Hello folks. I have been lurking here for a few years but have never created an account because it's been a hell of a lot more fun to just watch. Plus I haven't really had anything useful to add to anything. Until now (I hope)...

Waves stopped working on my machine a few days ago out of the blue. I use Studio One 5.2 and was using the R2R version of Waves. The plugins are still there, but the WaveShell wouldn't load at all.

I went though all of the posts I could find and nothing that fixed my problem. Uninstalled, cleaned everything, reinstalled, tried multiple versions of Waves. Nothing worked. I thought maybe Windows Firewall was blocking something, but no.

I had actually given up yesterday and started trying to find other plugins to replace the Waves stuff I had used in a lot of my songs.

I don't know how I found the fix, but I did. Digging through different folder in my Waves install, I found a second spot where the WavesLicenseEngine.bundle folder existed. Not the one in the instructions from R2R, but in another location altogether.

I deleted it and replaced the with the one from R2R and magically my Waves plugins worked!

I am using the WC.12.20.04.21 build FYI.

I created this account just to share my results and hopefully help others that have had the same problem. Please let me know if this solution helps.

Oh...It would probably be a good idea to say where I found the folder, huh?

C:\Program Files\Waves Central\resources\res\external\bin

 

Heh...

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. It's not 2001 any more. I know a lot of people find them useful, but really, they're like dinosaurs and not really making any progess in quality of their plugins.​

 

Last edited: Jul 25, 2021

I totally agree. I'm lazy by nature, so I used a lot of the CLA stuff because it gave me decent results quickly and I really didn't have to work for it. I used it a lot on my older songs, so I freaked out when none of the plugs loaded. Now that they do, I'll A/B versus other plugs and find replacements.

I don't want to be tied to Waves. This experience has been hell.

 

When you say you cleaned everything...does that mean registry to? If so, do you use a third party software for it or manual removal? I find that third party reg cleaners can suck and still leave garbage behind.

 

The first and second time I went in manually and removed anything that started with Waves in the registry. Of course i was careful and read every path. The third, fourth and x times i just used Win uninstall and lived with the results.

Pretty sure I used BCUninstaller a couple of times too.

In the end it wasn't a registry issue for me.

 

Ive just had this problem in the morning when i updated my plugins, its depends where you get the stuff but the last versions have a file that says fix (normally it just deletes the files from waves local server) try that, in waves central just click on repair, then delete the waves local server from %ProgramData%\Waves Audio\WavesLocalServer and then apply the patch, and thats all, it worked for me

 

Alexander - I tried all of that and reinstalling the redistributables. Still, it didn't work for me. The only thing that worked was replacing the folder twice. YMMV though and I hope you have an easier time than I did!

The Fix It file just deletes the folder that needs to be deleted.

Oh, I also went into airplane mode to do the final install. I didn't like the fact that Waves Central wanted to upgrade to current. Paranoia on my part for sure!