are. A few take a second maybe. But this piece of crap takes about 40-50 seconds:
I already tried all the troubleshooting I found, but it’s the same every time. It’s just poorly written software. Granted, I have tons of VST3s but other than this one, they all load fine. At least they don’t take forever every single time.
It’s not just how long it adds to the DAW load time, but when I load L4 Maximizer inside Cubase, it takes way longer than all the others plugins.
Not now, but I did a few years ago.
Waves have been the most problematic for me, in various ways.
About 13 years ago (Waves v9) I had graphics issues - cured by a GPU upgrade.
4-5 years ago Waves would stall the Cubase start by about 2 minutes.
All the time I’ve used them, their compressors overload when receiving a signal after being idle long enough for the release phase to finish. Every one, even now, and across several machines, including a laptop. I actually utilise this behaviour by using TG12345s on my drums.
Currently using a few Abbey Road plugins and GTR, all v16.
My licenses have always been on a USB stick. Still using it after 13 years. Or more. Still had the above mentioned issues.
The way Waves implements their plugs just as a means of making them harder to pirate, and it still doesn’t work (and the pirated plugins consume less system resources, making things worse), is amazing.
How it works is Waves starts a local server for every version of Waves plugins you have. And it’s not when you open the plugin. It’s when the DAW opens. And most DAWs with auto scan routines will think that it’s a new plugin and scan it every single time. And their user interfaces are all HTML.
In a sense, Waves created Electron apps before Google had the idea.
Yeah I got rid of Waves a couple years ago when UAD went native and basically replaced all the same plugins I was using from Waves. Don’t miss them at all.
I never had any installed under C15, but that stupid Waveshell made Cubase LAAAAAAG every single time it started up. As soon as it was gone, Cubase takes maybe half a minute to finish loading everything and open up to the hub now.
I stopped using Waves when they decided it was a good idea to to stop selling plugins. I thought I’d miss them, but I don’t. The UAD and Steinberg plugins are enough.
This seems like the most likely explanation for this behavior. Since I bought that package with tons of plugins, and even worse, Waves has the same plugin for mono and stereo, which is downright stupid, because what’s the reason for that? I understand if there were different versions for stereo and 5.1 or more channels, but stereo and mono, if you’re working in pure mono, any stereo plugin will work just as fine.
So that puts a crazy amount of plugins that if they do what you mention, it makes sense why it takes so long every time. So it’s time to get rid of most of those plugins.
I read several times about the backlash against Waves for moving to a subscription-only model, and I don’t know if they did that for a while. But all the Waves plugins I have are not based on any subscription, I bought them all.
As a Mac user, they basically DO have a subscription whether you want it or not, and that’s WUP. Almost every time MacOS gets new version, the Waves stuff stops working for whatever reason. If you don’t pay your WUP, you don’t get the latest updates unless you just happened to buy the plugin recently.. Windows are a bit different as those tend to stretch waaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer than a MacOS release, so you can get away with using your old stuff for longer before you HAVE to update it.
The most recent time Waves forced me to re-buy my plugins because of an OS update (I got a new Mac), I uninstalled them. At the time it was because of “metal” graphics or some such… basically the video card was stronger so I had to pay money to continue to use plugins with Win 98 style GUIs.
Nah. Bye Waves
Fair trade off I guess. You guys get to run ancient outdated plugins, where we don’t have to spend a week optimizing our brand new $3000 system just to playback and multitrack basic audio..
