New Waves Update Plan Terms

[PieBerger]

WUP is the equivalent of paying for maintenance and support which is common for most business software.

Which ordinarily is a good thing, but no other company AFAIK charges existing license owners more to renew/maintain the license than to buy a new one, nor are they gatekeeping license transfers behind extortionate maintenance fees. My FabFilter bundle is NFR but had I bought the regular commercial license, it would only cost 9e to transfer the entire bundle (license) to a new user. Despite having a similar RRP value, Waves want $150 for the same privilege. The Gold bundle has been on sale for as little as $99, how can Waves justify charging me 50% more than the sale price for maintenance (and the ability to transfer me license) when FF are giving me a 65% discount on upgrades for my continued support... They're not bad for wanting revenue to keep afloat, they're bad for going about it in the worst possible way by locking in customers with an utterly ridiculous licensing policy. I would gladly pay a sensible fee, say $25, to be able to transfer my license to someone else. Given that Gold regularly goes on sale for peanuts and that mine is only a v9 license, I probably wouldn't even ask for more than the hypothetical $25 fee (27 to cover PP fees if needed) just to be rid of it.

[morelia]

no other company AFAIK charges existing license owners more to renew/maintain the license than to buy a new one

Nailed it

[rewrite history]

I wonder if owners of Fabfilters Q2 complained when Q3 came out and it wasn't a free upgrade?

I believe they had to pay around $99 for just ONE plugin? Talk about siphoning their customers wallets. Let's try to put things in perspective, Waves Gold bundles includes more then 40 plugins, which equates to a few dollars per plugin.

[Robert Randolph]

I wonder if owners of Fabfilters Q2 complained when Q3 came out and it wasn't a free upgrade?

I believe they had to pay around $99 for just ONE plugin? Talk about siphoning their customers wallets. Let's try to put things in perspective, Waves Gold bundles includes more then 40 plugins, which equates to a few dollars per plugin.

Except waves charges more for updates than the plugins cost to begin with, AND they block selling you license if your WUP isnt active.

Fabfilter doesnt do things like that.

[plexuss]

And look at and work with waves gold plugins compared to FabFilter. No comparison - fabfilter's are top notch and innovative. waves are old tech.

[rewrite history]

Except waves charges more for updates than the plugins cost to begin with, AND they block selling you license if your WUP isnt active.

Fabfilter doesnt do things like that.

They don't "charge more for updates then the plugins cost to begin with". Are you talking about $29 sale prices as your base figure? We're talking the actual retail prices here.

Fabfilter is now 40% off on all their plugins, try buying one at that price, and then try reselling it for the original price. I think companies are wise to that sort of buying and selling tactic, it's just not smart business for anyone.

Because now everyone that owns Q3 won't be able to get more then $100 bucks for something they recently spent $179 for. So your deflation is built in, instead of a transfer fee.

People buying things on sale and trying to resell them at the original price, while expecting not to take a huge hit on the transfer fee is plain naive. This is the software business, software doesn't have a huge resell value to begin with. Moral of the story, don't buy what you don't need and don't expect to get back anything close to what you paid for it.

It's almost like buying a new car and driving it off the lot, you're already a couple grand down in depreciation value. That's just how the business world works, we don't make the rules, we just have our eyes wide open when buying the next time.

Impulse purchases are a symptom of GAS, that is the bigger issue here when you dig deeper.

[rewrite history]

And look at and work with waves gold plugins compared to FabFilter. No comparison - fabfilter's are top notch and innovative. waves are old tech.

Not everyone is impressed by a fancy GUI and hype.

[plexuss]

And look at and work with waves gold plugins compared to FabFilter. No comparison - fabfilter's are top notch and innovative. waves are old tech.

Not everyone is impressed by a fancy GUI and hype.

I was referring to sound quality. Dont be so self centred and presumptuous.

[rewrite history]

And look at and work with waves gold plugins compared to FabFilter. No comparison - fabfilter's are top notch and innovative. waves are old tech.

Not everyone is impressed by a fancy GUI and hype.

I was referring to sound quality. Dont be so self centred and presumptuous.

There's no "sound" that Q3 can do that a dozen other plugins can't already do.

Placebo is a very dangerous drug.

[imrae]

I wonder if owners of Fabfilters Q2 complained when Q3 came out and it wasn't a free upgrade?

Not a good comparison, Pro Q3 was a feature upgrade wheras Waves updates are generally maintenance releases.

[plexuss]

There's no "sound" that Q3 can do that a dozen other plugins can't already do.

Placebo is a very dangerous drug.

You must make some amazing sounding music. I'd love to hear it. Can you share a link? I am always looking to learn more from more knowledgable people.

[vurt]

Placebo is a very dangerous drug.

not really.
if you've got a niggle, it might help.
if you've got diabetes, then its probably insulin youd want and not a placebo.
but the placebo itself isn't the danger, just knowing when a placebo is appropriate and when to actually medicate.
kinda shit they teach at med school

[PieBerger]

I wonder if owners of Fabfilters Q2 complained when Q3 came out and it wasn't a free upgrade?

I believe they had to pay around $99 for just ONE plugin? Talk about siphoning their customers wallets. Let's try to put things in perspective, Waves Gold bundles includes more then 40 plugins, which equates to a few dollars per plugin.

No one complained because there was no reason to, it was a completely optional upgrade that added a bunch of new features that justified it's price tag. No user was forced to pay the upgrade just to become eligible to transfer their license either. As an Everything Bundle owner, I paid about £40 for it and as a result, I didn't have to spend $69/99 or £200 on Waves F6 or Sonnox Dynamic EQ respectively, to have dynamic EQ capability in my toolbox. More plugins doesn't equal better bundle out of the 40 or so plugins in the bundle I probably used less than quarter of them. Gold is bloated af, why use multiple compressor plugins from the Gold bundle when I can use Pro-C 2 and have multiple flavours included in a single, intuitive interface. I don't need a regular parametric EQ and a separate dynamic EQ because Pro-Q 3 does both. Waves and other companies (I'm looking at you NI) bloat their bundles to get the plugin count up, to make it easier for their marketing department to sell; "40 plugins RRP 1million dollars, sale price tuppence ha'ppeny, such value, wow". It's a really cheap trick to try and overhype the value and by extension the perceived quality of a product/group of products. FF products carry a heavier price tag but they are also more feature rich and cover more ground in a single product than their Waves counterparts. They are incredibly versatile, take Saturn for example. On the face of it a simple colouring tool and in can be just that, but it can also be used as an amp sim, or transient processor, a creative sound mangling tool or even a basic channel strip with drive/colour, compression and EQ. It's not just a colouring plugin and it's comparatively high price tag reflects that.

[Greenstorm33]

Are you talking about $29 sale prices as your base figure? We're talking the actual retail prices here.

Nobody who's been paying any attention for the past few years bothers to talk about Waves' actual retail prices except as they relate to the ridiculous WUP prices, which is the only place they're actually relevant.

[rewrite history]

There's no "sound" that Q3 can do that a dozen other plugins can't already do.

Placebo is a very dangerous drug.

You must make some amazing sounding music. I'd love to hear it. Can you share a link? I am always looking to learn more from more knowledgable people.

Just turn on the radio, Spotify or whatever music broadcasting system you can think of. Guess what you'll hear? That's right, Waves plugins.

Doesn't anyone else find it funny how the industry standard and leader in the audio world, and has been for DECADES, is in question for "sound quality" by a forum user here? Every professional studio around the world has Waves plugins for a reason. They've also released countless hit records that are more then the proof you need.

Anyways, enough time wasted on peoples' personal vendettas against a company's policies that are clearly documented and should be visited before purchasing anything.