so.....how about those Waves plugins?????

[Bruce]

Figured they're getting killed everywhere else, why not here too. Discuss.

 

[Sleezy E]

I never liked their "give us more money every 2 years" thing
And they may have been one of the first to the party.. but there are just as good if not better choices out there these days.

I haven't bought any in over a decade.

 

[Bruce]

I never liked their "give us more money every 2 years" thing
And they may have been one of the first to the party.. but there are just as good if not better choices out there these days.

I haven't bought any in over a decade.

Some people change computers and OS's like they change socks. Personally I'm good for an update every 5 years. At 240 bucks I always got a dozen new plugins and the most recent versions of everything. I was good with that. Now to use my (anything but) perpetual licenses, I have to subscribe. Cant wait to see their reps at NAMM.

 

[fretworn]

I’m so glad the DAWs and their supporting sw plugs are fairly mature at this point!

I could see how you lose tons of money in this game…

 

[MirrorProfiles]

didn’t mind WUP too much because it was optional, and not required with every version.

the new policy assumes that everyone wants or needs the mercury bundle and constantly wants or needs every new plugin or update.

all I want is a select few plugins, and whatever version is stable on my particular rig. I have no interest in upgrading constantly and hoarding more and more plugins I don’t need.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

well they u-turned eventually. probably too late for a lot of people.

I actually hope now that they have perpetual licences again, they offer some more appealing subscription options. I’m not against subs per se but I’d rather it makes sense based on what I’ve bought already

 

[Bruce]

well they u-turned eventually. probably too late for a lot of people.

I actually hope now that they have perpetual licences again, they offer some more appealing subscription options. I’m not against subs per se but I’d rather it makes sense based on what I’ve bought already

Was nothing wrong with the sub. I own Mercury and a bunch others. I shouldn’t have been forced into a sub to use my stuff.
Only took them 3 days of the most negative pressure in recent history to reverse this.

 

[DrewJD82]

Man, they certainly pissed off a lot of people REALLY fast.

I’m in a Waves user group on FB and it was erupting last I looked. Apparently they’re claiming all their plugins have been updated for M1 but people are finding that’s not the case, but AFTER they sign up for the subscription and update all their plugins, then they’re finding it’s not working and are unable to go back to a previous version. Not a good start.

I learned on Waves plugs and still rely on a few of them regularly just because they’re familiar home. I never update my Macs so I haven’t had to worry about updating the plugs, but the complaints about their update methods/costs has been a hot topic for as long as I’ve been using them.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

That didn‘t last long…

https://www.waves.com/news/perpetual-waves-licenses-are-back

 

[norminal]

That didn‘t last long…

https://www.waves.com/news/perpetual-waves-licenses-are-back

Whoever was responsible for that initial marketing decision is probably revising their CV as I type this.

 

[laxu]

The companies that do this just never understand these things don't exist in a vacuum. It's easy to end up with multiple subscriptions eating a lot of money each year. Even if the pricing for that one software seems reasonable, if it's not one that you use every single day then it can be a tough sell.

It's a tough problem to be honest. Software, especially on Apple systems, can require perpetual updates to work correctly and that's hard to justify as financially viable when you sell a "buy once, keep forever" software. I have stopped using some software because they went to a subscription model or at least made the "buy an update" model a bad deal in comparison - like it's slightly more expensive than a yearly subscription and only gets you one year of updates.

I find the "keep it working for X years but sell a version 2.0 as a discounted update" plan far more palatable - the selling point is that you get new features, better performance, better usability etc rather than "what you had, but now it doesn't crash".

 

[Cirrus]

The problem is, once people lose faith in a brand, once that connection is broken, it's basically impossible to get it back. The number one job of the management of a company like that is to manage the reputation of the brand. This is a right fuck up, even if they did reverse it.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

and I'm not sure they even went fully back - for instance, I was planning upgrading a few single plugins I had to a bigger bundle and covering the WUP that way. That is no longer an option - as far as I can tell they haven't brought back upgrading to bundles from single plugins yet.

Hopefully they do - I'm in a sort of grey area of what makes the most sense to upgrade where nothing is quite what I want.

Waves did themselves no favours here, but my opinion of how they operate was already at rock bottom. Their products are still on the whole very good though, and they are well supported, stable, and the compatibility across different studios and systems is worth something.

 

[FuzzyAce]

I have their Abbey Road stuff and a handful of their utility style plugins. They work good, and I don't update my mac constantly so maybe that's why lol. Honestly though I prefer using Plugin Alliance as a hub and never had any issues so far.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Software, especially on Apple systems, can require perpetual updates to work correctly

Fwiw, Waves'entire WUP business (and now their attempts at a subscription model) only really works because of Apple. Simply because Apple keeps sh***ing on any kind of backwards compatibility regularly. Now, sometimes that might be for good reasons, sometimes it quite defenitely isn't. Just that Apple doesn't give a damn. So there we (Mac users) are, only living happily from autumn to autumn, just to see what things they will break with the next macOS update.
Sure, you don't need to update your OS all the time, but sometimes you do (or *really* want to for good reasons). Usually, you can skip at least every other OS update without running into any issues regarding other software updates, but things have gotten massively tighter during the last 2-5 years. Until then it was possible to run, say, the most recent Logic version on a macOS 4-5 version numbers behind. These days it's already down to "just the latest and second to latest" macOS'es. So, in case there's a certain fix or feature you'd really like to use, you will often have to update your OS before.
And that's the particular moment when Waves' evil plan starts to work. "Oh, you're updating macOS Catalina? We're so sorry, no way to run your V9 plugins anymore - but you can take advance of our great update plan!"

Not that this would be much different with some other companies (as in new OS versions requiring updated plugins), but some companies don't always charge you for updates. Waves does so all the time. Take U-He's most excellent Zebra 2 as an example (or their as excellent MFM2 delay machine). Free updates ever since they got released way over a decade ago, they'll always only be charging you for big version number updates (and some added features would defenitely be worth a big version number jump).

And then there's Windows. Which typically doesn't require you to update much software at all. Chances are that at least until the most recent version of Windows 10 (sort of different with Win 11 perhaps), you could still run a whole number of plugins released 20 years ago without them being updated. Number of this old plugins you could run on an actual macOS version: Exactly zero.

This very Apple behaviour has already made me lose lots of plugins. Tons of freeware but also things such as NI's B4, FM7, Pro-53, with Battery 3 to follow, which is actually causing me headaches already because I use that in each and every project and Battery 4 is an offense towards human intelligence. Upgrades don't help a lot, either, because older projects would not load properly anymore once a plugin is upgraded to a different version number (hence plugin ID). Sure, with Waves that's different because even the oldest plugins are still updated - but then: forced into WUP!

TL;DR: Use Macs and Waves plugins = recipe to get shafted!

And as this is about Waves plugins, I won't get into Apple's planned obsolescense obscenities - there's quite some more stories to be told.

Regarding Waves plugins, I personally just started deleting them already. The only thing I may keep for a while is their CR8 sampler, because there's really nothing like it on the market right now, but I hope this will change one day.

 

[Cirrus]

I got fed up of them earlier in the year, before I was aware of it. The only Waves plug I used to use that I didn't have an alternative for from another company was the BSS402 compressor, so I got a hardware one. Now I just need to somehow use it in 5 different places simultaneously

 

[partytrain]

My Waves use has slowly tapered off over the last year or so. This latest episode just proved to me that I was making the right move.

 

[Orvillain]

The companies that do this just never understand these things don't exist in a vacuum. It's easy to end up with multiple subscriptions eating a lot of money each year. Even if the pricing for that one software seems reasonable, if it's not one that you use every single day then it can be a tough sell.

It's a tough problem to be honest. Software, especially on Apple systems, can require perpetual updates to work correctly and that's hard to justify as financially viable when you sell a "buy once, keep forever" software. I have stopped using some software because they went to a subscription model or at least made the "buy an update" model a bad deal in comparison - like it's slightly more expensive than a yearly subscription and only gets you one year of updates.

I find the "keep it working for X years but sell a version 2.0 as a discounted update" plan far more palatable - the selling point is that you get new features, better performance, better usability etc rather than "what you had, but now it doesn't crash".

Companies go for subscriptions because in venture capital land, subscriptions imply growth, which leads to higher valuations.

That's it.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

I lost a lot of good Waves stuff that I loved to play with and used on a lot of old projects. That stuff was a bitch to transfer onto my Mac from a PC too.

I bought my son the gold bundle last Christmas and had the itch to install Waves Central and try out one of the add ons I selected (Cosmos Sample thing) and lost ALL my plugs.

I still get to piggyback on his subscription to retain a few things but I won't be buying any of the Name™ stuff back like CLA, SSL, Abbey, Kramer. Fuck em.