Dude that's awful. I'd request to speak to someone at waves, and see if you can sussing this out. Maybe send them proof of defect/return on your mobo.

Upon first read thought maybe using a USB stick or dongle might be better, but the chances of losing it or it crapping out are probably just as much or higher than a failed Mobo.

That really annoys me, since I own well over a dozen waves licenses, and have even bought duplicates because UNLIKE most pluggin makers waves only offers a single seat per license. So my main daw, slaves, and mastering PC, each need individually purchased lincenses to use the same pluggin on each. Most pluggins allow 3 seats, some 2, and some unlimited (ozone, fabfilter).

I'm sorry to hear of your bad experience. I hope your able to get a better resolution. This is the kind of crap that causes users to abandon the entire company for life, when the product itself is otherwise just fine.

Terrible buisness move by waves.

kmetal, post: 459536, member: 37533 wrote: Dude that's awful. I'd request to speak to someone at waves, and see if you can sussing this out. Maybe send them proof of defect/return on your mobo.

Here's their exact relevant words:
"In order for me to be able to forward a second recovery request to higher management - as an exception - and possibly allow second recovery, the licenses in question must be covered by the Waves Update Plan (WUP).

Currently I see that your license is not covered.

Please make sure to renew your coverage and I will gladly forward the request."

So it's catch 22. I have to pay $170 for their "update plan" and THEN maybe they'll grant me an exception to the one-year rule. You can't make this stuff up. No wonder this Waves Diamond Bundle was on sale for $349 when I bought it. It was a ticking time bomb teaser rate. Nobody should support this company.

On a side note can anyone recommend a good mono/stereo compressor for tracking, mixing and mastering? I can live for 8 months without all of the other Waves crap in that Diamond Bundle.

That's insane. No wonder people steal waves stuff, that's not fair.

Ozone has some good compression, I loooove the fabfilter limiter, you may want to try there compressor, I havee it, but haven't messed with it much.

Hate to say it, I like the waves rennessaince and h-comp alot, bur doubt you want to put a penny more into waves.

Slate virtual buss compressors sounded good enough for me to buy, tho i have yet to install them.

Fab is great, I think there equipment and limiter are best available in general. I think I haven't used the comp enough yet, but I limiter and eq were instant gold. I love ozone too. At least they allow unlimited installs.

I would be happy enough with ozone or fab or both, without any other plugs, I could do an album.

One thing I like about the fabfilter and ozone is m/s (mid/side) capability. This is almist a must have I believe for new gen compressors. It's great for say compressong the overheads, to get a nice grab on the snare, without bringing up the cymbals too much. The mix knob should also be standard on every pluggin.

+1 for Fabfilter
No gizmo, they just do what they are ment to easy to work with, lite on the CPU...
If you do get your character and mojo from mics and preamps, you don't need all the emulations of waves

+1 for Ozone
I use it only for mastering but, you can use modules as independant plugins for tracks

The more I work with those the more I realise they're all I need. I didn't even explore the samplitude included plugins yet !
;)

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles, Doc.

kmetal, post: 459536, member: 37533 wrote: Upon first read thought maybe using a USB stick or dongle might be better, but the chances of losing it or it crapping out are probably just as much or higher than a failed Mobo.

I have the Gold Bundle, plus a few miscellaneous Waves bargain plugins. I have them installed on my laptop and my desktop and kept the license on a perfectly good USB stick to act like an iLok. Almost a year ago the USB stick stopped working (for no apparent reason) and I had to go through the license recovery process. I knew about the once a year stipulation then, so rather than walk on eggshells wondering if/when another USB stick was going to fail, I've just kept the licenses on the Waves license cloud since then. I have to go online and authorize whichever machine I'm using. That's not always convenient when field recording with the laptop, but I never use any plugins tracking anyway. If they're not activated I just have to sit there and skip all the attempts to find the licenses. If I'm mixing elsewhere with my laptop and the plugins would be relevant, I just have to make sure I've authorized the waves on the laptop before I leave the house.

When I first heard I could use a relatively inexpensive USB stick, instead of an iLok, I thought that was a great alternative and an idea long overdue. The charm wore off pretty quickly, because some of my other software does require an iLok. My laptop only has 2x USB ports so if I was going to need both of those license gizmos along with even just a basic wireless mouse I didn't have enough USB ports, so I had to take a powered external hub.

3rd party plugins are a PITA, that's for sure. Over the years I've tried to rely on them less and less, but there are still a handful I really like. Unfortunately if you're going to buy 3 or 4 a la carte, you might as well buy the whole bundle.

dvdhawk, post: 459545, member: 36047 wrote: I'm sorry to hear about your troubles, Doc.

I have the Gold Bundle, plus a few miscellaneous Waves bargain plugins. I have them installed on my laptop and my desktop and kept the license on a perfectly good USB stick to act like an iLok. Almost a year ago the USB stick stopped working (for no apparent reason) and I had to go through the license recovery process. I knew about the once a year stipulation then, so rather than walk on eggshells wondering if/when another USB stick was going to fail, I've just kept the licenses on the Waves license cloud since then. I have to go online and authorize whichever machine I'm using. That's not always convenient when field recording with the laptop, but I never use any plugins tracking anyway. If they're not activated I just have to sit there and skip all the attempts to find the licenses. If I'm mixing elsewhere with my laptop and the plugins would be relevant, I just have to make sure I've authorized the waves on the laptop before I leave the house.

When I first heard I could use a relatively inexpensive USB stick, instead of an iLok, I thought that was a great alternative and an idea long overdue. The charm wore off pretty quickly, because some of my other software does require an iLok. My laptop only has 2x USB ports so if I was going to need both of those license gizmos along with even just a basic wireless mouse I didn't have enough USB ports, so I had to take a powered external hub.

3rd party plugins are a PITA, that's for sure. Over the years I've tried to rely on them less and less, but there are still a handful I really like. Unfortunately if you're going to buy 3 or 4 a la carte, you might as well buy the whole bundle.

Sounds like I'll be sticking with the cloud since I'm not moving the studio PC's around much. I guess there is no surefire way to prevent license recovery, as it's either a dongle failure, or a Mobo/disk failure.

dvdhawk is there a way you can authorize your stuff in the feild using your mobile phone as a hotspot? Im personally the type to forget to authorize before leaving home.

kmetal, post: 459548, member: 37533 wrote: is there a way you can authorize your stuff in the feild using your mobile phone as a hotspot?

It would probably be fine in the city. Out here in the sticks where cell coverage can be spotty, I'd be afraid it would stall half way through and somehow get stuck in limbo. A simple cellphone call isn't a given around here.

I had a bad experience a few years ago updating a digital mixer's firmware over a school wifi network. The building was empty and the network worked great - right up until the time it didn't. It wasn't stable enough to get 100% through the update. It did not end well, so I'm a little gun shy about doing anything like that on an unknown network.

So when the license is on the Cloud what happens when you start up Nuendo for example? Does it look online for the license?

As an update, a Waves support person in America (not in Israel where I was snubbed by a Waves support tech) saw my post and is supposed to be getting my Waves Gold up and running again. Apparently the American support reps know how to run a business. You treat paying customer with respect. Paying customers are not pirates.

That fantastic news!!! And the way it should be, imho.

I've messed w cloud registration for izoptop, avid, waves, adobe, prolpellorhead, ilok, and ik muktimedia. They all seem to work the same at least from the user side.

You get a little app called a pluggin manager, you sign in via that, and it shows you a list of all your licenses. You check them off, and then they are assigned to the computer, one way or another.

After that you don't need to be online at all, and your licenses are recognised when you boot your daw just like a dongle, or offline registration.

When you need to move license you connect to the www, sign into the pluggin manager and uncheck the box next to the pluggin.

I'm not sure exactly how they assign the license to the computer, if it's via the Mobo or drive, and I haven't needed to make a claim yet, so I don't know his recover works.

Some of the pluggin managers also gave installers and updates built in, like Avid and Izotope, some dont, like ilok.

I like the built in installer on Izotope because everything is in one spot, orgdnized, and I don't need to even open a web browser.

Glad this turned out well for ya, this thread made me realize how much I rely on waves compression. I still think the fabfilter limiter is second to none, maybe worth still investigating. Cheers!!

Dr_Willie_OBGYN, post: 459555, member: 25832 wrote: So when the license is on the Cloud what happens when you start up Nuendo for example? Does it look online for the license?

The computer that's authorized apparently writes some local key on the drive when you transfer the cloud licenses. I don't remember having any trouble launching StudioOne on the laptop with the Waves authorized - and it's rarely (if ever) online when I'm recording with it remotely.

Ordinarily, the Waves plugins are used on my desktop machine. If I launch StudioOne on the laptop and it isn't currently tied to the licenses the Waves library tries to boot up. I'm prompted by StudioOne several times to either Locate the Licenses or Skip loading the plugins. I hit "Skip"and everything else in StudioOne works exactly as it should. If the Waves plugins are essential to the project I have to make sure I have the right computer authorized. Waves also seems to update the Waves Central app more frequently than I move the licenses around, so more often than not I have update Waves Central before I can do anything.

Related question: Is a USB Flash Key the same as a USB memory stick? Waves advised I authorize to a USB Flash Key to avoid losing the licenses in the event of another computer failure/issue.

Yes, they are the same thing. And I’m here to tell you the “USB Flash Key” can fail too.

I'll wonder if a ilok comes with any more prowess or guarantee in the event of failure, even though it's basically a USB drive, does ilok make recovery easier?

I know when I had an issue w my protools license they got a new one to me in a couple hours.

I've had an iLok for a lot longer and it's never malfunctioned. Waves does not allow you to use an iLok or I would have done that to save a USB port on the computer.