Add me as +1 for the Waves plugs (Diamond Bundle).  I use them regularly and can't do without them for some projects especially the L1/L2 and C4.  I also have most of the UAD plugs and find they're great too but for different applications, both have their strong points and are great plugins IMO.

As far as running Waves on Vista TStranger I'm not sure because I'm still on XP X64 until I go to Win 7 (where I may get some surprises)....but that's a bridge I'll have cross when I get to it.  Hope you can find a fix.

Cheers, Max.

Update - just booted 8.5 in XP and it recognizes all my WaveShell 5 plugs. I'm assuming your version of Vista is 32-bit, in which case you'll probably be able to get them working. First step would be to check whether the plugs are installed somewhere other than your VST folder of choice.

bitman


There is a utility out there that extracts shelled plug-ins from the shell and puts nice individual .dlls in your vst folder for each plug in the shell.

I found it in a thread here about waves ssl stuff not showing the gui when turning off x-ray did not help.

It worked a treat, but I can't find it right now for you and I need to get ready for work.

Try the utility shell2vst.exe

FYI guys I've run the Waves Renaissance bundle (3.5...yeah it's old) in XP 32, Vista 32 & 64, and Win7 64 using 8.3.1 and 8.5.1 in 64 bit mode. Use the above mentioned utility ( shell2vst.exe) that will wrap the dxs as vsts, and rescan. You should be all set. Just pay close attention to where the "new" .dlls install. Also be careful as to how you use shellvst2, the instructions are a little vague and if not done right will cause you problems.

Guitarmech111

When you say the WAVES plugs do not work, what are you seeing or not seeing that indicates they are not working?
 
I have all of the waves plugs and SONAR 8.5 ruinning w/o any issues with XP SP2 32-bit.
 
I would download the latest installer and try it again. Make sure you scan the waves plugins and also make sure all of the WaveShell.DLLs are current.
 
Reset all of your plugs, then rescan VSTs.
 
This is all of course if you are NOT 64-bit. I don't believe Waves V6 supports 64-bit applications.
 

Will do GuitarMech.  Thanks.  Now by '64 bit', do you mean Sonar x64 or a 64 bit machine?, because I am operating on a 64 bit machine, but running Sonar 32 bit so I can use Reason 4.0.  But the Waves Plug-ins work fine with SoundForge 9.0....just not with Sonar.  But I cannot get Waves Support to acknowledge key information like this.  The support guy is just cutting and pasting FAQ answers and fiddling with his iPod.

Dizzi45Z
Are you running 32 bit, Sonar 8.5 and the latest version of Waves 6?  Just curious.  

Hey Dizzi,

Yeah I am running 32 bit Sonar 8.5 and used the latest V6 installer from the Waves site.  :)

emwhy


FYI guys I've run the Waves Renaissance bundle (3.5...yeah it's old) in XP 32, Vista 32 & 64, and Win7 64 using 8.3.1 and 8.5.1 in 64 bit mode. Use the above mentioned utility ( shell2vst.exe) that will wrap the dxs as vsts, and rescan. You should be all set. Just pay close attention to where the "new" .dlls install. Also be careful as to how you use shellvst2, the instructions are a little vague and if not done right will cause you problems.

Good stuff emwhy.  I made sure that the .dll's are all installed in the correct 'look to' directory in Sonar.  And I tried to convert the shells into direct VST's with VST 2.0   (shell2vst.exe), but the VST 2.0 program said that the shell files were not recognizable as VST plug-in shells and could not be converted.

The part that makes me suspicious is that normal windows functions, don't work inside the Waves directories.  When I double click on c:\program files ....\waves\  inside windows explorer, it jumps me to a completely different directory than the waves directory.  Most often into a photos directory or maybe some random directory on my computer...and will not let me enter the Waves Directory.  The same for the copy I placed into the \VST Plugins\ directory.

I think the problem lies with the V6 installer and is not an OS compatibility issue.  There is just not that much difference between Vista Home and Vista Business.  But I will re-set all Plug-ins again tonight and then re-scan and see how that goes.

TS

I'm sorry that you all have this, so many problems...OS compatibility issue.. and not 64bit.. so on... 

To rap it up... WAVES sucks... please, don't continue to support them with your money.

Here's the problem with that logic... there are things, from an audio production perspective, that I can only do with Waves plug-ins. I dislike the corporate culture, and do my best to feed their coffers as little as possible, but there is still no good sub for the Rennaisance EQ and Compressor, or MondoMod or MetaFlanger...

There are other great, similar plug-ins, I make heavy use of UAD, SoundToys, PSP, Kjaerhus, and Voxengo, along with some PD stuff, but sometimes you just can't replace Waves.

Too bad too, because as a company they are awful. It took me almost two years to get a reasonably priced upgrade from V3 to V4. It wasn't until I pointed out that their EULA did not say that I had to upgrade to continue to use the software, but their authorization process prevented anyone with pre V4 software from re-installing. Eventually they caved, but in fact I had given up, they contacted me as a "former disgruntled" customer - I always felt they should have reversed the two words!

I use Waves mainly for the R Comp and L1. I haven't found anything that at least to my ears sounds better.  That being said. I'm still using an old package, and WILL NOT give them any more $$. They really screwed-over a local studio where I've done some tracking when one of their Macs bit the dust. They wanted the studio to pay full price to re-auhtorize the plug-ins depsite an obvious mechanical failure. The company that made the Mac even went to Waves on their behalf, but they still wouldn't budge.