Sonar X2 Studio > Sweetwater Creation Station/Windows 7 > Allen and Heath ZedR16
 
I've purchased a number of plugins from Waves, and there's always been something missing, but it never bothered me until recently:
Watch nearly any video on Youtube where there's a demo of a Waves plugin and at the top of the graphic, above the Waves tool bar, there are additional buttons for 'Bypass' and in some cases 'Sidechain'. This area, and these buttons, don't appear with my plugins. (I have been bypassing these plugins from my effects bin on the individual channels.)
Waves generously gave away a reverb plugin for Black Friday yesterday and I had a bit of an installation problem, so I called their tech support. We fixed the installation issue, and afterwards I asked about this other problem of the missing graphics/buttons above the Waves tool bar. The Waves rep sounded incredulous, as though he'd never heard of this problem before and suggested I contact Cakewalk.
Anyone else here use Waves plugins? Anyone have the problem I'm describing?
Thanks!

BTW - I've checked with the Waves Web site - my DAW is listed as 'compatible' with their products (and they work just fine, except for this one issue).

I believe it has something to do with either the plugin format or the way the DAW displays them. I've noticed in Pro Tools there is more going on at the top of the plugins ie sidechain etc. than in sonar. Studio One displays the plugins similar to Pro Tools. There's nothing wrong with your plugins.
 
 

If you're using the VST3 versions of your Waves plugin then they have a bypass button on the top left of the plugin. The sidechain thing annoys me though, I had always thought that VST3 included sidechaining as standard but either it doesn't or Cakewalk hasn't implemented it for some reason, I don't know. 

Thanks, yeah - I didn't think there was anything wrong with the plugins. I thought that I was missing some sort of file that would be common to all the plugins, allowing them to display that top portion of the graphic where the buttons reside.
Not having the ability to sidechain with some of their cool compressors is disappointing.

I believe you might be confusing the header hosts add to plug-ins as being part of the plug-in itself. There is no standard across DAWs regarding this header. In the case of Waves plug-ins and SONAR, only the VST3 format supports side chain. VST3 support was introduced in X3. Even then, the header SONAR adds to the plug-in changed very little and procedure to setup a side chain in SONAR did not change.

Up until I spoke with a tech at Waves, yes, I thought the 'header' was a part of the plugin. 
I'm not seeing this header.
I'm running Studio X2. What's the bottom line here? Is there a problem within Sonar? Have I downloaded the 'wrong' VST version of the plugins? 
How can I enable this header, to allow it to appear on my plugins?

The problem has nothing to do with VST header. The problem is Waves requires VST3 support to perform side chaining in SONAR. X2 is not a VST3 host. You need a newer version of SONAR which supports VST3 to use a side chain with Waves plug-ins. VST3 support was introduced in X3.

Thanks for the explanation!

And...even if you upgrade to Platinum, the header will not change. You can, however, use side-chaining with Waves plugins. They show up as available "Sends" in other tracks.
 
Regards,
Dan