lfm
bladetragic
Also, there are very inexpensive offerings available from smaller companies that are sometimes just as good or better than what the more "mainstream" companies like Slate and Waves are offering. You may want to have a look at those as well.
And smaller companies also go bankrupt - and there you are and no way to authorize what you once bought.
Kjaerhus Audio is one I come to think of.
But buying from smaller vendors always look for what kind of authorization there is. If general serial you are probably ok - so not having challenge/response type where tied to computer is good advice.
Plus you don't have to lock yourself into a subscription or deal w/ the WUP plan that many people seem to despise.
You are not in any way locked by Waves Update Plan(WUP). You have gotten all updates with fixes etc without active WUP. All v9.x updates are free. My first Waves bundle Gold was extended with Vitamin plugin while in WUP - so that was for free - and that needed WUP to get that license as well. But not requirement to use the rest of Gold bundle.
You are not denied support because you are not in WUP - they helped in every way since I left WUP late 2014. And if having large investment in Waves - max amount is $300 to activate it again(and same amount you get as vouchers to buy discounts on plugins). So having $1500 investment like me, $300 to get version updates if needed is coffee money. And it's not until v10.x of Waves that you actually must activate WUP getting updates. And every plugin you buy is automatically on one year WUP.
It's somewhat outdated view on Waves you told about. Cakewalk subscriptions are in fact more locking you in than WUP do - no bug fixes or updates once stop paying for Sonar rolling updates.
I never said your are locked in to Waves. That was referring to the Slate subscription. That is why I said
"OR" deal with WUP which many seem to despise. And many do complain about it. I was simply offering an alternative that he may not have known about or explored.