Anyone Use Waves Native Gold w/ G4 dual 500?

[SHC]

I've seen several threads discussing problems w/the Native Gold which I'm thinking of getting for my G4 w/dual 500's. Just wondering if anyone has had any success/problems with a similar configuration. Also what type of dongle does Native Gold use? Thanks.

[Conscious Structure]

Waves no longer requires a dongle if you're using version 3.0.

[ThomCat]

I use the Waves Native Gold bundle with a DP 500 G4. At first I had a lot of freezes and crashes, which was very frustrating because once you experience how much these plugins can improve your individual tracks and mixes you'll put up with any amount of technical snafus rather than do without. When I upgraded from OS 9.04 to 9.1 all of these problems magically went away. I also am using Logic Platinum and a Digi 001.

If you can, authorize and keep your Waves stuff on an external HD so that you can move them from platform to platform. If you put them on an internal HD you're stuck there.

You'll be glad you got the DP500, as you'll need the horsepower, because I find that I always add +L1 and C4 to the output bus for every project, and both are CPU cycle hogs (C'mon OS X!).

'Cat

[usinare]

i use the gold bundle v3.0 and its very good.
some of the waves plugins uses a lot of cpu power like c4.

[SHC]

Thomcat - how much space does Waves eat up on your HD? I have a 15.5 Project X external Glyph HD partioned in half which I hate to use for anything but recorded audio. My internal Hd is devoted solely to music apps. You still think it's better to use the external HD? Also, how did you obtain the 9.1 upgrade? I can't seem to download it and if you order it, it takes several weeks and with OS X hopefully due out next month I don't know if it makes sense. Thanks.

[ThomCat]

How much space? Hmmm. I'll have to check and get back to you (I'm at "work"). It seemed to be pretty small...so small it wasn't an issue, but then everything's relative and my system drive is 30G.

I downloaded the Waves demos first which didn't take all that long on a 56K modem, and they are basically the same physical size as those on the CD; they are fully working demos that sunset at 14 days, so you could check their site and find out how large it is.

If you don't plan to use Waves anywhere but on your main computer where you put it becomes a non-issue, because then you can put it on the system drive or any internal drive. I finally relented and did just that, so I hope I don't regret it if I try to go mobile at some point. My understanding is that moving Waves to another drive at a later date is possible, but frowned upon by them...they may even charge you a fee for a new challenge/response for the new drive, I really don't know. Since drives occasionally die there has to be some framework in place for that one would think.

I dowloaded 9.1 from Apple in a couple of evenings thru that same 56K modem without incident. The whole thing is about 70 MB and Apple divides it into 15 parts of about 4.6 MB each. Each of those took about 25 minutes or so to download, but from there the upgrade is very transparent and takes about 20 minutes with little effort. Being that large you can assume that there is some serious bug-fixing going on, since there are few new features of note; and that is borne out by the fact that it seems super stable compared to 9.04, at least in my various setups.

I think it is worth the effort for that reason alone. I get the feeling that 9.04 was a rush job to coincide with the release of some piece of hardware, and 9.1 is the relaxed, fully tested update that fixes all of the things they had to cram into 9.04...kind of like the difference between "breaking" news and Meet the Press.

Remember that OS X is still largely an unknown quantity and it will be a while before most of our apps are carbonized; plus there will be a period of bugginess (?) before anyone really knows how well it will work. There is a recent post from a poor soul who lost all audio after upgrading to 9.1, but reinstalling 9.04 from the bundled CD should return things to normal were that to occur to you.

I suggest dowloading the Waves demos, but only after you have 9.1 working OK.