Waves Audio Plugins

[Vangele Ioannidis]

Irun Studio One 5.x with 100+ plugins on Windows 10. Mainly use Waves, SoundToys, Plugin Alliance, and Fab Filter EQ. Everything was working great and then one day it all stops. Loading projects that normally took seconds to load started taking 20+ minutes always getting stuck at loading the plugins. Each plugin took minutes. Waves plugins seemed to be the worst but Plugin Alliance was also slow.

Simplified explanation: Waves and other plugin manufactures use your hardware configuration to build a unique key for your computer to keep track of the license. Every time you use the plugin they take a hardware inventory to makes sure the license is on the right computer. My guess is this SD card reader issue was causing that hardware inventory process to fail. This is not an issue with the DAW so this issue/solution is not unique to Studio One and should work on other DAWs.

I should also note that if you are having the slow loading plugins issue, because of the hardware inventory process, it could be another piece of USB or other hardware and if it is not the SD reader you should systematically remove/add other hardware to see if that is the issue.

I am having the same problems with Waves plugins and multiple DAWs. I am not using an SD card. I have the latest version of Studio One and Reason and Pro Tools. FOr example RVERB took over 21 seconds to load. Waves please help us with this.

Thats a good tip that tends to help with some issues that are related to upgraded plugins trying to read older data. Additionally, a cache delete & rebuild is sometimes handy in the case of AudioUnit issues.

After delete the Waves server and restart my PC, i have the same problem. The plugins from waves load for so much time. Some times it will be good and sometimes it load and load and load.

I work with Sequoia 15 and Cubase 11 - the same problem.

I also have the problem and tried several reinstalls.

Probably I missed something in the manual uninstall process.

Can you please share what exactly you did during uninstalling?

Which folders etc. do I have to uninstall?

Did you have to delete registry entries?

At the moment all my waves plugins are useless.

If you are still struggling to get your Waves products to load please contact directly our Tech support team who will be able to solve any Waves-related issues and hopefully save you time and trouble.

Welcome to the Waves Forum.

I think Tech Support emails might be going to your spam box or junk mail. I can confirm a reply with all the relevant information to the issue you have raised was already sent some time ago(9 May).

Please check to see if you have such mail, I have also made sure support will try and reach you again to provide all information.

Do note that AMD Ryzen 9 5900x 12 core processor is not officially supported with Waves software. and it is also worth mentioning that Smaplitude X3 was only supported with Waves V10 so if you are trying to run V14 on this system it might explain the crashing issues you mention.

I discovered that the Waves folder on my PC was taking up almost 10GB of space on my system drive. Seems that they accumulate a lot of stuff here. Strangely enough, I found it at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves".

i use the WinDirStat app periodically to find folders that are "heavy" - Waves, and a number of products including Slate, any number of virtual instruments etc often install some large libraries and supporting files into the ProgramFiles and Documents folders as well as Program Files folders. i think at this point i have about 30 links to move this stuff off my C:/ drive on onto my contents drive.

I was surprised that I never noticed this big chunk hiding in the 32-bit "C:\Program Files (x86)" path before. Must have assumed that all of my recent additions to Program Files would be in the 64-bit path. Oh well, lesson learned. Just thought I would share.

I have only a handful of Waves products, but there is only 71 MB in my \program files (x86)\waves folder. That includes old install bundles going back to 2015 (IIRC, the year Waves first offered a non-iLok option, and consequently the year I bought my first Waves product). The plugins themselves are typically half a megabyte in size, and though I don't follow Waves anymore I'm pretty sure their catalog hasn't expanded to 20,000 plugins.

Basically all of the resources that make the Waves plugins tick, for every Waves version I have ever had installed. Except for the Waveshell VST and VST3 files, which are where you would expect them to be, in their respective plugin paths.

Band in a Box can be another offender, although you have more choioces. Even though you tell the installer to install the RealTracks and RealDrums content elsewhere, if you take the default for the main BB folder, it goes onto (C:). I assumed that would only be the program and resources folders, but it was about another 20GB on my system with the UltraPak version.

And they will stay that way, as I do not want to bork up my Waves installs. I think that overall the Waves plugin architecture is a delicate train wreck in motion, and I don't care to upset the balance by deleting anything. Waves can kiss my a**, but I do intend to keep using the plugins that I have bought.

Have you tried changing the sample libraries data folder location in Waves Central setup? I moved the location to another drive on my Dell e6420 using an adapter that replaces the DVD drive with a hard drive. Moving them freed up a little over 46GB of space on the system drive. I've never had any serious problems with Waves, and they're a lot easier to manage than some other vendor's plugins. The important thing to remember is not to manually move around files without understanding the consequences.

As I like the concept of using Linux-based Plugin servers especially for live audio, I wonder why there are not more SoundGrid compatible plugins out there? Has anyone around here ever heard more details about the requirements to release a SoundGrid plugin or has some technical details he or she is allowed to share? Especially, could a JUCE-Based plugin be ported to SoundGrid? I expect some differences, as the GUI will most probably be rendered on the computer running MultiRack while audio is processed on the SoundGrid Server?

Hi!

There are 3 plug-in manufacturers who released their support for WPAPI (Waves Public API) /SoundGrid, including Plug-in Alliance, Flux and Sonnox. And there are a couple more on the way.

If you are interested in joining Waves Third Party Plug-in Program feel free to contact me directly. da...@waves.com

Thanks

Dave

Waves Audio Ltd. is an Israeli developer and supplier of professional digital audio signal processing technologies and audio effects, used in recording, mixing, mastering, post production, broadcast, and live sound. The company's corporate headquarters and main development facilities are located in Tel Aviv, with additional offices in the United States, China, and Taiwan, and development centers in India and Ukraine. In 2011, Waves won a Technical Grammy Award.[1][2]

Waves' L1 Ultramaximizer, released in 1994, became a prominent plugin, with some publications pointing to it as contributing to the "loudness war" behind modern music mastering.[6] Record producer Tony Maserati said of early Waves software, "[they] were the only plugins [that were] quality and they were creative."[3] Waves later launched a signature line of Maserati inspired plugins.

Waves launched the Waves Signature Series working with music producers and engineers to explore their unique sounds. In 2009, as part of the Signature Series, Waves released the Eddie Kramer Signature Series of five plug-ins focusing on classic rock.[7] The Chris Lord-Alge Signature Series followed in 2010.[8] The Waves Signature Series continued in 2013 with the Manny Marroquin Signature Series.[9] In 2015, Waves worked with music producer Butch Vig to release the Butch Vig Vocals plug-in as part of the Waves Signature Series.[10]

In 2018, Waves released the Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain as part of their Abbey Road collection.[11] The chain is modeled after the EMI TG12345 consoles used in the Abbey Road Studios mastering suites.[11]

On March 26, 2023, in a controversial move, Waves introduced their subscription service, Waves Creative Access, while removing the Waves Update Plan as well as the sale of perpetual licenses.[12] They re-introduced Waves Update Plan three days later, as well as perpetual licenses.[13]

Waves Audio sells over 200 software products dedicated to music production, engineering, mixing, and mastering, in addition to a variety of virtual instruments and effects.[14] Notable software includes:

Waves has launched plug-ins in collaboration with Abbey Road Studios, such as the King's Microphones plug-in released in 2011,[17] the REDD Console plug-ins released in 2012,[18] the J37 tape saturation plug-in, the Abbey Road Reverb Plates plugin, the RS56 Passive EQ plug-in released in 2013,[19][20] and the EMI TG12345 plug-in released in 2014.[21] Other software includes the Torque drum tone shifter plug-in.[22]

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