Comments on: Studio Busted by Waves Anti-Piracy Police Shares Experience

By: small studio owner

small studio owner — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:45:41 +0000

ill make all of my customers sign a disclaimer with small print that reads: there is a $20,000 penalty for booking time in my studio for duplicitous reasons, such as trying to bust me for piracy, or if you are affiliated with the piracy police.

hey, if they signed it, they have to pay it. same deal they give us. i believe lying to get into my studio would be exactly as bad as me using your demo commercially, and as such, i will FINE YOU HEAVILY for it.

that said, i do not pirate software, and i will never buy waves after this crap.

By: StrangeCat

StrangeCat — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:55:23 +0000

Waves is great! I use UAD, PSP, OhmForce, Tritone, and others.

but in the paragraph they say that have UAD and needed to try waves but couldn’t get a demo LOL! What? what a load of crap! waves has demos of everything!

Still this whole waves piracy police is not a good idea at all.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:38:26 +0000

concering the W1: if you want it multiband you can set up some routing (cpu is moderate there, i got a g4), but generally i hate multiband compression. i tried waves, but its just to harsh…and wait, would i pay 500 bucks on that? no.

By: MrGrumpy

MrGrumpy — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 18:51:37 +0000

You said >> couldn’t get a demo version

I have worked as an audio systems integrator, installing audio software and configuring audio hardware for the past 5 years. I must have installed waves products hundreds of times. Some of them sound good others a crud … I can’t stand what the L1/2’s do at more than 3dB of reduction.

Saying you couldn’t get a legit demo version from waves is the biggest load of crap. They have always had legit demo’s and you’re also able to rent a plug for a week to try it out using the iLok system. Liar.

By: Pier

Pier — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:03:09 +0000

I bought the Native power pack from waves and right after that I discovered the WUP thing…

If I had known this policy I would have never given waves my money. Never.

After that I lost my plugins because of not wanting to pay the WUP and will never spend money on waves again. There are tons of good software alterntives out there. Sonalksis, UAD, etc.

They sell their diamond bundle for thousands of dollars while logic is selling the whole studio for 500$….

In fact I have to thank waves for their WUP because it made me search for alernatives. I was really blind thinking they were the best…

By: flip

flip — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:38:25 +0000

@Dave & george 9734:

I just tried it. Seems like it could work good as a smash n’ grab limiter. I’m looking for something more nuanced, like the L3 or L3 16. Multi-band is key:

http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=3173

By: george 9734

george 9734 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:44:55 +0000

I second that Dave, I’ve been using that one a lot!

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:45:07 +0000

waves? go away!
@fliP: http://www.yohng.com/w1limit.html
this one sounds fantastic!

By: george 9734

george 9734 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:26:18 +0000

I understand what has been said here against Waves’ tactics, and think things like RIAA suing poor people for a handful of downloads is totally evil, but let’s face it - there are pro studios handling big clients and making lots of money with [k] software. Many years ago I used to belong to a Hotline server with cracked audio software, and many of the members were from big studios, they used to chat about it. These days I’ve got my software down to a few things I find useful and have either bought or are open source, so there. Waves aren’t chasing college kids are they? Or, not yet anyway.

By: Chris Blundell

Chris Blundell — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:09:27 +0000

The piracy issue is complete garbage.
Before I released my first album, it was released on as a 192kbps Torrent by the mastering company or the PR company or someone in the chain. People downloaded it. I got contacted by people who had illegally downloaded it and wanted to buy the CD version (yes, thats actually true). I sold it to them without suing their arses off. They’ve since bought remixes and singles from me and have become solid fans.

I began with a pirated version of cubase, it stank, so I uninstalled it. I then worked with a pirated version of Tracktion. It was good, so I bought it. Versions 1, 2 AND 3. Then it went shit, so I removed it. I downloaded Ableton Live, it was great so I bought a legit copy and manual. Im going to buy version 7. I bought ProTools straight out, no testing, because of the hardware that came with it. Value for money.
There is no way of stopping software piracy because a) you’ll look like a complete money grabbing paranoid fool and b) there’s simply no way of wiping it out completely. People always find a way. Napster goes tits up so you go to kazaa, that goes crap, move to Limewire, bittorrent… etc…

Waves would let people off with a severe warning if they actually wanted to stop piracy, instead they seem to want to get money from the people who could potentially end up being their full-price paying customers. I’ve never owned a waves plugin and I never will, not even a pirated copy.

The fact that they have money to send people around to catch people out using pirated versions of their products means that they have too much money already.