Here's a doc with alternatives for their plugins, I found this list through @Weaver Beats on YouTube.

Waves Alternative Products

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2023

Plugin Alliance, also a great alternative
https://plugin-alliance.com

 

Waves announced today that they come back to the usual selling mode in parallel to the optional subscription.
But in my humble opinion they have killed their reputation forever. Who could keep on trusting them when they are so crazy and disrespectful to their long time customers?

 

Ohhh this is so good! yesterday I was wondering what compressor API 2500 looked like, since I fell in love with it and have been using it on all the songs.
Good info!

 

Waves Audio alternatives:

2CAudio
2nd Sense Audio
BABY Audio
Black Rooster Audio
Blue Cat Audio
Caelum Audio
Cherry Audio
Camel Audio
Credland Audio
Dialog Audio
DMG Audio
Dotec-Audio
Excite Audio
Forward Audio
Future Audio
GPU Audio
Grimm Audio
HEDD Audio
Hotone Audio
Initial Audio
Kiive Audio
Korneff Audio
Kush Audio
KV331 Audio
Lancaster Audio
Lindell Audio
Longcat Audio
LSR Audio
Lunatic Audio
LVC-Audio
Minimal Audio
Mogwai Audio Tools
Mokafix Audio
Otto Audio
Parallax Audio
Phi-L Audio
Process Audio
Pulsar Audio
QuikQuak Audio
Savant Audio Labs
Schaack Audio
Sattered Glass Audio
Signum Audio
SIR Audio
Stillwell Audio
STW Audio
Submission Audio
Sugar Audio
Synapse Audio
TBProAudio
Togu Audio Line
Trident Audio
TSE Audio
Type Writer Audio
Unfiltered Audio
Universal Audio
VB-Audio
XLN Audio

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2023

No Tokyo Dawn Labs, Fabfilter, u-he, Voxengo? You must be kidding.

 

I changed the link so you can request access to edit and add more alternatives.

 

Soon as this list started to be shared in the other thread, Waves immediately called for an emergency zoom meeting from home, still have asleep, drooling on they boxers, sweatin' on they nuts when someone linked them that thread & they realized there was an alternatives list circulating. LOL

I didn't know what the big deal was since i ditched them already but when I heard they lock you out of future updates when you have been more loyal to Waves than to your wives, I couldn't believe it.

 

could analog obsession be an alternative to waves?

 

If you only ever used Waves for EQs and Compressors, perhaps. Even so, I replaced what I used from Waves with Plugin Alliance plugs last year and never looked back.

 

The question is somewhat badly put.

It depends which type of plugin.

I would rather choose among true commercial developers for some kinds of plugins. And not necessarily expensive.

Semarus suggests Plugin Alliance as a good replacements for some of them. I agree.

There are also other excellent developers. Even in freeware (or in cheapware) plugins. But Analog Obsession would not be among my favorites, even if some of his plugins are relatively good.

It also depends if you're after plugins for synths or for guitars or for voices or for percs or for other types of instruments. Some companies make specialized effects for specific types of instruments. Even among the cheapware companies or the freeware developers.

For example for free or quite cheap (more or less the same price as Waves) guitars effects there are developers which are much much better than Analog Obsession. Have a look at these which are my favorites for that instrument (and except some of them they all provide also for other instruments):

• Audio Assault,
• Audio Damage,
• AudioThing,
• AXP,
• Blue Cat Audio,
• Brainworx,
• HoRNet,
• Ignite Amps,
• NomadFactory,
• Plugin Alliance,
• Tokyo Dawn Labs,
• ToneLib,
• Variety Of Sound,
• Voxengo

I put them in alphabetic order, to make you choose regard your own affinity instead of my own.

It also depends if your style of music is some old "analog-like" music, 70's/80's, or fully modern EDM music... Some developers make incredibly good old-style "coloured" effects which are not very usable on modern EDM music... and vice-versa.

So the best is to ask for each specific case.

 

Last edited: May 14, 2023

I've used some Analog Obsession stuff in the past, but like Airwindows, you need to quadruple check if the plugin is working correctly or if there are corner cases where it starts doing crazy things.

I don't want to FEEL like I HAVE to use PluginDoctor for every AO plugin because I can't trust it 100% without investigating every nook and cranny. I'd rather just get plugins from someone who tests their stuff for correctness.

 

No love for MeldaProduction? That seems like a pretty obvious one.

 

Just out of curiosity, why would you want an alternative to Waves? I mean, if you actually WANT Waves products, just be clever about where you go to get it!

CoughCoughSistersiteCoughcough

 

what kind of crazy things did you get with airwindows?

 

Airwindows plugins that need to take sample rate into account (eg. plugins with filters) do not work correctly if you re-open / render them in a different sample rate than the one you were mixing/previously working in - or worse, they make no effort at all to work correctly for sample rates other than 96kHz (his ultrasonic filtering stuff). Originally, many Airwindows plugins only worked correctly in 44.1kHz. Half a decade ago he started updating his plugins for 96kHz, I think that's still on-going to this day. To cover sample rates above 96kHz, he invented 'undersampling' (as opposed to 'oversampling'). Whether that actually works I do not know. Only supposed to fix SRs above 96kHz in any case.

Most of his compressors are ... "idiosyncratic". Here's Pop2 at default settings:



The re-issue of AObsession's LALA (like 2-3 months back) was broken in a way that any amount of testing would've revealed before release:




Here's AObsession's dbcomp. I don't know if this is 'correct', so I'll hold off judgment. But I'm very curious if someone with a different dbx160 plugin could share their PluginDoctor readings.