Waves Musician Bundle 1 at 69 $ instead of 160 $ : Does worth it ?

You can get this at JRRShop Blowout Shop for $51.02.....

http://blowout.jrrshop.com/waves-musicians-bundle-1-native-download-license

Thanks very much cclary for the deal at jrrshop ! 
Do you use those plugins and are they useful or can we do the same with standard plugins or with the ones included in Sonar (X3 producer) ?

OK thanks cclary.
So (sorry to insist but), for you, do you consider that  remains a bargain, or there is nothing exceptional ?

I use Doubler and the Ren comps quite a bit.  Good solid plugins.
 
Cheers,
Eddie
 

I am no longer allowed to talk about Waves, having expressed my dislike for the company on too many occasions. So this is me giving you the silent wave-off.

OK, forum police, there it is: explicit permission from the OP himself.
 
Waves is not content to sell you a plugin or two, say thanks and move on. No, they want an annuity. It's called the WUP. It's what would, in other industries, be called a maintenance contract. You pay an annual fee and it entitles you to free updates. Sound good? Well...
 
First of all, the updates you're buying in advance are minor revisions over the next year. You are essentially paying for fix releases. You'll have to keep paying for 2 years or more to get a free major release. That's between $10 and $300 per plugin, per year.
 
Now to be fair, Waves products are generally pretty stable. I've no complaints about their quality control. Knowing that, you might be tempted to save your money and simply pass on the WUP. It is optional after all.
 
Be advised that if you don't buy the WUP, there is no way to contact the vendor to ask a question. Go ahead, scan their website for an email support link or customer service telephone number. You do not become privy to that information without buying into the WUP.
 
Without the WUP, and without continually renewing it via ongoing payments, there is no guarantee that the products you bought will continue to work. In fact, past history suggests that there is a high probability that they will in fact stop working.
 
The main source of Waves plugin failures is the paranoid copy-protection scheme. Your license is tied to your hardware, which means if you upgrade your motherboard or disable your network, your Waves products will stop working.
 
Re-authorization will be fairly easy (assuming your DAW is on the internet) most of the time, assuming it works at all (it often takes multiple attempts). You will have to re-authorize your plugins every time you make a change to your DAW hardware. (This, to be fair, is not entirely unique to Waves but it is neither necessary nor commonplace and is a despicable practice.)
 
If you don't know why your license is suddenly no good, you can't ask them without a paid-up WUP. If it's a hardware change you didn't realize affected the license, or maybe you're swapping parts to troubleshoot or test, you might experience repeated license failures. But Waves only allows you to recover a "lost" license twice a year. No one at Waves will explain this to you without the WUP.
 
Sometimes, a major update to a plugin becomes mandatory, usually due to some incompatibility with a new O/S or CPU. Without a paid-up WUP, you'll have to re-purchase the plugin if you want to keep using it after upgrading your DAW. When budgeting for a new computer, be sure to add the cost of buying a WUP contract or re-purchasing all your Waves products.
 
Even if you don't ever upgrade your DAW, Waves may still get you if you dare to buy any new Waves products. In the past, newer versions of Waves plugins have actually made older plugins stop working. Engineered obsolescence is what that's called.
 
The reason is that Waves plugins don't work like all your other VSTs. They run inside a shell. One version of a plugin may not be compatible with the version of the shell that another Waves plugin requires. When that happens, your old plugins no longer work - and good luck backrevving the shell. No other vendor has such problems allowing multiple products to run side-by-side regardless of version.
 
I try to be fair and objective about these matters. My good friends bapu and yorolpal will be along to tell you how great the WUP is, and no, they are not brainwashed Waves lackeys (AFAIK). It's just that they've gotten free plugins because of the WUP. It's true. If you buy one of the big bundles, AND you faithfully pay up year after year, you can sometimes get new products for free - but only if they're added to the bundle you've previously bought. You can get in on this, too, if you've got an extra grand or two to spend (better go for the Mercury bundle, it's only $6300 + $300 (?) a year for the WUP).
 
As for the Musician's bundle specifically, I have only two of the plugins in that bundle (doubler and delay) so I can only comment on those. I won't say they're awful (OK, the display issues on the delay are annoying), but I can tell you that these never get used in my projects anymore. Why? Because I never know if they're going to work, they're not outstanding effects anyway, and because I have better non-Waves alternatives. Doubler in particular was a big disappointment. No other plugin I have can make things sound so bad so consistently.

Oh Thank you very much BIT for such an explanation ! you have highlighted these three letters (WUP) which I did not understand anything ! Indeed, I still struggle to understand why dear customers who have made ​​the effort to legally buy products must be dependent on a binding and exclusive system in order to continue to enjoy their plugins in case of updates or future development ! ?? I don't know if this WUP system is recent, but I'm not sure it works in favor of a customer loyalty! What they think in the marketing department and customer service quality at Waves?

Thanks Yorolpal for this interesting clarification. (And the parallell with Cakewalk is true even if they make an effort to put some new tools)
By chance, if you have the plugins of this Musician bundle, I would be curious what is your personal opinion about them.
Thanks again for everybody who has replied to my post !

Waves plugs are top notch and operate as advertised. Plus, they are pretty thoroughly debugged. In the past they were glitchy with some DAWs. But, by and large, this is well in the past. Another downside, perhaps, is that the plugs in some of the bundles (like you are asking about) are getting a little "long in the tooth"...or, old. However, so is the Fairchild compressor or the 1176, or the LA-2A, etc... And they are still essential studio tools.

As an alternative you should also look at FabFilter plugs. But they will cost you considerably more.

Rain
FWIW, I was rather surprised when my WUP expired to see that they were asking for over $200 to renew it. 

@Rain, most people forget to chose 'Use one one machine only,' that should drop your price down considerably.

I purchased WUP for Mercury last October & it was $205.00 total plus they extended it. I'm good until June 2015.

BTW the cap is lower than stated, plus don't forget you can get lower prices at WavesUniverse. 

carl

Rain
FWIW, I was rather surprised when my WUP expired to see that they were asking for over $200 to renew it. 

@Rain, most people forget to chose 'Use one one machine only,' that should drop your price down considerably.

I purchased WUP for Mercury last October & it was $205.00 total plus they extended it. I'm good until June 2015.

BTW the cap is lower than stated, plus don't forget you can get lower prices at WavesUniverse. 

Hadn't checked in a while, but my WUP was at $355!!!
After checking "Use One Machine Only" here's the result for a single year of coverage.
 

 
That's for 3 little bundles and 5 plug-ins. Thanks but no thanks Waves.

I'm looking at your pic & I assume you did click the next button to get the total price figure?
Still doesn't sound correct but whatever, I never buy full retail through Waves anyway.
 

carl
I'm looking at your pic & I assume you did click the next button to get the total price figure?
Still doesn't sound correct but whatever, I never buy full retail through Waves anyway.
 

The price is in red next to "Waves update plan price". It starts at 0 and goes up as you check the products you want to have covered. 
 
My mistake above, though - it is effectively capped at $240, no matter how much you wait as I've just seen by checking each product one at a time. 
 
As a matter of fact, I hit $240 with only 3 bundles and 2 individual plug-ins covered.