More and more I understand that Waves is a clown plugin provider. Today I wanted to uninstall some Waves plugins on my studio PC. You know, they have this terrible monolithic installer program called "Waves Central". So first I opened this slow chaotic software to get rid of the plugins. But I couldn't find an uninstall feature, there was only the install! When I looked up on their site, I couldn't believe it! They say sincerely that there is only a way to uninstall all plugins at once. If you want to keep some, then you have to reinstall them afterwards??? Well, this can't be a professional plugin provider at all!

This combined with their terrible plugin shell solution, their awful licensing methods (unusable on any laptop) makes my decision absolutly clear: No more Waves plugins!

Their shell solution makes it utterly impossible to organize the plugins. For some programs this is a must when you have more than 20 plugins. Furthermore the shell makes plugin recognition needlessly slow. E.g. Samplitude has a great feature to scan only for new plugins (min. 10 times faster). But the Waves shell has to be scanned each time and steals your time, even if there are no new Waves plugins.

But I hate plugin installers anyway (independant whether it's a provider installer program or a Windows installer):

• Very often they are very heavy, slow programs and bad designed (maybe made by a junior programmer).
• Each time you use them there is a new version, i.e. first you have to wait for download and install of the new installer.
• Most of the time it is not transparent where they do install their plugin DLLs (with or without Company folder?) or other contents (like presets), i.e. you have to check and copy afterwards. E.g. presets stored in the current user's document folder, so if you use an administrator user to install and use then a common user, you have no presets available.
• Sometimes you can even not define that you do not want any 32-bit or AAX versions ...
• Installing multiple plugins you have to select all the time the VST2 plugin folder.

So in the end i must admit that I like those simple packages in a zip with a readme file (like many free ones). IMHO this is the easiest and fastest way for installation. The update on my studio computer confirmed this obviously!

It depends who you are talking to.  I have 22 Waves plug-ins now and Waves Central for me has been excellent.  A totally smooth experience.  Not only that the plug-ins themselves are excellent. 
 
Waves Central takes its time doing its thing.  You have to be patient.  As soon as you boot it up it is checking for updates.  Look very top left.  I must admit there is not much letting you know this is going on.  You cannot do anything while this is going on either.  You need to wait for it to stop that part of the process.
 
The Easy Install mode is also the way to go as well.  That way it puts your licenses on your local machine correctly.  You can end up with a license being in the cloud by mistake and then you have to move it. 

I like Waves new version of WC. The old one when I first got Waves plugins was a dud.
 
But even the new one leaves a lot to be desired. At least on Windows. I don't know how that stuff works on Macs.
 
I don't want 32 bit plugins installed. But there they are. In fact, all Waves Shells are located in the x86 Program folder. They need to fix that.
 
Also, you can install what you want, but you have to uninstall everything. Makes no sense. Gotta fix that too.
 
Not allowing me to decide where I want the installation to be. This is the biggie. Need to fix that soon.
 
But like Jeff says, they sound great. And I will not do without Abbey Road Plates. Ever!! : )
 
I have looked for a feature request form on their site but found none. Only a Contact Us form.

Waves Central works fine on Macs, at least as far as mine's concerned. Not particularly slow and hasn't caused any problems. Sometimes it takes as long as a minute or so to do something major, but that's only when there's an update or I add in a new plugin. Being able to delete individual plugins would be useful as a way to get rid of trial versions of plugs would be nice, but they don't get in the way and even a complete uninstall and re-install doesn't take that long. Longest part of the process is downloading the stuff. Licence handling is fast and smooth.

No options where it installs the various plugins or their formats, but on any unix-based system it's frequently a bad idea to install stuff in places other than where the OS and applications expects to find it. User account level security and permissions can get really confused (and confusing) otherwise. I could shift the plugins by using symbolic links but since all that would do is add an extra layer of complexity there's no point.

I don't think Waves install any 32 bit plugs on High Sierra Macs, but to be 100% certain I'd have to check each individual AU component, VST and VST3.

I have lots of Waves plugins. The waves central thing works fine for me. I am a sucker for those $29 deals and every month or so I have to deal with installing something. It's no big deal to me. YMMV

Grem
 
But like Jeff says, they sound great. And I will not do without Abbey Road Plates. Ever!! : )

Just another 'gateway plug', for sure! 

I agree that the Waves Central thing leaves a lot to be desired. It's very confusing to try to figure out the whole "what's the cloud? What's local" thing. I do hate the idea of having to uninstall all plugins to get rid of one. 
 
The last time I installed the updated Waves Central program, all of my "local" licenses on my PC disappeared. I had to use the "reinstall licenses one time only" thing and that bugged me. 
 
But on Sonar at least it can organize the Waves plugins into its own folder, so I don't have to look for them on a huge list of plugins. 
 
As for the Waves plugsins themselves, I find some of them useful, and some okay. None of them are better than the UAD plugins I use, but, then again, the UAD solution is VERY expensive. 

Hi guys, thanks for your comments and opinions!
 
I agree that the Waves deals are interesting and some of their plugins are, too. And although I addressed the "Waves Central" and installer programs a lot, for me this is not the crucial flaw of their stuff.
What I really execrate is their exotic shell thing (I have not seen any other vendor using such a fancy thing), because it makes handling plugins intransparent and not least it slows down start+checking of plugins substantially, everybody can test this!
 
And the 2nd pain is their licensing that makes it cumbersome to work sometimes on another PC, I mean laptop. The only feasible way of Waves is to store the licenses on an USB stick, but having USB audio interface, iLok and mouse I do not like to have more USB stuff on my laptop. And as I use the mouse I avoid using the USB plugs on the right side of the laptop. So I have to use a hub even for the current setup. Another stick there could affect stability (I had this once with the audio interface, that's why it's got its own plug now).

I agree parts of using Waves plug ins can be cumbersome. Once everything is lined up though it works like a charm. I have had more issues with another company that uses a shell type of experience to use their plug ins. Some are probably aware of who it is I speak of.......anyways enough of this clownery!!!!! ( I love that word BTW) 

I have not had any issues with Waves Central.  Their plug ins are excellent.  I am grabbing the $29 deals when its something I really need or want.  Life is good.