Waves Adds the Doubler

[Waves Customer Support]

Hi Ducky,

You are right about the type-o listing Doubler as a WUP bonus plugin for Diamond. Doubler has always been part of the Diamond bundle. This has been corrected in my original post at this time.

I hope despite this my posting was still helpful to most.

[JFreak]

Quoting "Tim Holbert of the Waves Customer Support":

Any bonus plugins added under the Waves Update Plan are covered by the base product's WUP (Platinum, etc). Bonus plugins do not increase your total Waves Update Plan coverage.

So, just to clarify, have I understood this correctly:

- I have Gold+RennMAXX bundle registered in my Waves Account
- I also have Musicians bundle registered in my Waves Account
- I also have IR-L, Tune-L and Doubler freebies as separate entries in my Waves Account

Does this mean that even despite separate listings I will get WUP for the freebies whenever I might choose to re-wup my Gold+RennMAXX bundle? Is it so that if I never specifically WUP those freebies, I will continue to have active WUP for them through active WUP of Gold+RennMAXX bundle? Is it so that if I never re-wup my Musicians Bundle, I will have active WUP for Doubler through the Gold+RennMAXX bundle that now includes the Doubler? Can I face situation where for example WUP of IR-L entry runs out and I could not download new impulse responses even though I would have active WUP in the main bundle?

To repeat myself: you need to clarify these things, it is too confusing for the customer. I'm hoping you'd release V6 bundles that already have those freebies included, so the V6 bundle license would simply authorize all plugs you have included as freebies in addition to the original plugs of the V5 bundle. The customer (me) wants simplicity! One license to authorise everything that is listed in the bundle. In other words, if I have a license for a Gold+RennMAXX bundle and you add plugin X to the Gold bundle, I should be able to get it automatically authorised due to the Gold+RennMAXX bundle license in my iLok. I should not have to register the additional plugin X separately and get separate authorisation for it -- the plugin itself should know that it is ok to instantiate when the it sees Gold+RennMAXX license on the iLok. Simplicity, please. Is it so much to ask for?

And while I'm arguing about this with you, I have one more thing to say. It's about iLok compatibility. WHY on earth you cannot play fair with the iLok system and features it offers? Is it so hard for you to let others (iLok) administer licenses even though they have a great track record of doing so with oh so many other companies. Your customers have also got used to what iLok offers and will expect you to act like all others regarding licenses; now that you do not offer challenge-response authorisationsa anymore, you do not have a single excuse for your license policy. Just do it like others do and let iLok handle licenses, including transferring licenses between iLok keys no matter whose keys are in question. For example, I could give my Musicians Bundle for a friend if it would cost $25, but there's no reason to give it away should I have to pay you $125 for a transfer of ownership as the bundle itself costs only a little bit more. This behavior is not getting you any more new customers, but it is only denoting charity.

[Ducky]

J... I know that you very well know the answers to all those questions:
1. Waves wants you to WUP your product for EVERYTHING you do with it.
a. A common license for the full bundle means people not currently on WUP would gain a benefit with added plugins.
b. If you could transfer ownership through ilok.com, Waves couldn't charge that Transfer of Ownership fee AND WUP you (since the product must be current to sell your product).

In other words, you own nothing but the right to use the product for the time that it is compatable with your platform. You Play, You Pay is Waves' motto. And they are the only ones in this product line that treats their customers so poorly.

Just imagine if your still disk authorized! You're entire Waves Investment is dependent on that drive working. When it fails, you are out major bucks to get it onto an ilok becuase you will need a current WUP. And if the ilok fails? again, major reWUP catch up bucks. Customers are on the loosing side of this deal no matter what, unless you support "The Dark Side" (which is the lesser of two evils anyway?).

"Life's to short for ==>> WUP!!!"

[JFreak]

J... I know that you very well know the answers to all those questions:
1. Waves wants you to WUP your product for EVERYTHING you do with it.

Waves seems to be on their way to changing their policies, so let's give them an opportunity to do so. I am eager to hear the official answer to my (valid) questions. Many of us love their products and hate their policies, but as we all know, any decent company tries hard to change anything their customers dislike, and given their products are great, I want to consider Waves to be at least a "decent" company. Should there be more common sense in their policies, I would immediately consider upgrading to Platinum.

If they say something is included in a bundle, I'm going to take their word for it. Yes, currently WUP sucks, but as they have changed their rules before, there is hope they will change them again and for the better.

Come on, Waves...

[Waves Customer Support]

Hi JFreak,

Yes the bonus plugins' WUP is directly linked to the base product's (Gold+RenMaxx in your case) WUP. In other words, renewing your Gold+RenMaxx would also renew the WUP for the IRL, TuneLT, and Doubler if they were enabled in the account as bonus plugins for that base product.

So as long as your WUP is current on the base product then it is also current on the bonus plugins as well. This gives you access to www.acoustics.net for IRL, Waves Tech Support, special promotions, updates, etc for all of them.

Regarding Waves and iLok, we developed our iLok authorization delivery system back when most companies were still using license cards for authorization. With that being said, we are and have been working on improving our iLok.com support. However due to the size of our product line and how it works this posses challenges for both Waves and Pace. Hopefully I will have a more definite answer on this in the near future.

Again if you have any additional questions, feel free to contact us direct at 865-909-9200 x2.

[dramsenik]

Thanks for your input and explanation Waves Customer Support

[globaleric]

I can confirm that the WUP policy on the free plugins has recently changed for the benefit of the customer!

See the Doubler related thread I've started on the Waves Forum

It's pretty hard to believe, as last December the Waves statements were still quite different regarding this "free" plugin WUP issue.

Well, kudos to Waves for this change of mind.
And lucky me I didn't extend the IR-L WUP while I still would have been able to do so...

[JFreak]

Quoting Waves Customer Support:

Yes the bonus plugins' WUP is directly linked to the base product's (Gold+RenMaxx in your case) WUP. In other words, renewing your Gold+RenMaxx would also renew the WUP for the IRL, TuneLT, and Doubler if they were enabled in the account as bonus plugins for that base product.

So as long as your WUP is current on the base product then it is also current on the bonus plugins as well. This gives you access to www.acoustics.net for IRL, Waves Tech Support, special promotions, updates, etc for all of them.

Thank you for your answer, and thank you for changing your WUP policy for the better. This is how the policy should have been in the first place!

Regarding Waves and iLok, we developed our iLok authorization delivery system back when most companies were still using license cards for authorization. With that being said, we are and have been working on improving our iLok.com support. However due to the size of our product line and how it works this posses challenges for both Waves and Pace. Hopefully I will have a more definite answer on this in the near future.

I certainly understand your situation and do not expect authorization processes to change between major version releases; however, size of your product is not a valid excuse for keeping V6 authorization like it was with V5, as it is not that great a challenge as it seems. Your customer has a license in an iLok key, and your product will have to look for that license. It's that simple.

For example, in my case, my iLok key would have "Waves Musicians Native" and "Waves Gold+RennMAXX Native" licenses, as those are the base products that I have purchased. (Actually, I initially purchased "Waves RennMAXX Native", but updated that to "Waves Gold+RennMAXX Native", which is something that iLok system is able to do as you must know. Anyway, license-wise the situation would be simple.) Should I want to give away my Musicians Bundle, I could do so by paying iLok the $25 fee, and should it cost that much, I would actually be giving the bundle away. So, to summarize, my iLok would only show the base products that I have bought, not caring about what plugins are included in the bundle. I have bought bundle licenses and you are free to add another plugins under those licenses without changing the licenses in any way. In the users' perspective, they are licenses and nothing more.

And then, your side of the story. In your case, the plugin you release should be able to look for one of the many possible licenses (individual plug, bundle A, bundle B, bundle C...) and not just one license of an individual plugin. That's what you have to do when your product can be sold many different ways. It is the _plugin_ that should know which licenses are allowed to authorize it, so if a plugin is added to some bundle, you just release updated plugin installer and let the license holders install the updated plugin -- say, you decide to add L3 multimaximizer to the Masters and Platinum bundles, then the holders of Masters or Platinum bundle license would download and install updated L3 multimaximizer plugin and when used, the L3 plugin would authorize when it sees the licnese of a Masters or Platinum bundle. THAT would be a process every user would understand, as the changed authorization behavior would definetely be "update" for the plugin, especially in the Masters or Platinum bundle license hoders' point of view, while holders of Diamond bundle plugin would naturally not have to update if the only change is about accepting Masters and Platinum license for authorization.

(Another option would be delivering different plugin installer for individual plugin license holder and bundle license holder; that would be more complicated for you, but you could easily hide that behind your web site. You do realize that "My Waves Account" knows what plugins I want to install, and you could very well create custom download links on the fly. It's very easy to do, really, so you have plenty of options too.)

So do you get it? There are plugins and there are licenses. The two will have to play together. Best practices for the user are most often the simplest ones, and while what I described may be more work for your developers NOW, it would be beneficial for you in the long run.

(On another topic; why is the L3 multimaximizer not included in the Masters bundle? And why the Z-noise does not belong to the Restoration bundle? They would be nice additions, given the names of the bundles...)