.

mike_mccue


I tried reading through their official "how to" for offline install but I remain confused.

Do you need to dedicate a USB stick as a generic dongle or can you copy some sort of license file over to my DAW and keep the USB slots open?

Thanks.



best regards,
mike

You can have it as you want. On a stick or on your computer.
You have the possibility to change later if you want to.

.

So far my experience with both having existing licenses formerly on iLok...now on Waves License Center...and purchasing new ones has been very benign.  It's easy peasy to authorize and run.  I bought a generic USB drive for mine tho I could just as easily assigned them to my DAW computer.  Of course, I'm "online" so I'm not sure how the offline procedure works but I would imagine it's not too difficult.  Watch out for those "voucher" programs tho...they've sucked me in to several purchases;-)

Yeh, I guess it's reasonably easy, but not as easy as just emailing me an authorization key like everybody else does.

I dread the day I upgrade my computer, though. In fact, every time I pull up a project with Waves stuff in it, and a little Waves logo pops up while it's doing who-knows-what, I wonder if someday it's just not going to work anymore and I'll have to spend a day convincing someone 10 timezones away in Israel that I'm legit. No, it's never happened, but I am leery of products that use over the top copy protection.

I am reluctant to use a flash drive as a DIY dongle. Those devices are not built to NASA specs and could easily fail. Or get lost, or broken off because they're sticking out the side of your computer. Or swapped by your teenager who needs more capacity and after all they're all interchangeable and who keeps forever-data on a USB stick anyway?

bitflipper


Yeh, I guess it's reasonably easy, but not as easy as just emailing me an authorization key like everybody else does.

I dread the day I upgrade my computer, though. In fact, every time I pull up a project with Waves stuff in it, and a little Waves logo pops up while it's doing who-knows-what, I wonder if someday it's just not going to work anymore and I'll have to spend a day convincing someone 10 timezones away in Israel that I'm legit. No, it's never happened, but I am leery of products that use over the top copy protection.

I am reluctant to use a flash drive as a DIY dongle. Those devices are not built to NASA specs and could easily fail. Or get lost, or broken off because they're sticking out the side of your computer. Or swapped by your teenager who needs more capacity and after all they're all interchangeable and who keeps forever-data on a USB stick anyway?

 
Bit
I understand how you feel here.....
One thing I am starting to do (in an all out effort to get truely organized????  Really!!) is when ever I purchase a plug I start a Master file for that line.....say if it is a cake plug I name the file Cake or IK Multi Media or Waves...
 
Then I will insert a sub folder named what ever that plug is.....so if it was the IK Black or White I would name it Black or white or if it was a waves C6 compressor I would name it C6...
 
Then In that sub folder I will Print as a PDF the Receipt I get from the Company, (since I usually use paypal) I will usually print out my PayPal Receipt, Next would be the email with the serial number on it from that company and finally I will put the PDF Manual in it....and if the download has the exe file (zip or not) I will put that in there as well............So EVERYTHING is in one nice neat folder.......
 
When I buy the next plug from that company I will put a new subfolder in there with the plug name and do the whole thing all over again....
 
Last I have three different drives that I will copy the folder to so that if one drive fails I always have two back ups.
 
If I do this right away it take me only ten minutes to do especially if you start your folder on a usb stick..
 
It sounds like a lot of work but it really is not.... If you ever had to prove anything you then have the parent Companies Receipt for the plug, the payment for the plug and the serial number of the plug.....hard to say your not legit with that much documentation.......
Lastely, if they do an update for that plug you just put it in there as well.......easy peasy 
Just a suggestion...
Clifford

Many of you probably got the email from Waves announcing "buy any selected $99 plugin, get back a $100 voucher". On the surface it sounds like a buy-one-get-one-free deal, but it's not. You can only apply 25% of the voucher toward the purchase of another plugin. The only way to actually get the $100 credit is to either buy 4 additional plugins or a $400+ package. So it's really a 5-for-the-price-of-4 deal, which isn't very exciting.

I like this company less and less the more I hear from and about them.

Clifford: I hear ya, man. I keep all that stuff on multiple drives, too. But I just don't trust the company. I fear their customer database and accounting system may be as convoluted, complex and fragile as their copy protection.

bitflipper


Many of you probably got the email from Waves announcing "buy any selected $99 plugin, get back a $100 voucher". On the surface it sounds like a buy-one-get-one-free deal, but it's not. You can only apply 25% of the voucher toward the purchase of another plugin. The only way to actually get the $100 credit is to either buy 4 additional plugins or a $400+ package. So it's really a 5-for-the-price-of-4 deal, which isn't very exciting.

I like this company less and less the more I hear from and about them.

Clifford: I hear ya, man. I keep all that stuff on multiple drives, too. But I just don't trust the company. I fear their customer database and accounting system may be as convoluted, complex and fragile as their copy protection.

Bit
 
Yes I agree with you.....It always seems I need to go back to square one to authorize a product....and everything is kept "in the Cloud" which bothers me as well............kind of like using an iLok........I have only one product that uses that and never again.......(PSP) and I like their stuff.....just not the dongle
 
Also, I did not know that about the voucher either.....that is discouraging....kind of a little misleading as well.....But I am glad you brought it up.
 
Thanks
Clifford

Some software companies have nothing but watermarked software [a process that makes it possible to determine the origin of software.] for protection [including tamper-proofing, so that unauthorized modifications to software (for example, to remove a watermark) will result in nonfunctional code]. 

I don't know why more companies don't go that way. Its bulletproof, and easy.

Here's a paper [PDF] on watermarking. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~cthombor/Pubs/01027797a.pdf