Digital Performer 2.7 requires Waves 2.8. Many DP/Waves owners have been happily using Waves 2.6 with DP 2.6. When they get DP 2.7 and run it, Waves 2.6 causes an error message that says "This version of Waves is too old and incompatible".

I have run into several people who have then run the Waves demo installer from the DP 2.7 CD. With past versions of Waves, this would have solved the problem. However, since Waves 2.6, Waves has had a demo version of the MAS Waveshell as well as the standard working version of the MAS Waveshell. If you run the Waves installer on the 2.7 CD, DP will now give you a message saying Waves is running in demo mode. This is very confusing to the customer becuase they are expecting that since the dongle is attatched, they should be authorized. What has happened is the
MAS Waveshell 2.6 is still in the Plug-Ins folder, but the demo installer has now added the 2.8 MAS Waveshell demo.

It gets even trickier. If you go to the Waves website and download the 2.8 installer, the installer will install the non-demo version of the Waveshell, but it does not delete the demo version. Even after a proper Waves 2.8install, DP still thinks Waves are running in demo mode. But wait, there's more! If you manually remove the demo version of the Waveshell,
it still doesn't work. This is because Waves preferences are read at startup - and - it doesn't matter where the Waves preferences are, they will still be read. That means that you can pull the Waves prefs out of the system folder and put them in the trash, and DP will STILL think Waves is running in demo mode. Whatta mess!

The proper way to deal with this is to not run the Waves demo installer, but to download the 2.8 installer from the Waves site. If you run that installer, DP will never complain. However, I doubt many people will be that smart or lucky. I got a guy on the phone today who has been trying to get Waves going for two days. When we looked, we found three different versions of the Waveshell in the MAS Plug-Ins folder (MAS Waveshell 2.6, MAS Waveshell 2.8 demo, and MAS Waveshell 2.8) and another shell in the DP Plug-ins folder.

The fix was to: Get rid of any and all references to Waves software on the computer, including Waves preferences. Empty the trash. Restart the computer. Install Waves 2.8 from scratch. Now DP and Waves are happy.

Paul Savio

Mark of the Unicorn Inc.