Waves Platinum 4 DirectX

I am a recording engineer. I've owned a studio in Los Angeles for over 25 years, and I've worked on hundreds and hundreds of CDs and records.

I think the waves stuff was as good as anything for quite a while, but now I think there are better things out there for less money and from companies that haven't engendered the animosity of their client base.

I have some I use, I like the Ren package, although I don't use it anymore because of the company's attitude towards its customers. As others have stated, a good analog eq or compressor will kill this stuff sonically, it might be a good idea to consider getting a good 1176 and some API gear. You will find that if you record things properly and with a quality chain, you won't feel the need to tweak with plug ins.

I feel that maybe these plug ins might be worth the money in some situations, but not when you are dealing with a predatory company that is willing to destroy its own client base. I just mixed sound for a major concert video release, I hope you will all see it. You will recognize it because directly under my credit, you will see.. "No Waves (tm) Plug Ins Were Used In The Creation of These Mixes". I would love to see other like minded engineers and mixers do the same.

Making music for past 20 years, digital for past 5 years. (I regret going digital!)

Best thing is to do is to start with use of the presets that come with the software. The original presets are normally the best setting the software has to offer. In this case pretty poor. But otherwise easy to use, depending on your exeperience really.

The best you get out of compressors is flat toneless plastic sounding compression you get from the cheapest hardware units. EQ10 comes to use but not better than any free plugs of the Net. The rest is useless. I work in a production studio so get to use Waves plugins there in my free time. In reality they only use them on demos el'cheapo commercials etc. On production of a proper music CDs they only use these plugins for minor fixes or touch ups and that's it.
At my home studio I use free of the Net plugs which are't any worse, in many case are better.

For demos or general fun the Waves are ok, I wouldn't use them for anything serious work. Price of these plugins is a joke. How do they come up with these high prices I have no idea. You can get decent compressor and EQ for price of one bundle and your stuff will sound real. If I was gona buy Waves I wouldn't pay more then $50 and I would still think hard about it.

I've been producing music with my computer since I was 16... that is about 10 years of experience. I've been djing for about 7 years. Right now I have a PC with a MOTU audio interface, KRK monitors, Cubase, etc. I'm using the V5 of waves plugins.

The waves plugins are easy to use. The interface is very simple and graphically they are cool.

In my opinion waves plgus are very decent in terms of sound quality. There are a lot of worse options but surely you can find other better options.

Please, please, please if you are planning to buy some WAVEs plugins inform yourself about their WUP policy.

Basically when you buy a waves plugin you are buying the right for using it during one year!! After that year you must pay a fee every year if you want to reinstall the plugins, or want to update them!!

Even if you have an older version (ie V3) and want to reinstall ir on another machine you must pay all the years you havent been paying since the WUP policy went on.

I wont expand any more as I'm sure you'll find a lot of angry people out there that can inform you. Just chek the waves forum for example.

I love those plugins but the WUP has made me hate waves.

I have been writing music for over 10 years now. Extensive classical background with composistion, voice, violin, and piano.

Currently using Waves version 4.5 with Nuendo 3x.

Make electronic music that compromises between downtempo, triphop, to larger scale musical dance records.

Running an AMD64 @ 2.1 ghz with Windows XP SP2. Current DA is a MOTU 896, Dynaudio M1, Yahama NS5a w/ 8in Sunfire sub.

The interfaces of each plugin where all basic to the needs (IE not too much stuff than needed). The main problem was the ludacris technical support, 3 weeks to install, and insaine copy protection. IT was so severe a software crack had to be downloaded and installed AFTER the studio bought the plugins. After the installs finally ended up working and the tech support people came around we stuck with the more stable cracked versions. Far too many problems with copy protection concerning trying to demo other waves products.

Basicly they lost 5k in future spending with the studio I work with because of their unprofessional customer support.

The studio I work in does not condone any cracked software, but in this case paying 3k for a software package and having an illegal version work better is quite upsetting....

The sound is far than musical other than the Ren compressor. The eqs are small, and 2 dimensional, and I've heard better verbs in a guitar amp.

Bery unmusial sound and over all very much a 'rip off'.

My studio will never buy or demo any Waves product from here on out.

Never again,but if we had to do it over again only the Ren Compressor would have been bought. There are far more capable and musical sounding fx out there for thousands less. Save your money and give it to charity.

SHAME ON YOU WAVES!

my vote for worst product of the last 2 years.

I have been a performing musician for about 20 years now, and have had some form of home studio for about 15. The last 5 years has been computer based.
I run Sonar for tracking/mixing, Sound Forge for Mastering, and have many 3rd party effect plugins: Waves Platinum bundle, Waves IR1, PSP Vintage Warmer, BBE, Sonitus, etc...
Waves software has been the least "bang for buck" software with the poorest customer support, and they actually charge you fees to continue using thier software.

Warning: Many pro users are BOYCOTTING Waves. Please read the following to ensure you don't get screwed by this unethical company.
The real deal breaker is: the WUP (Waves update program) !! Check this out. When you first purchase Waves software at it's outrageous price... You don't actually own it. If your harddrive crashes one year later, and your WUP has run out, you can not re-authorized your hard disk (Waves copywrite protection). Now they don't even support disk authorization, and you have to purchase an ILoc key... Nevertheless Wave's won't even talk to you if your WUP has run out. You will have to pay a WUP fee (mine was over $300) to get your already purchased software to work.
If anything happens to your ILoc key, and your WUP has run out, you're screwed. You have to pay the WUP fee again to get a new key authorized. Even if you have your original sales receipt, and have paid several other WUP fees.
This is just unethical. BOYCOTT WAVES !!!

Average, at best. After paying for the over-hyped, over-priced Waves software, I found out about many other softwares that performed better, with better customer support, at a fraction of the price.
To name a few: PSP, Voxengo, UAD, even Sonitus free bundle (packaged with Sonar) dupes many of the Waves plugins.
You're paying for hype (surely generated by Waves themselves).

If the good Lord would allow me to go back in time, I would not waste my money on Waves software, only purchase from vendors like the ones listed above, and spend my several thousand dollars savings on packaging, website enhancements, dog food, anything but mediocre software from a dishonorable company like Waves.

I started playing guitar when I was six...:) Got my recording engineer degree in 91. My main instrument is guitar but I play percusions, keys and vocals..:)I am using Version 4. I use the plug ins with Samplitude 7 and also with Sound Forge 7 as well. The music I create is ambient world type. Very multi layered. This program has too many plug ins to try and talk about them all but I have used all kinds of plugins and in my opinion Waves is by far the best available although it is quite expensive and out of the average home recording musicians budget it is truly the best on the market. I am using a Pentium 4 2.6 GHz with 1.5 gig of ram and 240 gig of hard drive space. A pretty decent system which you will need for any serious recroding applications including Waves. I use a Delta 1010 rack unit thru a Behringer 32 channel mixer out to a Harmon Kardon amp thru to Monitor Audio speakers. If you haven't tried Monitor Audios again in my opinion they are the best speakers money can buy. I am using the Studio 6 model which retail for about $2500. Worth every penny. If you know Tannoys then you know good sound but I can honestly say these blow any Tannoys I have owned away and I love Tannoys!

These are very sophisticated plugins and in all honesty if you don't have a reasonably good understanding of recording, compressors, limiters, and various effects units the only way you will be able to use these is by using the presets which in all honesty are probably more than the average user will ever need. No problems installing, automation is supported. It is very easy to get amazing sound using these plugins presets.. the advanced user can tweek and find tune them to no end.. the ultramaxizer for mastering is amazing.

These are without a doubt some of the best sounding plugins in the world. But hey you get what you pay for.. they used to cost thousands..! fortunately like everything the price is always coming down as it is a very competitive industry. So what used to cost thousands can now be picked up for about $1600. Most of the presets are more than enough for the average user.

I as most mucicians will have a hard time justifying paying as high as $2000 for software. A disk that costs the company less than a dollar to reproduce. A musicians logical mind has a hard time spending that amount of money. But if you are involved in production then you can not be without this program. I mean that sincerely. As I said I have a recording degree and have been playing music most of my life and when it comes to creating a polished final product this software will pay for itself on your first production. Even a novice will be able to use it with amazing results and a finished product that shines. I have never had an issue with it taking up to much CPU and I have used as many as 4 effects on one track..!
The only thing I wish it had was guitar effects. I know there are a lot of people out there using pirated software because I have done so myself. I had a copy of this given to me and the person that gave it to me said take this home and use it for a while.. if you love it as much as I do go out and buy it.. hey what can I say I was broke like most musicians so I used it for a year.. then finally went out and payed for it. Hey the software is great! Buy it and support the company so they can keep the amazing extras coming and the free upgrades!