I’d seen the complaining about Waves on Mac and thought I was exempt, as I’m running Win11. But I decided to build a GP backup laptop and found Waves is only good on one machine unless you do their update plan. So I guess I’m looking for replacements for the Waves plugins now. I’ve got a bunch of Waves stuff, but the main ones I use are Wurlitzer, Rhodes, Clavinet, Yamaha Elec Grand, CLA-76 and sometimes their piano. I noticed the 50% off sale is still going on with Arturia V Collection at Sweetwater. Is this the best alternative? The Arturia price ($300) is about as high as I’d want to go. Is there anything better for this price? Or anything cheaper that would do as well?
1 Like
Another Waves user has been WUP’d. I gave up on Waves two years ago. WUP and the v9, v10, v11 and v12 shells littering my VSTPlugins and VST3 folders did it for me. Sorry you had to join the crowd. But, like hitting your thumb with a hammer…it’ll stop hurting after a while. There’s a certain serenity that follows after overcoming a Waves addiction.
I’ll let others speak to the keyboard plugins, but to save some money for them, you might want to check out Klanghelm’s 1176 emulation, the MJUC. It costs all of $24. It’s excellent for the money. There’s a free version called MJUC jr. that you can try first.
4 Likes
Arturia V collection is a nice compilation of vintage synthesizers. There are also an acoustic piano, a Rhodes and a Wurly but I think these are not so cool. I like AAS Lounge Lizard and NI Komplete for pianos.
Arturia compressors are inside another package called FX2, which is nice too but not comparable with waves. Check everything on Arturia site
1 Like
For the Arturia collection: I don’t think you can get it any cheaper than 50%off, so if you like the content of that bundle and you can afford it, then grab it (You’ll get a huge pile of diffrent instruments where the synths all sound quite good and the organ and pianos are at least ok).
If it is about piano sounds, you should have a look at Modartt’s Pianoteq… i like their acoustic pianos as well as their e-pianos:
Modartt: Pianoteq
Another cool candidate especially for e-pianos would be Lounge Lizard:
AAS Lounge Lizard EP-4 electric piano plug-in VST AU AAX (applied-acoustics.com)
Oh, and i can second the recommendation of the Klanghelm plugins - they’re great!
4 Likes
And for E-Pianos, not only Rhodes and Wurlitzer: Take a look at Keyscape
4 Likes
I like their CP70 and their 140b is still my favourite Wurli (even if not perfect, the closest from my own 200a, I don’t understand why as they also have a 200a…). Their LA Custom Rhodes sounds also very good to me, but for regular Rhodes, I prefer the SCARBEE CLASSIC EP-88S (probably the closest from my own Stage 73).
The Wurli/Rhodes from Arturia, Pianoteq, Lounge Lizard are good sounding plugins especially with a lot of Fx, but thy are all quite far from the feeling of the real hardware e-pianos.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier, but unless you are doing deep sound design, check out Arturia’s Analog Lab V. It includes all of the pianos and synths of the V Collection and offers control of up to 8 parameters for each, giving you quite a bit of control over the sound. Tons of presets for AL V are available. It lists for €199, so I presume the US$ amount is similar.
So, 200 + 24 for MJUC easily keeps you under 300. You can demo AL V to see if it will work for you. You can find better one-off emulations of the different keyboards, but €200 gets you a LOT.
One nice thing about AL V is that if you have a licence for an individual keyboard, you have access to it inside of AL V. I own the full Matrix 12 and Wurli, and can access them inside of AL V. That future-proofs AL V. If you need more control over a specific instrument than is offered by AL V, you can pick up a licence for just the instrument. No need to buy the entire collection.
I also have Pigments, which is great.
1 Like
I use the Hollow Sun instrument in Kontakt for this
2 Likes
Ah, thanks for the idea, I haven’t tried any other CP70 plugin than the Keyscape one. I think I’m more open to CP70/80 plugins than to Rhodes/Wurli, because I’ve never gotten my hands on the real thing.
XLN Audio Addictive Keys may be also a good alternative. They provide a Studio Grand / Electric Grand / Rhodes MK1 and Upright. You have different Mics options and the usual effects like tremolo / phaser / compressor / reverb / delay. As far as i know it is sample based but load time is shot and not an issue.
From my point of view they provide a very nice base sounds. I use it in combination with AAS Lounge Lizard. XLN for the natural Base Sounds and AAS LL for Wurlitzer and more special sounds.
1 Like
Plus 1 on the MJUC, and another former Waves user very happy to be off that forced upgrade treadmill. The MJUC incorporates three different models, all a little different and all excellent.
Keyscape is my go-to for Rhodes and Wurli. Having owned hardware versions of both back in the day, Keyscape is the real deal, great sound and very tweakable, especially if you want to add in just the right amount of mechanical grit for realism.
Plus one on the Pianoteq for acoustic piano. I watched them develop and constantly improve their modeling technology over the years and once they really nailed it, I set up an endorsement relationship. Finally, an acoustic piano that’s amazingly accurate, highly tweakable, and very light on CPU and storage since it’s modeled, not sampled. Primarily European piano models, but no complaint with that at all. For me, the Bluthner works for pretty much everything.
1 Like
Wow, you’re right about the EPs in Arturia. The Rhodes seemed OK but certainly not great, but the Wurlitzer is just awful. And, really, Wurlitzer is my favorite instrument, so that’s a big negative to me. I like the other instruments in their collection, but the other ones I care the most about I’ve got covered by mostly Cherry Audio instruments. I can slow down my look now that I’m not rushed by the Arturia sale.
So far I like Pianoteq and Keyscape the most out of the alternatives. But Keyscape is a bit more expensive than I’d planned and it’s huge. In Pianoteq, how important is the tweakability that comes with the Standard version vs Stage version?
Lounge Lizard from AAS is great for Rhodes/Wurly
The thing that hasn’t been said about the Arturia V collection is that you can run it on upto 5 machines. I run three, studio mac G5, rig macbook pro and backup rig macbook pro 
B&H has Pianoteq 7 Standard on sale right now. $275, regular $299.
Personally I don’t like the Arturia Collection (I used version 6): too much effect is applied on most of the sounds, and if you remove them, sounds turn out to be thin - maybe that got improved with the latest versions, I don’t know and don’t care anymore: I’m using u-he synths now and Keyscape.
ADSRsounds.com has Lounge Lizard for $99 right now. I ended up going with that for now.
The link that ADSRsounds.com sends you doesn’t work, but by searching through the AAS website, I was able to find the appropriate page - AAS Package. The key that ADSRsounds.com sent me worked just fine there.
I have Pianoteq Stage and am yet to find any limitations on anything I need to tweak for day-to-day playing and gigging. The fine-tuning functionality you get in Standard and Pro are great, but are not something I’ll personally ever need for my performances.