If you do audio recording in a DAW, you know about Waves. The company makes plugins used by lots of amateur and pro engineers alike. I think I have about 5 or 6 plugins made by Waves. But I won’t be buying any more.
Waves has been playing a game with their Mac users, where with each new Mac OS that comes out, they ask you upgrade your plugins. Which costs MONEY. I used Melodyne – it’s a great plugin, and it’ll pretty much work with anything, but I will often purchase an upgrade because they make radical improvements to their product. I have a collection of synth plugins that worked in the past and still work today.
Not so with Waves. Oh, you upgraded your operating system? Guess what? Your Waves plugins don’t work any more. Pay for the upgrade, sucker. And get ready to do it again and again…
…unless you’re a Windows user. Microsoft doesn’t update their OS as frequently, so Waves can’t bilk you out of your money as often.
Add on top of that the ridiculous copy-protection scheme where you have to authorize the plugins to run over the Internet, and I’m done. There are other plugins out there that do the same thing where they don’t try to squeeze more money out of me every year. Sadly Melodyne does the same shitty online software registration thing. Happily, Apple doesn’t. And if you buy Logic Pro once, it’ll be a loooooong time before you have to pay for upgrades or for a new version.
