I have no serious problems with the AR plates, but the plugin is pretty worth to use it in the mastering chain, even if you cant use too much in the mixdown. And also worth the hassle with Waves Central license and install management. Sounds awesome on blues piano, like dark chocolate. Best buy in 2018 for around 20€ a steal

I think they are doing this on purpose to try to sell the servers but, it's not working at least I don't think so.
I stopped buying Waves a while ago.
Plugins have seemed to me to go up huge on cpu and there are just too many great options now a days to buy heavy cpu usage plugins.
Plus, they stopped supporting Maverick so, that ends my many Waves plugin buying days.

Thanks,

Marc

I have to agree with you.

For example: There is the Fabfilter PRO R reverb and it almost uses zero cpu or the Eventide Stereo Room 2016.

I am baffled as to how Waves is such a CPU hog with no explanation.

I also talked to their support and they were useless and offered no help.

Yeah, it's so obvious. I'm thinking maybe Waves 10, they will come out saying, we re-written our plugins with better code for more instances etc....
I'm slowly moving away from Waves as I'm loving stuff from the new companies that are hungry, ala Slate, Kush, Plugin Alliance, Black Rooster Audio, Fuse Audio, Fabfilter, LSR and Joey Sturgis to name a few.

Sad, because I do own more than 100+ plugins from Waves that I've bought individually. I never buy bundles as I've always thought their bundle were mixed with good and not so good plugins.

Well, actually I just bought my first bundle ever "Joey Sturgis BusGlue" as it's really good. Sssshhh, that's between you and I.

Marc

Yeah, never bought their bundle. I also buy their individual stuff.
But my go to reverb are Eventide Ultra Verb, Eventide Stereo Room 2016 and Fabfilter Pro R.

I would have loved nothing more than the Abbey Road Plates but cannot use it.

I will forever be baffled as to how a Plug-in cannot work on an I7 3.6GHZ and a whopping 64GB Ram on a Samsung EVO PRO SSD.

According to waves, I need a better system.

Yeah, there business related moves have left me going elsewhere.
In this day and age, there are to many great plugin and plugin companies to stress about them.
I'm sure, soon, I will start selling off their stuff.
Just waiting to see what they do with version 10 before I do.

Marc

In the end, its also a question of UAD or not. So I also love my great Eventides and Lex PCM for reverbs, but this vintage Plate is really unique. So there are not too much options on the market to archieve this vintage reverb sound. UAD 140, Soundtoys Little plate ( holy f... ,I missed the freebie in nov., because of holidays) and the Waves Abbey road plate. But I have to admit that I prefer PA-Products when I decide. Thank god that I dont use Apple products

Hi ! What is your Mac and how many instances of Waves Reverb Plates can be playing ?

It would useful to have some precisions about CPU and instances possible

Getting into the weeds pursuant to plug-in design details apparently is well beyond the pay grade of posters on this forum including me. I was not a very happy camper with the entry and acquisition expense to join the UAD plug-in fraternity 10 years ago however the 140 plate and LA2A quickly became my go plugs for just about everything. As with most things digital, sonic quality will ultimately rule the day: to this end the Waves plug-ins are by far the most cost effective embellishments available--IF-- an appropriate Waves server is deployed. One year ago I chose the Digigrid/Waves LV1 system for a complete make over in my Live/Studio processing. Digico "D" pres and FP32/96 won the day so I started with a Digigrid IOS 8 channel with an integrated server and I bought the Abby Road Plates to get started. (I also bought the 12 channel IOX and a 32 channel license) We work in the acoustic Americana genre and I seldom need to use more than 6 channels simultaneously so the IOS was the perfect work horse for my needs. I elected early on to add the Waves H-Verb and found it to be the best reverb I had ever used and absolutely most CPU hungry plug-in Waves offers. That fact along with discovering one of the better servers is recommended to work in 96K processing necessitated a server one replacement for my internal IOS limited server.
This is what I have learned: An integrated design system is necessary to achieve the synergistic performance we are all looking for. The LV1 mixer is optimized to work with the latest version of my DAW, Studio One 3.5, and at this point I am producing the very best recordings from both live and studio work with the least effort I thought ever possible.
Please consider the following; mixing and matching sophisticated algorithms is not an ideal solution: adding this and that to your plug-in list may provide a momentary rush however ultimately electronic miscegenation problems will arise that will prove disappointing to deal with. If you want to effectively deploy all of the world class Waves plug-ins and their outstanding technical support go with Digigrid/Waves all the way. The D-live, Digico family and several others are offering outstanding consoles for live performance with integrated plug-ins that are very good however if the Waves plugs are your bag --- go all waves.
Hugh

Look at the screenshot.

Fired up a Waves Impact Server yesterday and ONE instance of Abbey Road Plates took about 25% of Waves Impact's DSP @ 96khz . I own Mercury and have been a Waves guy for decades, have heard of hoggish plugs but a $700 box to be able to run 4 verb plugs? Come on. On Studio One 4, current Mac Pro, 12 core 64GB RAM, one instance of Abbey Road Plates took the CPU from about 40% - to choking w/audio drop-outs (@ 96kHz). Unacceptable.

Exactly. Like to see Waves get this right (price too), but I'm still not convinced this is prime time.

Check how your DAW is processing plugins. I use Abbey Road Plates in Sonar quite often with no problems, at 44.1 everything gets a bit ropey but I avoid that rate if and whenever possible. Also with Sonar and Waves, it's probably already obvious to you but VST3 is the plugin version to run and enable multi-processing engine and plugin load balancing, and you should be smooth sailing. I use several different DAW's, love Sonar for producing because everything works really well in that DAW, but I don't scan any Waves VST2 plugins because they can be glitchy and often run late with no real explanation as to why, so I don't even want to see them in my plugin folder to avoid accidentally grabbing the wrong one. Other than that and a few Soundtoys plugs that don't work well in Sonar, it is a really reliable monster of a DAW, love it.

Each DAW will have it's own variance of similar peculiarities.

I'm no expert at all , but I have a feeling that running ARP at 96kHz is the problem. Whether it is a coding problem or the higher sample rate just pushes the physical emulation into extreme overdrive, I have no problem using ARP on a reverb bus in Reaper using my my older quad core 64-bit Windows 7 PC. I also run 4-5 instances of TG12345 with it, but that combo is pretty heavy on my processor, so I use other reverbs and keep the TG12345, which I love. I didn't like ARP all that much so it was an easy decision.

I tend to agree. There are inefficient plugins and then there's ARP. Never seen anything like it.

And the fact that I don't work at 96k, and have zero issues on a 10 year old Hackintosh supports what you're saying.

IMO it is very important to sort out all of the relevant facts surrounding raal's plight. When we review all of the pertinent info pertaining to the operating limits of Waves three servers raal's problems are apparent: Waves impact server is integrated into their 8 channel IOS small channel 48K small gig package. The Impact server is the least expensive and most limited of the three processing devices Waves offers. I have and use daily a Server One that is the middle grade server recommended to run at 96K while the top of the line Extreme server is recommended for big channel count and unlimited plug-in use. In Waves systems the server carries all of the CPU computing load and this is why it is possible to run a huge system with a lap top and to this end extremely important to match your max work load with an appropriate server choice. I often will carry out my IOX and Mac book pro for my one man guitar vocal gigs at 48k using one instance of the most CPU hungry plug ,H-Verb, and a bit of LA3A. I never have a problem but I do understand the limits and when doing audio for video that requires FP32/96K multi-tracking and a bigger channel count I need the bigger system and server.
I recently inadvertently insulted a retail dealer from Florida that was Flaming the Digigrid/Waves LV1system as totally unreliable very inferior to the D-Live gear he really likes, --- but as a dealer he would sell the Waves system to any one that wanted it. People, including dealers, that do not make the effort to assimilate the pertinent information to make intelligent choices to deliver efficient performance are doomed to the disappointing results we read about in these and other threads. An honorable, knowledgable retail dealer that can and will walk a customer through the hoops to make a good decision and stand behind the sale earns the profits associated with gear markups. A huge problem develops when ignorance prevails in wholesale gear transactions.
Hugh

hughshouse - you've invoked a personal judgement in your continued use of the word "honorable". This conflates the problem with the technology and the person.

The golden rule of sales is: the implementation IS the solution.

The second golden rule of sales is: perception IS reality to customers.

Given the unarguable points above, that if Waves makes the products exceedingly challenging in the minds of customers by having so many opportunities for confusion on the implementation (albeit well intended, I'm sure), then it is not the fault, or the honor of anyone in question. I'm glad to see you had success in your implementation, but you cannot state that as an absolute universal truth for everyone.

If a dealer or a customer struggles getting the results they need in a reasonable experience (which is what I read), then THAT is the problem. I can see the dealers selling the components themselves, but it sounds like Waves needs to either 1) try to simplify their offerings to match the skillset and knowledge of Joe customer, or 2) provide implementation services as part of their package. Maybe they do, and you can enlighten the forum, and that would be helpful too.

But please do stop with the judgement, and on a side note, using some paragraphs in your posts would be greatly appreciated moving forward.

Thank you for your consideration.

The primary problem Waves systems present is virtually unlimited options and less than comprehensive communication in tailoring work profiles into the appropriate gear to do the job. All of the info necessary is available in their web site however you have to be willing to dig deep to find it. Clearly Waves needs to renovate their marketing protocol.
The golden rules of sales are very difficult to quantify: unfortunately perception does trump reality in much of today's commerce and implementation often can become a thorny field of disappointment. In this case the primary responsibility for better communication does belong to Waves however retail dealers should have a working knowledge of the fundamentals of any thing they sell. There is now and always has been a big difference between retail VxS wholesale transactions. The problem is Wall mart & Google have killed, for the most part, classic retailing.
Hugh

Most of the Abbey Road plugins are on the more CPU intensive side, by design. People have been wanting more “quality”, but quality will always come at the premium of CPU usage, you can’t have one without the other.

It’s interesting, but the load seams to be very similar to H-Reverb stacked with the EMI TG channel strip. Plates does indeed have a bit of TG emulation built in, I’d also wager that it is a FIR reverb in design, much like the H-Reverb. FIR is not your typical algorithmic or IIR convolution reverb. Indeed, if you look it up you will find that for its better quality sound, it does burn more cycles. That’s the disadvantage of it, but man it does sound good.

If you use these reverbs you really have to plan out using it. I do my arrangements. Then when add reverb when I am ready to start mixing, and then a lot of times you have to put convert your reverb to audio because it is to intense for the P.C. So basically, I had a little reverb by little. So I find myself in the final mixing process converting everything to audio, and then once again loading up another return with an Abbey roads on it and adding this reverb. It is a slow process to make it usable, but the quality of sound..... erk.... it is a battle... and those plates are so useful.

Amazing. All these threads and not one person using a daw farm as the solution.

And the funny thing is, many guys actually have several computers lying around.

Get the reverbs into their own computer. Get vst instruments into their own computer. Get your heavy cpu compressors etc into their own computer. Connect to the master daw.

No limits.

I realize many folks simply prefer one box....like having a hoover that can suck up a brick.

Cpu-intensive stuff that you have to calculate whether you can use.......non-issue in a daw farm.

Plates.....get them on their own box....and then route them to your master daw....you may quite possibly even feel/hear more mojo with that physical wiring.

Well there is always SoundGrid. Clearly not as flexible, but if you're a big user of Waves it might be worth a consideration.

Then there is MultiRack, I'm not entirely sure how it works, but it might be a networked computer thing too. So, MAYBE, people could do as you suggest, and run it on an external host. There is VEP as well, but I understand that's expensive to buy into and keep up to date.

Latency is a concern in both these situations as I not know much about it.