While I partly agree that is a problem, the REAL problem is in producing Plugins
and then just moving on.  A company should be constantly striving to produce
NEW plugins, and, if the quality is there, they won't have to have "Huge" Sales
to dump plugins and keep revenue flowing...and eliminate getting plugins for 
"Free" ...for users of certain bundles, give them a "better price" then others...

WUP, to me is "plugin insurance", it merely allows you to get the "updates" free for 
ONE YEAR, then, after that, if you want updates you PAY FOR THEM,
where (most) other companies just GIVE you the updates regardless, ad infinitum...

I understand the "idea" but it's a BAD idea...especially in light of "most other" companies.

Waves has been doing this a long time, longer then most, and, as such, their plugins
have become "long in tooth"...especially the older ones.  While they still get the job
done, they are "old".  Not even updated GUI's...and YOU'RE STILL PAYING FOR THEM,
even if you've "owned" them for years...that's bad business...it becomes "plugin" rental,
so they should just move to the "subscription" model, which is really what it is in the
first place.

You don't buy a car, and, after OWNING it, keep making payments to the company
from which you bought it.  

While you DO pay for "insurance" on the car, that is in case of
"liability", where this is no such "liability" with a plugin...per se.

That's my 2 cents...call it what you will, it's a "Scam" to keep "extra" revenue flowing, when
they should be continuing to produce "viable" new plugins to keep the company afloat, and
keep the existing ones supported.  But it is, indeed, Capitalism at it's finest!

Starise
I love the waves products I have purchased. I don't see them as head and shoulders above many others though. In fact, There have been a few occasions recently where I managed to get exactly what I was after using only the pro channel in Sonar for a final mix. And this is my dilemma, should I pay Waves for some kind of update scheme when I can likely get the same or a very similar result using other plug ins which don't require me to pay for updates? 
 
That answer comes pretty easy for me. If I can't keep using what I have without a required payed update of some kind I'm out. If all plug in companies do the same thing eventually I can still lean on the plug ins included with my DAW. If Waves needs a small fee every now and then to keep afloat I can understand that ...but I'm talking a small fee and included updates. If it sounds like I'm saying two different things I'm not....I am ok with a reasonable annual fee to keep the plug ins up to date. Small meaning in the 20.00 or less range and the freedom to not opt for it and keep using the older version. But here's the thing..if the plug in already does a great job there comes a point of diminishing returns..where it already does what it does as good as is possible. The only advantage to updates then being making the plug in fit into new OS versions and schemes with DAWs. This was always fee in the past with companies making up the revenue in sales from exisitng products....but I understand that times are tough out there and I'm willing to help to a point so that I can continue to have a good company around making good plug-ins.
 
Make sense??

Indeed!

BassDaddy
What has changed more than the music software industry in the last 12 years or so? The WUP is a leftover from that time period and their pricing was crazy expensive then. The Eddie Kramer Signature Bundle I bought in January was $62.00. The retail says $500.00. Has the WUP been recalibrated since they started selling at 80 percent off at times? No. I could give them 10 to 20 percent but not what they want. I bought Gold for $86.00 as an upgrade on Black Friday. I thought about it at $149.00. I didn't want to spend that  much for it so I passed. I spent $86.00, WUP me at $86.00, not $800.00. Is it worth more than I paid? Sure it is. But I wouldn't have bought it. It wasn't my idea to make it available at $86.00. If they are thinking they will make up for the low price with the WUP they are incorrect. This policy is like a Doctor bleeding you with leeches, may have been a good idea once; kind of outdated now.

Indeed BD.  They base the WUP on the RETAIL price...

BassDaddy
What has changed more than the music software industry in the last 12 years or so? The WUP is a leftover from that time period and their pricing was crazy expensive then. The Eddie Kramer Signature Bundle I bought in January was $62.00. The retail says $500.00. Has the WUP been recalibrated since they started selling at 80 percent off at times? No. I could give them 10 to 20 percent but not what they want. I bought Gold for $86.00 as an upgrade on Black Friday. I thought about it at $149.00. I didn't want to spend that  much for it so I passed. I spent $86.00, WUP me at $86.00, not $800.00. Is it worth more than I paid? Sure it is. But I wouldn't have bought it. It wasn't my idea to make it available at $86.00. If they are thinking they will make up for the low price with the WUP they are incorrect. This policy is like a Doctor bleeding you with leeches, may have been a good idea once; kind of outdated now.

You get WUP free for a year at any discount price the plug-in is sold for. Let's assume that WUP cost 20% of the cost of the plug-in. If the plugin is $500, then WUP is $100. However, if the plugin is on sale for $100, then WUP for a year costs $20. So, in that sense, WUP is recalibrated. More, when you renew, there's a CAP to how much WUP is. 
 
Here's a tip: When you renew, do it more than 30days out before your oldest-WUP commitment expires. They may grant you a "deal" or WUP sale. Renew your entire WUP for ALL your plug-ins. What seems to happen is, WUP will be extended for one year past your last plug-in's WUP expiration. For example, you have one plugin's WUP that expires in January 2016. You have another plugin that expires in November 2016. If you renew in December 2015 for all plug-ins, WUP should be extended for ALL plugins until November 2017! So, for your oldest plugin, you get nearly two years of WUP! To add to that, you still pay no more then the max cap they charge which, in my case is about $240.
 
More, because of the cap the more plugins you own, the cheaper WUP becomes. 
 
Believe me, they have struggled with right-sizing WUP for the customer and Waves. If you're making money doing the work you do, this should be nothing. If you don't, it's understandable to complain. But many engineers make good $$ from Waves. It stands to reason they should want some type of royalty, as crappy as that sounds. 
 
Seriously, though, there are insanely expensive software and services out there because the market supports it. Many of them not as complex to develop as what Waves or Cakewalk offers. 

As I've mentioned many times to clients, "It's not the hardware/software I have in-house, my monitors, or even the shape of my room, it's the final product you get that you pay for." We tend to become a slight bit caddy to the fact that we can get very similar mixes (in some case better) with these plug-ins than we ever could with a room full of gravely expensive and unreliable hardware.  We've got it easier to make great mixes than ever before. It's not that expensive. :) 

It does suck to have to wup to sell a plugin. I just wuped my Platinum and SSL to sell them. I used the voucher to upgrade Platinum to Horizon. Now when they sell I also have to pay $150 each because they are over some threshold. My wup was $300. That is a lot of scratch.

Carl was that in response to me? I don't thing it's relevant. Clearly if I had just bought it I would have wup on it. Having to wup for $300 then pay $150 transfer fee seems unreasonable to me.

No, no-one in particular but I see a trend where people get excited & buy them. Then after a while they're not satisfied or want something else then decide to sell them. Then moan or wonder why they're losing money or can't sell them for more than they want.
The WUP & transfer policies haven't changed ( except for amounts perhaps)
It just seems to be more of a buyers remorse situation than a problem with Waves as a company.

cclarry

smallstonefan
Carl was that in response to me? I don't thing it's relevant. Clearly if I had just bought it I would have wup on it. Having to wup for $300 then pay $150 transfer fee seems unreasonable to me.

The best thing to do in this situation, and Waves does allow it, is to sell the account.
The New customer just takes over your current account and there are no fees...

Just uninstall everything, send the licenses back to the Cloud and give your account info to the
new owner, who changes the info to his info.  

That way you don't pay the $150 per bundle...but then you can't sell them
separately...

Actually not a bad idea. If you wish to liquidate your Waves gear, do this. I think that's brilliant, actually. 

I don't want to address any one point in particular with this, because you all have valid points, but I do believe the rabbit hole goes much deeper, albeit not so deep we can't understand it. 
 
Let me make a comparison, for a second. Algorithmix made a few Linear-Phase EQs that each cost $1,300 with free updates for life. I own the Algo Red, which is a really great EQ. Unfortunately, Algorithmix has all but abandoned it, and no more updates. The market didn't support the plug-ins, so they essentially (apparently) abandoned them. Waves offers a strong Linear-Phase EQ for less than half that, and when it goes on sale, it may be as low as $79! I bit. Waves will support it for a long time. The investment and income is there. But you'd think the appalling price of the Algorithmix EQ's, which Bob Katz would swear by as the best EQ plug on the planet, would cover the costs of updates for a long time. 
 
Seriously, nobody wants to pay for some empty thing. WUP has nothing to offer aside from updates and admittedly, excellent support. However, if Waves is investing in new technologies all the time, as they are today, without WUP and people $500 plug-ins they'll go bankrupt or just never advance. There's a business model here. If buyers aren't partaking they'll have sales. 
 
I can't totally discount the Waves business model, because it seems to work.
 
WUP is never required. You only need it IF you upgrade your plugins, or need support, etc. With that said, I also wouldn't discount something Waves does for bundle-owners who pay for WUP. Gold bundle owners received a FREE Vitamin plug-in to their bundle. There's an incentive to buy bundles for this reason. 

Anytime you want something for less, there's revenue lost, and the company has to cover it elsewhere or cut corners. Hence, the very serious debates over whether Wal-Mart stores are good for local economies. People always want cheap, cheap, cheap, and free. But great comes at a price. My local mayor came under fire for letting Wal-mart build a store n my town. His reason was, "People will drive 20 miles to a Wal-Mart store to spend less. That town gets the millions in tax revenue that we simply don't see. Our town will continue going that distance, or we can build a store here and land the millions/year in that tax revenue. We have great local stores that will have to compete, but people really don't want the quality as much as they want to save money." 

I don't like that idea, but it's reality. People simply don't want to pay for what they get, if they can "expect" to get equal quality cheaper elsewhere.

I'm certainly not a fan of WUP, but once you've been in such a hard, competitive business, it will make sense. Waves will still succeed in the market and people will continue buying their plug-ins and WUP for some time.
 
What you're getting in return is years of research with the engineers who admit they use their own signature plug-ins, because it takes them far less work to get an awesome mix than the previous methods using outboard gear. And all that outboard gear, not only isn't cheap, you can't get it in your hands (at all). Even though we don't want to pay for updates, and such with WUP, let's not pretend that these plug-ins and WUP are expensive to do pretty much the same (or more) work. I don't like spending $$$ on WUP, but I can certainly appreciate brankupting cost of buying all that hardware. 
 
To finalize my previous comparison, Let's take for example, a Sonoris Compressor. It does a very fine job of compression of any signal, and you may find it way too easy to use. It's transparent and accurate. It does a GREAT job. Now compare that to the PuigChild compressor or API 2500 from Waves. These are relatively easy to use as well, and cost about the same, but what you get here is many, many hours/days/months or research and superb modeling techniques to get the "sound" of those hardware units. Many of the companies that offer free updates for life don't typically have the funds to engage in such efforts, and are left mostly with their calculations and experience in other areas.  

Again, nobody can argue that free isn't better for the wallet, but is it truly better for the product? 


All software has to be updated. Hardware does, too. How many would argue that a super-fast CPU at $400 cost is a great deal, something that will devalue eventually into nothing of value? I can buy one that gets the job done for half that, but at some point, I will have to buy updated hardware. It's an endless cycle. We don't pay for the support because we pay for the hardware. A new PC or Mac costs quite a bit.


For the WaveShell and CPU hogs, Waves plugins offline installer is very large. Having WaveShell allows your DAW to load the many plugins they have faster. If they were all separate, it would take longer to load them all for work. As for CPU, sure some plugins do soak up more. The IR-1 Convolution Reverb, for example is a CPU fiend. It gobbles it up. Many of the modeling plugins do, too as do the Signature lines.
 

My Waves plugs just simply work in SONAR, Reaper, Studio One 3 Pro and Mixbus.
 
I WUP (almost) every year. I am currently WUP'd until Feb 2018 for Mercury, Abbey ROad and SSL.
 
Sorry to hear you had troubles razor. 

Waves don't use iLok devices anymore.  You can tie your Wave's plugins to a USB storage device (which I recommend) but not to an iLok device.  Perhaps the poster is just using the word "iLok" as a generic term when they meant a USB storage device (a thumb drive usually)?
If the Wave's license center shows your USB device and it has the licenses on it, then your issue is solely with the Wave Shell and Sonar.  If the Wave's license center doesn't show your plugins then you need to start with fixing that.  And yes getting Wave's plugins to install and work correctly can be really painful and difficult.

So what are the favorite plugs out there my is the tapes tubes and transient, piug plugs, ren.

thornton
So what are the favorite plugs out there my is the tapes tubes and transient, piug plugs, ren.

UAD.

sharke

bapu
My Waves plugs just simply work in SONAR, Reaper, Studio One 3 Pro and Mixbus.
 

Damn that's what I thought too, until this happened tonight in Mixbus with ALL of my VEQ's
 

 
Opening and closing the GUI didn't help. I would have to either delete the EQ and load it again, or restart the project. Didn't happen with any other of the non-Waves plugins in the project. 
 

Just tried that exact plug in Mixbus and it worked fine. No problems with the GUI or operation.