Hello again,
First up I wanna thank everyone who’s been helping me so far, it’s really appreciated with my migration over to my new mac!!
I see that Waves seem to be having a big sale on their plug ins that ends tonight. Really tempted to buy a few new plug ins but not 100% sure what’s best for me… do any of you good folk know if this is a type of sale Waves do quite often? I don’t want to miss out as the reductions are incredible, but if I don’t have to rush to decide what to get that would be helpful.
Thanks for any knowledge you might have on this - it’s really appreciated
All I can say is that I’ve bought Waves plug-in bundles, and I use them all of the time. Waves stuff works fine with the Steinberg software I have, but I’ve never used Cubase, so I don’t know whether there are any compatibility issues or not.
My gut reaction is that you should get the cheapest bundle Waves offers right now, and just play with it for a few weeks to see what you think of it.
Hm… bundles… they contain a lot of useless crap
Not all Waves plug-ins are really better then the Cubase integrated ones…
I like the BSS DPR-402, H-Delay, Bass-Rider and Submarine
but to buy another channel EQ makes no sense… Frequency is quite good and the integrated EQ is already enough for many tasks
They do sales all the time. This is their marketing strategy. The list price is way too expensive for what it is. Then they give you 80% off and you are happy how much you saved.
I agree with misohoza, never, really never pay more than 30 bucks for any plugin, even the pretty new CLA Epic and Mixbus now come for that price. You just have to wait a little …
Couple things about Waves: their plugins are always on sale so don’t feel pressured to get them right now, though the current sale is a pretty good one. Second, and this one is big, they are a bit of a Ponzi scheme. The plugins are cheap up front, but to get updates or support after the first year, you have to pay for it. You can keep using what you’ve got, but every couple years they go to a new major framework (they’re currently on version 12 of the “Waves Shell”) and if you don’t update to that you will have major trouble if you need to reinstall a previous version. Now they do give you credit for what you pay for the update program towards new plugins, but of course you’ll eventually be paying more to update those! Plus honestly, they used to be top, state of the art plugins and a lot of big names used them, but a LOT of their plugins are getting pretty long in the tooth and if I currently didn’t already have them, I think I would skip buying them at this point.
Don’t take my word for it: suit up in your triple thick Kevlar body armor and head on over to Gearspace (formerly Gearslutz) and wade in to one of the many “discussions” about Waves plugins over there!
I used to see non-stop Waves hate on the UAD forum. And it’s true that Waves can appear like the Walmart of plug-in companies. Some of their stuff is meh or (to me) just plain -silly-. And some of it is marketed like a late night infomercial. OTOH, have you seen any of Slate’s ShamWow level videos?
But OTOH, I use their stuff all the time, it sounds great at various things and I could care less about the outdated UIs. I mean… does anyone who has ever owned a hardware Lexicon complain about the absolutely terrible user interface?
Buried in amongst the meh, they have specific tools that are still, IMO, first rate. But you kinda have to know what you are looking for I suppose. And they don’t cost $200 so there’s less chance for buyer’s remorse… or kidding yourself that something is better than it really is (which often happens with high priced stuff, let’s face it.)
I can’t say I’ve ever regretted one of their purchases. The only thing I ever bitched about was their licensing scheme. But that has largely been resolved.
I installed a couple of their freebies (H-Comp and a De-esser) that they offered back in 2019 but they are Waves version 10 plugs. They still work fine but they keep wanting me to pay an upgrade fee to get to the later versions. I like the sound of both of them and I’m quite often tempted by some of their other plugins but I picked up Arturia’s big FX bundle last year and between that, Cubase, Reaper and other free plugins out there I already have more than I need or can realistically use.
I fell for the sales a few years ago and did regret it. I have spent WAY too much money hoarding their plugins, believing I did save a lot of money. The plugins are fine, but the bad awakening happened when I realized you have to pay them quite the sum of money to keep the plugins up to date. Whenever they decide to increase the major version, you’ll have a bad time either way. Mixing older and newer versions is kinda bad, because old versions might not support the latest MacOS, and getting them upgraded every year or so is rather expensive and honestly… not worth that much money. The plugins are fine, but not THAT great. There are a few exceptionally good and unique ones, though. I keep those up to date only. For me, that would be their Nx, which I also bought the bluetooth tracker for and the PuigTec EQs, as well as the API 2500 compressor.
However, in hindsight, I feel kinda scammed, because of course they don’t really tell you the update costs in advance when you get drawn into the sales, which they keep up almost all the time. I don’t like their marketing strategy.
And then… there is another point. After I had some projects I could not load anymore, because I didn’t have the plugins installed anymore or after my switch to Mac, I had no more access to my Windows-only plugins, I decided I would make much more use of plugins that came with my DAWs. Just to make projects future proof and portable. And honestly… that is the better choice. Saves you much more money, CPU time and frustration.
Given my experience with Waves, I can not recommend their products, as long as they don’t change their marketing and pricing strategy.
