Waves is famously paranoid about copy protection, and their new non-iLok scheme is about as obtuse as they come (just where IS my local license, anyway?). That has made me uncomfortable from the get-go, fearing what kind of convoluted process I'd have to go through if, out of the blue, my license was not accepted. 

Well, tonight that's exactly what happened...I tried to bring up a project with Waves plugins in it, and it failed with a "has no license" message. I'd been working on the same project just hours ago with no problems (no reboots, no installs, no hardware changes in between). But tonight, for reasons I can only speculate, Waves has decided I have no licenses. 

They still have my money, but I have no license. Wish I could revoke my payment so easily.

So I go to waves.com for help. It says to run wlc.exe and tell I want to recover a "lost" license. wlc.exe refuses to run, insisting that I must download the V9 installer package and use the version in there. Half an hour later, after apparently copying down every product Waves sells, I am able to run wlc.exe version 9.2. It's an upgrade, I tell myself. Don't be such a pansy.

After all that, after "recovering" the licenses, they still don't load and insist there is no license. OK, maybe I didn't do the recovery right, I'll try it again. Mmm, no, I won't. Because Waves only lets you do that once per year! That's right, kids. Upgrade or repair your computer more than once a year and you're out of luck.

OK, I'll just ask Waves Support what's going on. Ah, no. Support is not available to people who just buy plugins without the WUP. 

So it's off to the forums with fingers crossed. But regardless of the outcome, I'm pretty sure I am DONE with Waves.

EDIT: Got my licenses back, had to transfer them from the cloud because it thought my local license device was empty. OK, I'm guessing longtime Waves users are thinking "everybody knows that". But I'm still done with Waves. Future purchases will be limited to vendors with email addresses.

I always wondered about clouds losing licenses and how to get them back. Sorry you had to go through this.

I don't think I could trust Waves. Thanks for sharing your story.

I'm right there beside you my friend. 

I have been dicking around with Waves support for over week, phone calls, remote connect, emails, and still no luck. I can't even insert a waves plug as it usually causes Sonar to white screen. (On both machines) The tech was able to duplicate it every time during the remote connection.

They tried to blame it on me for not having the latest Sonar build and come to find out they are using the new Sonar beta to test their stuff on. Then it was my video drivers, then it was because I was running UAC, etc... I really am fed up with them.

Today they wanted me to uninstall Sonar 8.5, X1, and X2 then reinstall X2 because they didn't think all three versions should exist on the same machine. They gave me a list of items to try that took most of my day including deleting things from the registry then reinstalling Waves with the New V9r7 installer. Still have the same problems.

My last email to support was "nothing has changed and how can I get my money back". Their reply will be interesting no doubt.

Anyway, If anything gets better I'll post it here but as it stands I have just learned an expensive lesson. Hopefully I will be able to sell some of the licenses...

the vst plugin thing, "in general," is starting to loose a lot of its luster to me.

A.  Todays DAW plugins, are nearly just as good, and just as good as the ones you can buy.  ( Really the quad curve eq, is like, "one of the best," eq's around.  Ok, well its not an LP eq, but Cakewalk provides that for you anyway in the form of the LP64.

B.  It just seems like, "the plugin market," was a very inexpensive market for a lot of these developers to enter.  They themselves, "for the most part," do not have that much of an investement in the market, and we are really beginning to see, "how detrimental that is," to the end user.

C.  We are starting to see plugins that, "reinvent the wheel," and have no real addition to mixing or mastering music, and really exist to sell themselves.

D.  There is so much out there to buy, and each time you buy something you have to learn it, you are so much better off not buying a thing.

E.  When these companies go bankrupt, and several of them inevitably will, because the market place simply can not have, "200,000," best Eq's ever..   Your plugins become absolutely useless; the combination of copy/anti-piracy protect, and lack of further updates.

Thanks for comiserating, guys. I really expected to come in this morning and have a bunch of "Waves is great" and "never gave me any problems" replies. 

Linear, you're absolutely right: as the market expands, more alternatives become available and the ensuing competition benefits consumers. Want a great reverb that's both affordable and doesn't assume you're a criminal? Valhalla! While those big bad dinosaurs are out throwing their weight around, back at the nest those crafty little mammals are eating their eggs.

As a programmer, I could not make a living if people didn't pay me for my hard work. But I am only able to make a living if I give customers something they're willing to pay for. Every coder knows that their prime directive is to make the software work. To get that first alpha up for testing, you stub in some functionality that isn't done yet, you substitute some crude graphics for the UI, but you make it work.

Copy protection, OTOH, goes against everything a coder believes in. Its only purpose is to make sure the software's default mode is to do nothing at all. Screw the customer - his sacrifice is acceptable collateral damage as long as we get paid. 

Bit
I purchased a few waves plugs on that black friday sale and while trying to install them I managed to wipe all my waves plugs off my system....

It took me a few hours of dancing to get them all back and registered and working.....

so I feel your pain and am thinking the very same thing!

Clifford

I have RenBass and Maserati.  I've purposely staid away from them because of stories like this.  I'm thinking I should get cracks for the plugs I own.

vintagevibe


I have RenBass and Maserati.  I've purposely staid away from them because of stories like this.  I'm thinking I should get cracks for the plugs I own.

people wonder why companies resort to ilok
you're probably anti ilok too 

vintagevibe


I have RenBass and Maserati.  I've purposely staid away from them because of stories like this.  I'm thinking I should get cracks for the plugs I own.

Um, I wouldn't say that's a good idea.  Cracked  plugs are way more risky than any legit Waves plug ... there are lots more stories of cracks being Trojan Horses for malware, causing instability, etc. than stories of Waves flakiness.
 
Not that Waves is perfect, but they're so popular that there's bound to be more problems being reported than with most similar products.  Yes, their CP scheme is convoluted and can cause problems for some.  Chalk that up to all the whining over iLok -- you could say that Waves was simply responding to customer demand when they dropped iLok and went to their current system.
 
Independent devs like Sean Costello (Valhalla) can afford to omit strong CP, but then again they don't have the wide range of products that Waves or other majors do.  If you're one of those who shares in the excitement over the latest plug from Waves, UAD, Slate, Softube, etc. -- you can thank strong CP for that. 
 
That being said, there are some outstanding full-range vendors who sell excellent plugins without annoying CP: 
 
NI (Softube)
FabFilter
PSP
PluginAlliance
MeldaProduction
iZotope
 
These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head ... each is top-notch in my book.  Waves ain't the only game in town ...
 
Cheers,
Eddie
 
Edit:  how could I forget iZotope?