Read This Before Buying WAVES Plugins!

[Salem Beats]

I had a problem with some Waves plugins GUIs locking up, showing weird garbled interfaces, etc. I've paid my yearly Waves Update Plan in order to have technical support, and this is how the interaction went:

Hi guys,

A little bit of background -- I have 5 monitors split amongst 2 video cards: an AMD Radeon HD 7770 and an AMD Radeon HD 5450.

The steps to reproduce my issue are as follows:

- Instantiate the GUI for any Waves plugin on a monitor which is hooked up to video card #1
- Drag the GUI over to any monitor which is hooked up to video card #2
- Close the plugin GUI, and wait a couple of seconds
- Re-open the plugin GUI.

At this point, the plugin's GUI will either be blank or garbled and strange-looking. As long as the plugin's GUI is moved to a monitor which is connected to the same monitor it was instantiated on, this problem never occurs.

The only other plugin manufacturer I've had this type of issue with is Fabfilter, and they fixed me up very quickly with a registry edit which disables graphics acceleration for their family of plugins. It seems that this might be an OpenGL issue and might possibly be an AMD-specific (I don't have any Nvidia cards to test).

Disabling graphics acceleration globally is not an option for me, so I'm hoping for a workaround to disable graphics acceleration for my Waves plugins only. I know that this is likely a graphics bug on AMD's side, but I'm hoping for a band-aid from you guys until I can hopefully get a fix from AMD (fingers crossed on that one, I doubt it's very likely).

Thanks for your time!

-Ki
Salem Beats

Dear Sir,


Thank you for the email.


I really wish i could help you, but unfortunately this setup is not supported with Waves Products. We support up to two monitors under one video card only.
We never tested our plugins with such configuration and do not support it.


If you need further assistance feel free to contact us or visit our Waves Support section.
Best Regards, Roee Yossef
Waves Technical Support Staff

Where could I have discovered this before I had wasted my money?

I cannot find this statement of lack of support anywhere under Supported Hosts, Supported Platforms, or System Requirements. A minimum screen resolution is specified, but no maximums are mentioned.


In addition, most serious software-based studios have a minimum of three screens.


It seems to me that this lack of multi-monitor support is an undisclosed hindrance which lags behind the rest of the industry. I guarantee that sales would go down if "only two monitors supported" was listed on the purchase page for each plugin. Fabfilter were quick to come up with a workaround on their end. All I'm asking for is a band-aid in the next point-release. Is this really absolutely out of the question entirely?

This is not stated in our site. what is stated is what we do support and not what we don't support. there can be thousands of combination of course that are not stated as well since obviously we cannot test and qualify all scenarios.


By the way, Reaper is not a supported host as well.

Ok, I understand that you cannot test all scenarios. I will also give you that my 5 monitors are more than most people have. However, 3-monitor use is widespread for both software developers and software-based music studios in addition to other trade professions. If 3 monitors aren't supported, shouldn't they be? Will they ever be?

I'm well aware that REAPER is not an officially supported host (and neither are the other popular DAWs/Hosts I tested this with -- FL Studio and two versions of NI's Maschine). The fact that the same issue comes up with several hosts, however, suggests to me that the problem will occur with any host and is inherent to the plugin itself and how it interacts with the graphics acceleration drivers.

It appears that you don't have a workaround right now. Since you don't list 5 monitors or 2 video cards as "unsupported" in any way, shape, or form, it seems that any glitches when using this configuration should be passed along to your developers so that they can remedy the problem, especially as most other plugins don't suffer these issues. Since all of these plugins are run from a shared WaveShell plugin, it seems that a widespread fix would be relatively simple to implement across the entire range of plugins.

I just want to gauge whether or not your company is too stubborn to acknowledge and attempt to fix the problem or whether I should attempt to cut my losses and switch my tools to a plugin developer who does (and take as many other possible people as I can with me).
It seems that the proper response from a developer's support staff for a current issue should be something along the lines of "Sorry, we don't currently support that, but we'll look into fixing it" rather than "You stumbled upon the wrong combination of gear. The blame is with you, kiddo. You should've known that you can't use more than two monitors! (Even though this isn't stated anywhere at all)".

I will defiantly forward the issues to the relevant departments. Regarding an ETA if it will ever be supported or not you'll have to follow the updates on our website.

OK. If your company hadn't set up the awkward position where a Waves plugin needs to be covered by WUP before it can be transferred, then I wouldn't need to hurry to get a response. I apologize that your company's strange policies put you in an awkward situation to support people.

Sticking a band-aid on this with some sort of registry flag or other setting to disable graphics acceleration seems like a fairly easy fix. Simply don't render with OpenGL anymore (I've been told that Waves switched to OpenGL around V8 or so, so the company's developers should have some experience rendering without graphics acceleration). Is there any chance that the developers can implement a fix before Feb. of next year? That's when the WUP expires for many of my plugins.


Once again, I apologize for requiring a deadline, but it is your company which has demanded the deadline by which I must sell my plugins if I am going to.

What you should take away from this is:
#1: There are things Waves does not support which are not listed on their site's "supported platforms" list, and,
#2: If you have a technical issue with Waves plugins which renders them unusable, you have to make bets on whether they'll fix it before your current WUP subscription expires. If you wait too long and the problem remains unfixed, you will miss out on your chance to sell the plugins to someone who won't suffer the same issue (Waves allows license transfers for only the plugins which are covered by a Waves Update Plan [WUP] subscription).

So... is there anyone with two or fewer monitors who plans on never adding a third (or more)
and
would like to buy my Waves plugins?

Lol.

-Ki
Salem Beats

 

[Salem Beats]

Another thing worth taking from this thread (that I've discovered after some software API research) is that multiple AMD video cards don't play nicely with plugins which use OpenGL for their UI (FabFilter, Waves).

From a software developer's site:

Q: How do OpenGL programs behave with multiple graphics cards on Windows 2000/XP?
A1: nVidia: The driver dispatches the OpenGL commands to all cards. This allows to move the window across cards, but incurs a small performance overhead.
A1: ATI: The driver dispatches the OpenGL commands to the card the window was created on.

Fabfilter, however, was very helpful in creating a workaround. Waves, on the other hand... not so much.

-Ki
Salem Beats

 

[macbeat]

If you pay for Waves plugins in 2013 you deserve it. Period.

Everyone else has caught up and they are not the leaders anymore.