It seems like every time I do an upgrade with Sonar that I have to "rescan my Waves license".  Only this time I cannot recover my license because it says I am limited to one recovery a year.
 
I hardly ever use my Waves plugins (mostly because of this kind of license issue).  I only have them on my home studio PC and I rarely do anything else on that PC these days in terms of upgrades of hardware or software.
 
Is this an issue purely with Waves, or does the act of upgrading my Sonar software cause this?  I must admit it seems to be tied to the latter but maybe it's just coincidence.  How do other people who have Waves plugins overcome these kind of crummy license issues?
 
For some reason the Waves Center keeps seeing my home studio PC as a different PC every time I launch it.  I have the same PC listed multiple times in Waves Center.  The licenses are listed as belonging to another named version of the same PC.
 

Are you sure you are doing the right thing?
Doing a too heavy recover thingy, or?
 
I mean Reset in Sonar scan, and do rescan - is what I do.
 
What kind of issue are you having?
Cannot see plugins in plugin manager?
 
Never had to fiddle with Waves anything but that.
Sonar finds two waves shell, one for VST2 and one for VST3.
 
If you start moving these shells around by yourself you might be in for trouble next time you run Waves installer.

Nothing like that happens to me either and I use my Horizon bundle constantly on two computers (USB key license). If you are still covered by WUP, their support is great.

I am not doing any recovery or any movement of my plugins. These days I leave my setup "well alone" and avoid tweaks and special handling. I no longer even change installation settings because I don't want any issues caused by me trying to improve the way things are installed.

I guess that is what's frustrating because I keep getting these issues with Waves for the few times I use their stuff.

I put my waves license on my DAW computer, don't have to worry about dongle, never had a problem with any of them not being recognized or not working properly.  If you want to use the waves stuff on another computer, simply transfer license to a usb stick, and any computer that has the plugs your license covers will be recognized. If you still have problems, contact waves support, they have good support techs.

Thanks but my plugins are only ever on one computer. I don't use a dongle and I am not trying to transfer anything.

For the little I use Waves, I'm tempted to throw the towel in. This may not be worth the effort. These were bought on a special a while ago and I may just write them off as a waste. A bit like Antares plugins a while ago.

*sigh*

Any suggestions for an alternative to the Waves Rbass plugin that is part of the Sonar Platinum stuff? That's really all I was trying to use.

Or maybe a freebie plugin that is similar? I am not looking to spend any (more) money

I've moved through Sonar X3+all updates and Platinum+all updates without the Waves licenser being upset in the slightest or even noticing Sonar has changed.

Waves licenser isn't tied to the DAW software in any way at all. I also use the plugins in Live, again without a problem.

It sounds like your Waves installation is the problem here, not Sonar.

It does seem like it's more of a Waves plugin issue.  Though this problem reappeared after I upgraded from Braintree to Cambridge.  And I've had the problem reappear on previous upgrades.  Now these might all be Waves issues, but something about the upgrade seems to be related, even if Sonar is not the culprit.  I wonder if any other Sonarites have experienced these kinds of issues before.

Waves stuff is sometimes dismissed as dated or worse sounding than the competition (especially some of their vintage modeling attempts) but they have a whole bunch of specialty plugins that are done really well and that don't always exist elsewhere. Renaissance Bass is one like that. However there are plugs that do something LIKE it. I blatantly googled these, but:
Fielding Reviver
BBE harmonic maximizer (part of the sonic suite)
Crysonic Nxstacy
PSP MixBass

I don't think they're free. In Sonar, you could use a parallel track and add some distortion on it to generate harmonic content, then mix that with the original. It would probably be useful to have a distortion that lets you balance even and odd harmonics, I'm not sure if there's anything with Sonar that lets you do that. I use Klanghelm SDRR sometimes, it was like 19 bucks but it's very versatile.

Edit:
Apparently these are free and do something similar:https://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/downloads/