Back in the days of TDM plugins, there was a dependence on Waves DSP plugins in Pro Tools.

At a time when DSP plugins were much more important than they are now, once the post-production community realised that Waves were not going to support AAX DSP plugins, people started to look for alternatives.

In this article, we look at some examples of Waves plugins that some of the post community still cannot live without, as well as examples we have found alternatives.

Production Expert contributor and community member Korey Pereira summed this issue up when he said on Twitter…

“Have mostly moved away from Waves plug-ins at this point, but have a lingering few that still come in handy. Getting really tired of the fees for every update though... can’t justify upgrading a bundle just for one plugin I still use.”

When asked about which ones were the “lingering few” Korey said that the most annoying one for him is the S1, which he uses for MS decoding.

He observes that the bizarre thing is that it cost him $72 to upgrade as part of his Waves Gold bundle when he could just buy S1 by itself for only $29. He added…

“Just seems silly to re-buy just to get current. Honestly, I think I am at V11, so will just wait until doesn’t work.”

Voxengo MSED

Aaron Brown suggested…

“Ever try MSED by Voxengo? Free and I like it more for MS work :)”

We featured MSED from Voxengo in our regular Friday Free Plugin slot. Its an audio encoder-decoder for mid-side processing, which is able to encode an incoming stereo signal into mid-side and vice versa, decoding a mid-side signal pair into a stereo signal.

MSED is also able to work in the “inline” mode with the ability to adjust mid and side channels’ gain and panning without the need of using two plugin instances in sequence. It can be used to flip the phase of the mid and side channels by 180 degrees, and swap the stereo channels, and to extract the mid or side channel.

MSED also features a “plasma” vectorscope, stereo correlation and balance meters which make it easier to monitor the stereo information present in the audio signal.

Waves MondoMod

Community member René Coronado asked…

“Which stragglers do you have? I basically just lack a Mondomod replacement.”

Waves say of Mondomod…

“MondoMod utilises an exclusive combination of linked AM, FM and Rotation modulators to create unique sonic textures ranging from tranquil to turbulent.

• Amazing chorus effects for everything from guitars to vocals

• AM (tremolo), FM (vibrato) and Rotation (panning) modules

• LFO with 5 selectable waveforms

• Tempo sync”

Back in 2013, Russ Hughes showed 3 ways to use the Waves MondoMod on synths in EDM and dubstep.

Waves MaxxBass And Renaissance Bass

Our own Mike Thornton would have to agree with Korey, he still uses the Waves S1 plugin to handle MS duties, but the Waves plugins he still struggles to do without are MaxxBass and Renaissance Bass.

In this free video tutorial, Mike shares how to get the best out of the Waves MaxxBass plugin in audio post-production.

In the second in a series of videos, Mike Thornton shares how to get the best out of the Waves Renaissance Bass plug-in.

Waves Scheps Parallel Particles

As well as the Waves S1, other plugins Korey can’t do without Waves Scheps Parallel Particles, which he uses for FX mastering and design.

Andrew Scheps says of Parallel Particles plugin…

“This plugin is about attitude, energy and emotion. You can find the sound you want, without having to figure out which of the traditional tools will get you there. It is as much an attitude shaper as a tone shaper, so you can focus on how you want your tracks to feel.”

Scheps Parallel Particles has been created to capture Andrew’s know-how and experience in the form of four simple-to-use controls, each of which represents one of Andrew’s go-to mixing processes:

• Sub is a harmonic generator that creates lows and adds sub frequencies that were never there before.

• Air focuses on those elusive air frequencies and brings them to the forefront. Like Sub, it is a harmonic generator, which creates innovative resonances that do not exist in your source.

• Bite is designed to create sonic vitality and emotion. It controls the front ends of the notes (those that reach your ear first), but it also has a big impact on the release.

• Thick adds solid body to the signal, evening out the lower mids and midrange, creating a feeling similar to that of a microphone being a little bit closer, or the room ambience being darker.

Separately, these controls are designed to work in very different ways to shape the vitality of the sound. In combination, they can really let you dig in and make huge changes in a subtle way.

In this video review, Dan Cooper tested the Scheps Parallel Particles plugin by Waves. Watch the video to hear how it performs on a stereo drum track, bass and electric guitar in Pro Tools.

James Ivey shared with us that the plugin he learnt during 2017 was Waves Scheps Parallel Particles. James says…

“Most of the time I use Scheps Parallel Particles on Vocals. It is much quicker to add this plug-in which I know is going to work over trying a couple of compressors and EQ combinations then setting up routing and then deciding I should have used Parallel Particles in the first place. 

It works great on Drums. It can make Toms sound fat and give a snare a nice crack but keeps the body and tone of the drum.”

Korey also said in his tweet that he used to use the Waves WNS, UM226 and LowAir, but the difference with these is that has been able to swap these for the McDSP NR800, Nugen Halo Upmix and Avid Pro Subharmonic respectively.

Let’s take a look at each of these, in turn, both the Waves plugin and the plugin Korey now uses.

Waves WNS To McDSP NR800

The first one was Waves WNS. In this free video tutorial, Marcus Huyskens demonstrates how to use Waves WNS to process a noisy dialogue clip with excessive AC noise.

Korey has chosen to replace Waves DNS with the McDSP NR800 plugin. The NR800 has been designed to operate with no internal latency and designed not to contaminate the original source material with artifacts. Although the NR800 would be normally used on broadband frequencies, you can also use it to focus on a narrow section of the frequency spectrum using noise reduction focus points. There are also a set of input filters that can be configured with slopes up to 36 dB per octave and set to frequencies independent of noise reduction focus points.

In this free video tutorial from McDSP dive into the new NR800 Noise Reduction plug-in and get an overview of the NR800 controls and check out three demo examples.

Waves UM226 To Nugen Audio Halo Upmix

The second Waves plugin that Korey has been able to find a suitable replacement for is the Waves UM226 upmixing plugin.

We included the Waves UM226 in an upmixing shootout. In our article, Shootout Results - The Best Upmix Plug-ins - Which Is Your Favourite? Alan Sallabank analyses the results from the blind poll and shares his observations on how each of the tested upmix plugins performed, which offers a detailed insight into how Penteo Surround, Nugen Audio Halo Upmix, and Waves UM226 handle the kinds of audio we are likely to throw at them.

Korey is not alone in replacing the Waves UM226.In his article Moving To Dolby Atmos - Tips On Products That Helped Roger Guerin shares…

“Being a long-time user of Waves 360° Surround Tools, my template included their UM225 and UM226 upmix plugins, but unfortunately, they can only go up to 5.1. Side note: while participating at one of the Mix with the Masters week-long seminars with Oscar-winner score mixer Shawn Murphy (Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Mission Impossible, etc.) he demonstrated his weapon of choice: the Penteo 7 Pro upmixing plugin. I was convinced after trying the demo but felt it was a bit rich from my blood at the time, plus the UM225 and 226 were still serving me well.

But the call of immersive mixing was getting stronger… then Penteo upgraded to 16 Pro, the Black Friday special was just around the corner. The planets were just too well aligned to pass. Penteo 16 Pro was in!”

Mike’s preference for an upmixing plugin has always been the Penteo Surround plugin, from Penteo 3, to Penteo 7 Pro and onto Penteo 16 Pro, which he awarded Expert’s Choice.

Korey chose to replace the Waves UM226 with Halo Upmix from Nugen Audio. When Nugen Audio joined the Upmix plug-in group with their Halo Upmix plug-in, Mike Thornton asked how would it fare against the established plug-ins in this sector? In this preview video, Mike got his hands on a pre-release copy of Halo to see if it delivers. Watch and find out how it performs.

If you want to read more about what Mike thinks about the Nugen Audio Halo Upmix, check out our article Preview: Nugen Audio Halo Upmix Plug-in. Since then Nugen Audio has improved Halo Upmix. in 2016, Nugen Audio Announced A New Version Of Halo Upmix To Support Multichannel Inputs.

Then in 2017, Nugen Audio Released The Halo Upmix 3D Immersive Extension For Dolby Atmos And Ambisonics. We also included the Halo Upmix in our upmix shootout. You can read in our article Shootout Results - The Best Upmix Plug-ins - Which Is Your Favourite? Alan’s observations of Halo Upmix.

Waves LoAir To Avid Pro Subharmonic

The last plugin Korey has been able to replace is LoAir. In the third and last in a series of three free videos looking at ways to use the Waves MaxxBass, Renaissance Bass and Lo Air plug-ins in audio post-production Mike Thornton shares how to get the best out of the Waves LoAir plug-in.

That’s Waves LoAir, in this next video, Mike takes the Avid Pro Subharmonic plug-in for a spin on speech, music and sound effects in stereo and surround modes and finds it has a neat trick up its sleeve. It can be controlled by MIDI.

What About You?

There we have it. A look at how some of us working in audio post-production have been able to replace some Waves plugins with alternatives, but shave struggled to replace others.

What about you? What Waves plugins have you been able to replace and what plugins are you yet to find an alternative for. Please do share your experiences in the comments before…