Can't find my Waves plugins

Lophophora · 01-19-2018, 08:51 AM

Hey,

I have been using several Waves bundles in Reaper for years without an issue. I purchased and installed a new Waves bundle today and the installation kept on failing. I ran all the steps of the troubleshooting section until it workes. This included uninstalling all Waves plugins. After that, the installation worked and I also reinstalled the old plugins successfully.

The issue is that Reaper doesn't see the Waves plugins anymore. Only Rewire appears in the plugins list. I have the following paths in my Reapers settings:

C:\Program Files (x86)\VSTPlugIns;C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VstPlugins;C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3;C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves\Plug-Ins V9

And I also tried Autodetect (but nothing seems to happen).

What's wrong?

Jimmy James · 01-19-2018, 11:51 AM

I had a similar problem after doing some demos. Then I also bought a handful of new plugs during the crazy cheap sale.

Problem after problems. So I uninstalled everything waves. I deleted any folders. I used Cleaner. And restarted my pc.

I then opened the waves installer and defaulted all the install. I cleared and rescannex in Reaper. And all was good.
I have a lets me install btw. And I think that was part of the problem.

Reaper updated the vst stuff recently as well. And I think that is part of the problem too.

Lophophora · 01-22-2018, 02:04 AM

What's a "lets me install"?

Waves support has told me to follow the instructions on their web page, which I had already done before contacting them so I'm kind of stuck. I'll probably try uninstalling Reaper and Waves altogether and start everything from scratch.

citizenkeith · 01-22-2018, 02:06 AM

Did you try "Clear Cache/Rescan"?

Lophophora · 01-23-2018, 07:51 AM

I sure did, it doesn't help. I haven't had the time to look into this but I will soon, and let you know.

citizenkeith · 01-23-2018, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lophophora

I sure did, it doesn't help. I haven't had the time to look into this but I will soon, and let you know.

Waves only supports VST3 for REAPER. While many people don't have problems with regular VST plugins, that may not be the case for everybody.

Here is some info from Waves' support site:

https://www.waves.com/support/how-to...gins-in-reaper

Lophophora · 01-24-2018, 01:48 AM

The troubleshooting you mention is the one I've been through numerous times. I've also uninstalled all Waves plugins and Reaper, reinstalled everything with the same result: Reaper doesn't see any of the Waves plugins.

Waves support tells me to go through the troubleshooting link, which I already did several times.

zeekat · 01-24-2018, 01:54 AM

Pretty sure if you have your Waveshell plugs placed properly in your VST path both VST2 and VST3s should be available in Reaper. Can you check if WaveShell*.dll files are in the paths you posted? I think it's something like WaveShell-VST[version].dll for VST2 and WaveShell-VST3[version].dll for VST3.

Lophophora · 01-24-2018, 08:09 PM

Well, I thought they were there but there are many occurrences on my hard drive so I don't really know:

pic upload

Giovanni_B · 01-24-2018, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lophophora

Well, I thought they were there but there are many occurrences on my hard drive so I don't really know:

pic upload

Delete the "/Steinberg" in the first path. Then clear cache and re-scan.

Lophophora · 01-24-2018, 08:29 PM

Just tried, no luck. I had also tried removing all paths but C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 and it didn't work either.

karbomusic · 01-24-2018, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lophophora

Just tried, no luck. I had also tried removing all paths but C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 and it didn't work either.

No need to continue if you've already done this...

Reset the default VST paths for reaper by clicking the auto-detect button so we have all the default paths there for the next step.

Now close reaper and backup reaper-vstplugins64.ini, then delete it. Launch reaper and it should start scanning plugins with progress on the splash screen; once it completes and loads, see if the waves plugins now show up.

Lophophora · 01-25-2018, 07:09 AM

Thanks, I tried but still doesn't work. Waves support tells me to uninstall and reinstall all Waves plugins and Waves central. I had only uninstalled the plugins before, I'm gonna try with a full Waves uninstall...

Lophophora · 01-25-2018, 08:05 AM

Finally got it to work! Here's what I did after uninstalling all Waves products in case someone else has the same issue:

Remove these remaining Waves files which may still be found on your computer -
Press the [Win Key] + [R], type in %appdata% and hit OK. Delete the Waves Audio folder.
Press the [Win Key] + [R], type in %programdata% and hit OK. Delete the Waves Audio folder.
Press the [Win Key] + [R], type in %localappdata% and hit OK. Delete the Waves Audio folder.
Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\ and delete the Waves folder.
Run a search on your system for the term "WaveShell" and delete any files that you might find.
Go to these locations to search for remaining WaveShell files, and delete them if found -
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3
C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns
C:\Program Files (x86)\VSTPlugIns
Any custom VST folders

karbomusic · 01-25-2018, 08:52 AM

Excellent!

ivansc · 01-26-2018, 01:30 AM

Hm. I had assumed that once you got a clean waves install via Waves Central these sort of isasues were a thing of the past. Are you saying you had already cleaned house before and everything was OK and then you got another bunch of random waves files all over the place?
Damn. Thought they had finally fixed this for good.

Lophophora · 01-27-2018, 12:34 AM

Looks like they didn't. Then again, maybe the issue came from old files that were installed before I got Waves Central.

ivansc · 01-27-2018, 02:21 AM

Hate to say it, but that really is the most likely explanation.
I dont know how to state what I said in a more emphatic way, but you really really really need to comb through every possible folder and nuke EVERY Waves file you find before you can start relying on Waves Central.

Maybe we should figure out a sticky to guide folks in the right direction - this and similar waves related issues seem to crop up almost daily.

serdy · 01-28-2018, 09:04 PM

Thanks Lophophora for taking the time to post your step by step process. It worked for me, and I very appreciative!

Lophophora · 01-30-2018, 08:32 AM

Glad this proved helpful!

bawsebawse4321 · 01-30-2018, 08:41 AM

you should go to c:\Users\YOUR_USER\AppData\Roaming\Reaper\
find files named reaper-vstshells64.ini or\and reaper-vstshells.ini
open it with a notepad and delete everything and save.
then open reaper, go to preferences, to vst and press clear cache\rescan

waves plugins require some c++ redistributables, so if the method wont work, check whether you have all the c++ redistributables installed

tgraph · 01-30-2018, 09:32 AM

I put my entire C: drive into the VST path and it had a little trouble with one dll but found ALL the plugins after a hang up.

hedgehogbrown · 01-07-2021, 02:38 PM

i tried the usual delete and rescan thing a few times and i needed to get into some old sessions urgently. the fastest way i could get into one was just to open the .rpp file in the text editor and do a find and replace to replace waves shell v11 to waves shell v12 (look at file for exact name) and just hit replace all.

amazingly, that worked.

Tod · 01-07-2021, 07:47 PM

I just bought some new waves plugins and I had the same problem. First of all I'm still running Windows 7 and the new version of Waves Central is set up for V12 and I need V10.

I eventually followed their directions and totally uninstalled everything, then reinstalled and everything it there as it should be.