WAVES Frustrating, annoying day

[Howdy Doody Time]

All I want to do is have all my Waves Licences on a Thumb drive. Easy Peasy you say, just go to Waves Central and Manage Licenses.

Ages since I used it, so Password and or Username no good or long forgotten. So change password. Go to email, follow instructions, password successfully changed, and user name now known, so re-load Waves Central, enter new details, and you guessed it - Username or password no good.

Now Waves Central smells a rat and asks me for permission to fix ownership problems. So OK go fix them. This process may take a long time it says, and boy they weren't kidding. Process finally over, so sign in to make changes. Enter new login details, and yes you guessed it again details no good. Now Waves Central gives me a url to contact support. Endless waiting, and cannot connect.

Now if these guys cannot write a front end for license management and support, just how good are their plugins??

I await the inevitable torrent of "Always works well for me" to which the pre-prepared answer is "Well It Doesn't Work At All for Me" It's nearly five to eleven in the evening here and I've been trying to do this since about 1pm toady.

[Howdy Doody Time]

Boy do I feel Silly!

The second request for username and password was for my computer login details - nowt to do with Waves details.

Mind it should have made that clear, but I did wonder why it kept getting my username wrong while offering a blank line for the password It dawned on me when I finally realised the username was my computer user name, which is my name, not my Waves user name.

The licenses are as we speak winging their way to the thumb drive. If my face looks red, well it's hot here in Thailand you know

Sorry Waves!

[Drew Stephenson]

Oops!

Ah well, let he or she who has not made a similar mistake be the first to cast a stone.

[Gone To Lunch]

We have all done it, or something similar.

But at the same time, the art and science of interface design is not as well known as it should be in so many of our toys. We fail, but we are led to fail.

And as for documentation, don't get me started!

(Smoke now pouring from my ears...)

Years ago when I served time in the software industry, it was said that the person given the task of creating user documentation was always the one the development team were happiest to lose.

[zenguitar]

Well done for having the decency to say mea culpa.

Andy

[Howdy Doody Time]

Mea maxima culpa.

BUT having said that, I had licenses on different machines, and even a few on a thumb drive. I thought that putting ALL my licenses on a new thumb would solve the problem. However it hasn't quite worked like that. I can put the new thumb in my MacBook Air and I see 4 licenses. If I take it out and put it in one of my iMac's I see 90 odd licenses!

Who knows what that is about, maybe it depends on which computer you used to install and activate the licenses in the first place.

But that sort of defeats the object. Lets say I only have the iMac that sees all the licenses, and that breaks down, so I buy another one. What will the new one see?

I'm confused, but too bloody tired and busy to faff around with it any longer.

[MOF]

I’ve had similar problems in the past.
I had what I thought was an issue last night, a mate Facetimed me to ask me about Logic, I booted it up and then couldn’t launch a new song or load recent songs.
I thought it might be an issue with Facetime and quitted it only to find a Logic dialogue box telling me the previous audio interface couldn’t be found, why it didn’t appear over the Facetime screen I don’t know.

[sonics]

I can put the new thumb in my MacBook Air and I see 4 licenses. If I take it out and put it in one of my iMac's I see 90 odd licenses!

If one machine sees all the licenses on the USB drive, they must be there. You need to make sure your Waves Central versions are up to date and synchronized with the drives. Then they'll show the same licenses. Waves Central makes it easy to see where each license you own resides; on the computer, in your account or on a USB drive.

As an example, if you upgrade a plugin, Waves will add it to your account and mark the old license for removal. The first time you sync the USB drive it will remove the old license. The new license will not appear automatically on the stick; you must move it there in Waves Central. Doing so will sync the device and the new license will now appear on the USB Drive.

Hope that helps.

[Howdy Doody Time]

I can put the new thumb in my MacBook Air and I see 4 licenses. If I take it out and put it in one of my iMac's I see 90 odd licenses!

If one machine sees all the licenses on the USB drive, they must be there. You need to make sure your Waves Central versions are up to date and synchronized with the drives. Then they'll show the same licenses. Waves Central makes it easy to see where each license you own resides; on the computer, in your account or on a USB drive.

As an example, if you upgrade a plugin, Waves will add it to your account and mark the old license for removal. The first time you sync the USB drive it will remove the old license. The new license will not appear automatically on the stick; you must move it there in Waves Central. Doing so will sync the device and the new license will now appear on the USB Drive.

Hope that helps.

Hang on, are you saying that my thumb drive with all the licenses, has to be synced with whatever other computer I plug it into, in order to see the licenses are ok to use on the different computer, and that involves updating/downloading Waves Central? I would have thought possession of the thumb drive is evidence that the licenses are assigned to me no matter what computer I'm using.

[Howdy Doody Time]

OK I just tried downloading the latest Waves Central and running it on the MBP 2015 vintage. (The iMacs are 2011) with the Thumb Drive connected.

All of the plugins show blank screens when selected. Some of them crash Reason 12 effectively crashing the MBP as you can't get out of the Reason Screen.

I just put the Thumb Drive back into my MBP 2019 machine, and all the licenses are back, with visible control screens, and they appear to be working.

So effectively the licenses on a thumb drive appear to be tied exclusively to one machine - but maybe they are tied to any Mac machine later than 2015 (see below) I have no way of knowing.

One of the reasons I wanted the licenses portable was so I could see what is causing the disappearing control screens on waves plugins, rendering them useless. I had read that pre 2015 Mac machines have a graphics card that can't handle the "metal" using plugins. They all work on a 2019 machine and none of them work on 2011 machines and none on my early 2015 machine either.

Well that does it finally for me with my perfectly serviceable Mac Machines of 2015 and earlier as far as music apps are concerned, at least those that use Waves Plugins. I will have to assign other porpoises to them, or put them on the dust shelf.

[sonics]

So effectively the licenses on a thumb drive appear to be tied exclusively to one machine - but maybe they are tied to any Mac machine later than 2015 (see below) I have no way of knowing.

If the licenses are on the thumb drive then they are not on any machine, it's that simple. Waves Central will show you their location.

You appear to be having version problems. If you run the last compatible versions, the licenses should work. For example, a V14 license will give you access to earlier versions. Sometimes a clean-up and reinstall is required.

[Howdy Doody Time]

So effectively the licenses on a thumb drive appear to be tied exclusively to one machine - but maybe they are tied to any Mac machine later than 2015 (see below) I have no way of knowing.

If the licenses are on the thumb drive then they are not on any machine, it's that simple. Waves Central will show you their location.

You appear to be having version problems. If you run the last compatible versions, the licenses should work. For example, a V14 license will give you access to earlier versions. Sometimes a clean-up and reinstall is required.

"If you run the last compatible versions, the licenses should work. For example, a V14 license will give you access to earlier versions. Sometimes a clean-up and reinstall is required"

It's a mess. How can I use a V14 license when I bought V9, 10, 11 and 12? Do I have to pay for an upgrade? My upgrades have all expired so I imagine cash needs to change hands. I think I'll respectfully decline.

At least some things have been straightened out in my mind though, mainly to do with built in obsolescence (and pauperish SSD capacity) of Macs, and the effect of that on third party offerings. While I'm impressed with the M series Mac specs I'm hamstrung by the 4 Ports on the 2019 MBP so 2 on the Mini is out of the question. I still own a 16 year old Sony Vaio that actually runs modern music apps like Nuendo 12, cubase 12, Reason 12, Harrison Mixbus 8 and all plugins. It's bit slow but it makes me want to seriously consider a complete move back to
PCs. I'm looking at the market now.

[sonics]

It's a mess. How can I use a V14 license when I bought V9, 10, 11 and 12? Do I have to pay for an upgrade? My upgrades have all expired so I imagine cash needs to change hands. I think I'll respectfully decline.

Of course an upgrade will cost you money. That's how Waves works. Just read the website.
Why not just use the latest version you own a license for. If anything, the compatibility issues would then be with running newer versions.

It's not a Mac/PC thing. Licencing issues will not go away if you move to a PC
You need to just get clear what plugins you own and if there are any issues on any machine.

If it all seems like too much bother, you better move to other plugins; many people have and hate Waves forever now.

[Howdy Doody Time]

Yeah, I can see how I disconnected you Sonics. The Mac thing became relevant when I needed to get the latest version of Waves Central but was informed by the installer that I first had to upgrade to Monterey. Well that instantly ruled out all pre 2015 machines because my 2015 MBP can't deal with Monterey. So I tried to upgrade to Monterey on my 2019 MBP. Not enough disk space. Undeterred I began throwing out non essentials, but still not enough space. At that point I gave up.

I have 2 Radar Studio Units running Windows 8. They run Nuendo plus waves no problem.

So you can see now why the Mac v PC thing became very relevant to me. It got me asking myself why I bother with Mac, and the answer has always been that I have six of them and I'm too invested to switch. However that is becoming less and less relevant since I just effectively lost five of them for music apps while my PC's (I have 4 including the two Radars) carry on regardless.

Nobody can tell me that the Apple Business Model across the entire range of their products is not focussed on short life span then obsolescence, As I have seen lately it is indirect as well as direct. How many iPhones do people accumulate? and iWatches? and in my case iMacs, MBAirs, MBPs?

I love my old studio equipment, I'm running a Digidesign 003 console as a midi control surface (mind you I also have x-touch but strictly for x32 Rack) I still use MOTU 896HD and Focusrite Saffire- all firewire devices. I run firewire and USB simultaneously on one machine. Apple Mac rails against this behaviour, while PC embraces it.

[sonics]

Thanks for the explanation. If you're trying to run ten computers of various generations then you should expect to have to do a lot of work in maintaining them, and accept that there will be a point at which no further upgrades will be possible. I had some good old computers and Firewire interfaces that have all been put aside for two good new systems. I am very happy to be spending less time as a computer tech and more time engineering. If you simplify you will get more work done!

The point with Waves is that you can simply continue to run the older versions on the older computers and they should work fine. Was there a reason you're not happy to do that? It's also a serious point that you might want to consider other software companies with a different licensing policy. There's lots of choice!

Good luck.