The high-end DSP plugin company Waves have been, yes, making waves (groan… I know, it’s too easy) with their newest efforts to crack down on those using cracks (someone stop me!), banpiracy.com. I won’t rehash it all when Peter Kirn over at createdigitalmusic.com has been doing a far better job than I could. But a couple of things to note: a.) as far as anyone can tell banpiracy.com is simply a front for Waves and no other developer/company is copping to being part of this “initiative” - i.e. visiting pro studios under one pretense and checking to see if they’re licenses are up-to-date, then suing them if they’re not. 2.) Waves have a long history of actively and aggressively protecting their wares (…I’ll stop, really, I will…) with OS-hooks, dongles, on-line licenses - the works, all at once. Thirdly, even in the high-end audio software market Waves charge a lot of money. And finally, piracy is a problem, even among pro and semi-pro studios. Don’t even argue otherwise. Anecdotal stories demoing cracks and/or later buying cracked software do not a solid case make. I personally had a very busy, albeit ghetto, urban studio brag to me about how much/many stolen software and sample libraries they had, and if I ever wanted they could hook me up.¹

My views on the quality of Waves actual software are as immaterial as they are uninformed. I’m sure they do what they promise and indeed sprinkle Magic Pixie Dust^TM all over your tracks. I’m sure they make tracks warm, and fat, and, erm, whatever other audio buzz-word you want to use here. They sure do make them louder. I, however, would not know. Well, other than what I’ve read from others who know a lot more about this than I, and it’s hard to argue with a list of users that reads like a (very geeky) who’s who of audio production. As much as it’s a money thing, it’s the whole copy protection issue. Additionally, as pretty and impressive as the Waves plugs may seem, if I was going to drop that kind of coin, there are a lot of other options.

So, let’s look at that proposition.
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The AudioDamage plugin bonanza continues. This one is called Fluid. It is a chorus.

“A chorus” I hear you say. Shrug, right. Well apparently not. If you read this page on Chris’s analogindustries site you’ll see it’s all about a lushness of sound that you don’t hear recreated very often, and apparently mostly exists in high-end boutique gear. I mostly know it from crappy guitar pedals, so this may be a treat.

I’m just acting as a conduit for marketing at this point since I haven’t tried it. But, as with these completely reasonable prices, really, why not? I have a job. And no kids. Is it the missing quality that will give my music the sheen it so desperately cries out for. Unlikely, but I bet it sounds great on vocals.

And in the above thread Chris lets drop that the next in the trilogy will be “Vapor” and I have no idea what that will be other than to make things sound airy. I can’t imagine they’re doing an exciter.

A while back I posted an open letter to IK Multimedia regarding their decision to start using dongles to protect their software. As a user of a few IK products, namely SampleTank (meh) and Amplitube (yea!), I was put off by this turn. I considered this the end of the line with any of their future products.

Well, somewhere along the line cooler heads prevailed at IK, and they decided to allow users to choose between copy-protection schemes. If you were already on the dongle path (of the iKey variety), or if that suited your needs, you could use it for your IK products; if, like me, you had a dedicated production rig you could use the already-in-place digital ID, web-based registration. So, cheers, to IK for not completely dicking over a portion of their user base who didn’t use dongles.

If you act quickly, you can still take advantage of a 2 for 1 special offer on all IK Multimedia effect products that is running through the end of the month. Buy any IK effect software and get a free copy of any other effect software. Moreover, IK has instituted a generous cross-grade policy on all their plugins: if you already a registered user of one of their products, you can get a significant discount on any of their other plugins. If you’re worried that you might be cutting it a bit close on the offer, I suggest going through esoundz.com as they’ll get you sorted out quickly.

Edit: I don’t in any way mean to imply that I had anything to do with there decision - there was a bit of a ground swell on the forums, and one of their sound programmers led the charge - but it’s always nice to see your cause win out.