Waves Audio Units Still Not Supported For Ableton Live

[DJLuther]

I’m trying to assemble a complete list of the Waves Audio Unit plugins that are currently incompatible with Ableton Live so that Ableton Users are aware of them and don’t accidentally buy them if they prefer and regularly use Audio Units instead of VST. I’ve communicated with Waves on Waves.com about these anomalies and their official position on the subject is that they have no future plans to officially make their AU plugins compatible with Ableton Live. I think it would be reasonable for an Ableton user to think that if most of the Waves plugins that they’ve purchased are compatible in AU with Ableton, then all of them should be compatible with Ableton (even if Waves doesn’t currently offficially support AU in Ableton Live). Most, if not all of the other major third party plugin manufacturers support AU in Ableton. These anomalies appear more like clumsy coding mistakes rather than “planned” incompatibility because they’ve obviously gone to some effort to make them compatible). These mistakes could be relatively easy to correct in future Waves updates so why not support Ableton Users in the same way they have supported Waves? There are many Ableton Users who buy Waves plugins who have first seen them demonstrated on YouTube with Ableton and buy these plugins based on watching these tutorials who incorrectly assume that all Waves plugins that they might purchase would be compatible with Ableton. My (perhaps incomplete) list of incompatible AU Waves plugins in Ableton Live that I’ve discovered are as follows:

SSL bus compressor (complete incompatibility for AU)
R-Comp (complete incompatibility for AU)
V-Comp (Gain Reduction Meter incompatibility in AU)

Please feel free to add to this list in another post if you discover other Waves AU plugins that are still incompatible with Ableton Live and I will update this list accordingly). I’d be interested in hearing other Ableton/Waves users opinions on this subject. What do you think? We’re you ever disappointed with a non functioning Waves plugin? Do you think it’s kind of lame that there is no complete support for Waves plugins in Ableton Live even though all the other major plugin companies support us? Waves has made a fortune selling plugins to Ableton Users but doesn’t make an effort to support us. I know that It’s obviously Waves’ decision in the end, so rather than suggest that they should “fall in line with the other majors”, I’d like to just prevent at least one other Ableton user from spending way to much money on software they might incorrectly believe will be completely compatible for them and instead support other companies that go out of their way to offer complete support for Ableton Users.

[Stromkraft]

Your list is moot and pointless as AUs are not given support by Waves in Ableton Live, period. That a few might work means only that. If they don't you're on your own as Waves do not consider AUs to be supported in Live.

There are no upsides to AU except if you want full compatibility with Logic or something like that. Is this the reason in your case?

[Machinesworking]

I’m trying to assemble a complete list of the Waves Audio Unit plugins that are currently incompatible with Ableton Live so that Ableton Users are aware of them and don’t accidentally buy them if they prefer and regularly use Audio Units instead of VST.

Officially Waves has never supported AU in Live. Waves chooses to only support one native plug in format in DAWs like Live, Digital Performer etc. that support both formats. It's lazy on their part, but IMO it's not a good idea to use AU in Live or conversely VST in DP since Waves will not take any care about compatibility when they update those plug ins in the future. If you want an easier time of it, just use the VST version.

[DJLuther]

Your list is moot and pointless as AUs are not given support by Waves in Ableton Live, period. That a few might work means only that. If they don't you're on your own as Waves do not consider AUs to be supported in Live.

There are no upsides to AU except if you want full compatibility with Logic or something like that. Is this the reason in your case?

Yes, things like full compatibility for logic would be a nice thing. Not pointless and moot because most (probably more than 90% of the Waves AU work perfectly not “a few” like you said. I also don’t believe that most of these AU just “happen” to work in Ableton and even if that was the case, it would be fairly easy to fix the few that don’t work, right? Why not offer full support? If there’s no advantage to AU, then why go to the trouble of offering AU to other DAWs? Why do all the other plugin developers offer this option but Waves doesn’t? Is it because of the old code? I’d like to hear real Ableton/Waves user opinions that would matter, not obvious Waves affiliates. Either way, Ableton Users can decide whether this information is useful or not and I’m pretty sure a lot of them use AU and don’t want to create a custom VST folder to separate all their one off free plugs from their main list (AU). Like the other response to my original post says, “It’s just lazy” not to make sure they all work.

[Stromkraft]

Why not offer full support?

Waves simply choose not to. They do what they deem best for their users. You can do whatever you want, but as a producer that got Waves VSTs in every track more or less I can only view your attempt as futile, unless there are special reasons. I can see you'd need this if you move projects between Live and DAWs with only AU support (or projects with AUs in them). But this said Waves own preset system is the better path anyway.

I was one of those that put in a lot of hours talking to Waves about supporting exposing their SC inputs of plug-ins with side-chain. It's just a few years since they implemented that. I talked to Waves support about AU support as well and they have never said why these aren't supported, just that they aren't.

Personally, I couldn't care less about AU support. There are plug-ins like the pitch related ones that are not fully compatible with Live and a few other DAWs. Those are way more important to get working.

I wish I didn't have to use AUs at all. It's the only option when there is no VST2 support.

If you feel Waves should add full support for AUs in Live I suggest that you make a well-argued suggestion to Waves. Obviously, as I don't use Waves AU — I simply ignore them — I can't assist in the making of this list. A campaign is probably more useful. I actually made one for the SC inputs but they solved it before I could put it out.

[Mark Williams]

Remember of course, that PC Ableton users also cannot use AU, so VST is always the safe & only way, and will guarantee any updates Waves do to their plugins will work cross platform on Mac & PC. Its good business sense and use of resources when developing new plugins to only have one format to pander too, I.E VST, which with minor changes can work on PC & Mac, whereas AU is Mac only.

[Machinesworking]

Remember of course, that PC Ableton users also cannot use AU, so VST is always the safe & only way, and will guarantee any updates Waves do to their plugins will work cross platform on Mac & PC. Its good business sense and use of resources when developing new plugins to only have one format to pander too, I.E VST, which with minor changes can work on PC & Mac, whereas AU is Mac only.

Except that Digital Performer supports both platforms and Waves decided to only officially support AU in DP. ..
Basically Waves choose whatever is considered the dominant standard in the DAW and support just that standard.

Quick question for all of you, have you ever exported a song to another DAW to continue working on it? I have, it's a total PITA, doesn't matter if you only use VST, AU whatever.
99% of the time you're not going to want to do it, it's one of those things that sounds good on paper, and in reality it's just an annoying waste of time unless you do it really early in the songwriting process. When exporting to other DAWs the only way I've found it to be easy at all is with end to end audio files.

I use on the regular at this point: Live, Logic, DP and Reaper. Transferring files between them is a PITA, not worth it at all for the most part. Add to this that Waves mostly makes mixing and mastering plug ins, and I'm not really seeing why you would want to chance messing up existing projects with attempting to use unsupported formats for no other reason than the random chance that you want to transfer files??

Not at all trying to be rude about this, but sticking to AU or VST on OSX for the rare chance of transferring to PC or another DAW etc. all your plug ins, which involves saving each tweaked preset, in the case of to PC, going in to each plug in preset folder on your computer and porting over to PC etc. is going to be a rare incident, not worth using officially unsupported plug in formats for because you don't want to use both VST and AU. I have a few VSTs that have no AU counterpart and vice versa. The reasons not to worry about this and just use both formats far outweigh the mostly perceived IMO benefits of sticking religiously to one format.

[porter321]

Glad I found this thread. I recently purchased Waves Mercury and SSL Bundles. I had also read that in general just use AU instead of VST when possible in Ableton simply because it's the native format for Mac. I've been using lot's of Waves AU plugins and then today when I went to put the SSL Comp on I noticed it wasn't working and then found out the VST version does work. Got online and found this thread. But I've never seen Waves telling Ableton users to only use the VST versions of their plugs. Not too big a deal because we can just use the VST versions, just wish Waves had been more upfront. For other's like me that didn't know this here is the waves compatibility page: https://www.waves.com/support/tech-spec ... rted-hosts