by the way my license are : 

C:\ProgramData\Waves Audio

My licenses are stored locally on the hard drive, because I had assumed that was the most efficient and reliable option. I had assumed that said licenses would be files that could be backed up and restored if necessary. I had assumed that Waves would provide instructions for doing that if I couldn't figure it out on my own. I had assumed that if all else failed, I could contact Waves for advice.

You could say that I made too many assumptions. But every one of those assumptions would have been valid for any other vendor besides Waves. 

Great..... I just bought my first waves plugs. So if I understand correctly, after 1 year I blow out a drive and I can't D/L get a free replacement from Waves? Wow. I assumed that if I paid for it I could use it forever but would have to pay an upgrade if I ever wanted the next version. That changes everything.

Thanks for the heads up. 

Nope...that's not how it works.  You can always reinstall your plugs and get new licenses if needed no matter what your scenario.  You just might have a day or three wait...maybe not even that.  Again...you can authorize to a USB stick or your computer and your licenses are kept in WAVES cloud account. If you have a catastrophic occurrence you WILL be able to restore your licenses. At least that is what they tout.  I've had one iLok go bad (before WAVES went proprietary) and I was without those plugins...WAVES included...for about four days.  And that was with iLok!!!!!  My advice would be don't over think or over worry about such things...or, conversely, don't buy the plugins. Simplze.

Linear Phase: Todays DAW plugins, are nearly just as good


Agree. 


I would love to see the DAW develop as truly being all ITB 


And include direct auto-backups/updates 'option'; with various 'users pref'; to any outboard memory device(s) of choice when closing the project.   Other options to backup/update of licences, critical user settings and Interface; drivers.   Should a catastrophic failure occur such as; hard-drive failure, Open SONAR X8 and with a simple one-click; Recovery is all that's required to get back up and ready to start where you left off. 

I've read a few horror stories about Waves over the years, and the more I read, it just strengthens my resolve to NEVER entertain the idea of installing them on my system.

Guyz let's stay calm !! lol ...

First there's thousands of people using them without a single issue !! and i'm in those ....so my goal , is to help Bit to be on our team !! 

When V9 was first droped i heard horrible stories and specualtions !!! so i updated one plugin (MPX) just to check : super easy !!

So i went Mercury ...and i don't regret (they still greedy as hell  , the last WUP update is an exemple) but i can say one thing :

1) When they drop a plugin : it works from day one and extremily rarely , there's bug in it !

2) you're investing to a brand a that was here 10 years ago and certainly be here in 10 years ..! 

3) I went waves to minimise the brands i deal with : easy maintenance and installation !!

4) They got some unique plugins , some sounds real great !!


Now back on topic : just call them , the guyz are super pro for real ...

if you haven't done one thing to the licences (not upadte , internet connection via the center or some) and it past from working to not ...some happened !! 

so try to isolate this on your system ....the communication is in trouble between your plugins and the licence ...check antivirus (maybe he thought it was a threat) , upadte of the system (maybe the licences uses a component that have been updated) , check the project (try with other project) and even your buffer ..sometime i have issue with plugins if it's crazy loaded and i lowered the latency crazy (for another project i worked with after;))) ...do you have a cleaning utility that done some wrong on your system ...ect...

My comps are not conncected to interenet unless i do upadte or need it for centers (Waves , NI ect ..) no anitvirus , firewall , no win updates ...ect ...

zo, I've never had a complaint about the quality of Waves plugins. As you note, they are as bug-free as anything out there. Plus, they offer some unique products that have no known substitutes (yet; none are so unique that other developers couldn't easily duplicate them).

My problem is with wrapping all that great solid code inside an intentionally obtuse wrapper whose sole purpose is to make sure the plugin does nothing at all unless specific but undocumented and deliberately opaque prerequisites are met. 

This is not quality systems engineering. This is creating a single point of failure that brings the entire system down. That's bad enough in itself, but then they compound the problem by obscuring functionality so that this point of failure cannot be easily circumvented without help from the vendor - which you have to pay for.

Compromising reliability like this serves one purpose only: to make sure they get paid. OK, I held up my half of the bargain and paid - now am I the only party in this agreement who's obligated to comply with the contract terms?

So last night I open an old project that had NLS and Kramer Tape, among other non wave VSTs and was informed my license was not valid...

I ran the License Center and even though it showed my plugs residing on my device(my daw) I had to send them twice from the cloud down to my daw to authorize...

Ill see tonight if its gonna be a repeat.

Are you using wavesshell or vst (i use shell2vst utility and alwayz exclude waveshells version from my plugin manager)