David and Goliath: riding the waves
At AES 2009 Waves was showing a new plug-in, called Vocal Rider. In their words: “Waves makes vocal processing easier than it’s ever been with their upcoming Vocal Rider plug-in (AU, VST, RTAS). The name says it all – Vocal Rider is designed to match your vocal tracks to the rest of the mix and then keep the relative volume throughout the song. All you do is instantiate it on your vocal track, bus a summed instrumental mix to the side-chain, and hit play. The plug-in fader then takes over, keeping the relative volume of the vocals and the rest of the mix constant. And, unlike compression, Vocal Rider doesn’t crush the dynamic range or color the vocal track at all.
Waves Vocal Rider Automatic Level-Riding Plug-in Features:
– Intelligent adjustment of the vocal track based on the dynamics of the music.
– Saves time doing the kind of automation you would have to do manually.
– Writes automatic volume riding to the track as automation for fine tuning”
The interesting thing is that Vocal Rider seems to be, uhm…. too similar to a PT plug-in released a few months ago by Quiet Art Ltd., a small developer from New Zealand.
That plug-in is called Wave Rider (things are getting funnier, ah?).
Here’s Wave Rider’s short description: “a virtual fader controller plugin for PT. It’s a unique RTAS plugin that detects audio signal level on the inserted channel, and controls the fader movements”. You can read (and hear) more on the official website, linked above.
Ok fine, they had the same idea, you’ll say. Well, it can happen.
But here’s another fact, confirmed by Wave Raider’s developer: a license of Wave Rider was acquired by someone from the Waves team (after tying one of the earlier versions of the plug-in).
Wave Raider’s dev told us that “even the keywords they use to describe it (saves time, no color, you can alter the automation later etc) seem to be taken off Wave Rider’s site and forum’s posts.
There’s a couple of differences on how the plug-ins operate. The Waves one has an option to let you feed an external source to its side chain, and few other fine adjustments (reminding of some of the suggestions for Wave Rider on the DUC and Gearslutz forums) .
Also the Waves plug-in seems to write its automation within itself as a separate lane.”
I won’t enter into the legal aspects of the whole thing, also because Vocal Rider has not been released yet. It seems Wave Rider’s dev (like most small/one person companies, unfortunately) did not apply for a patent for his software, but I don’t know if (generally speaking) this is enough to make someone else jump on a product and re-release it just adding a few touches here and there.
We’re trying to reach Waves for an official comment. We’ll update the article as soon as possible.
In the meantime, we’d love to hear your comments about this story…
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About The Author
Fab
Founder & main editor here at ANR, 'non-musician' and music-tinkerer. His first keyboard was a cheesy Yamaha PSS-270. He still loves it.
I don’t see what sort of patent the New Zealnd company could have possibly sought? You can’t patent the idea or concept. You could patent some unique method or underlying technology that made it all work, but that’s a different point here I think.
In the end here, I think the worst thing anyone could acuse Waves of is copying someone else’s idea. But how is this different from a company doing yet another de-esser, or another Pultec EQ copy or another Fairchild copy?
Wave Rider is the best!!!
Waves bull sh…t
My brother is a patent attorney. You absolutely CAN patent an idea.
I believe Wave Rider’s principle vulnerability was its status as Pro Tools-only. This is not 1999, Pro Tools is no longer as dominant or ubiquitous as it once was. Apple’s push for Logic has been significant, to name one example.
If they’d released a universal plug-in (RTAS, VST, AU, etc.) they’d be in a better market position to defend against the Waves juggernaut. I think this was a mistake: bringing their product to market without an explicit promise that VST and AU were being developed. Made it seem like a niche product.
The Vocal Rider product does not seem as smart to me as the original Wave Rider. Wave Rider relies on itself, Vocal Rider relies on the surrounding music. The former principle is actually more musical. Bussing a mix to the sidechain is the dumbest idea ever.
I think Waves is gonna have to shell out some dough in a settlement. This is not going to look good in court.
One important lesson. DEVELOPERS: IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT YOUR CONCEPT, DO NOT DEVELOP PLUG-INS FOR ONE PLATFORM. IT IS 2009. YOU CAN’T DO THAT ANYMORE.
I partially agree on this. It would have helped in some ways (more visibility, more brand awareness) if Wave Rider was also AU and or VST. But I don’t think the fact Wave Raider was and is RTAS only makes that much difference, if we focus on the concept design as main criterion.
Let’s say for example Apple has a unique technology in one of its AU plug. The fact the resulting product is AU only does not imply others can remake the same product as VST.
Also, I think the analogy with EQs or compressors does not apply in this case.
A better analogy could probably be the technology behind some consoles’ automation, which I think IS patented.
Feel free to add your thoughts tough, it would also be interesting to know what other developers think…
One thing the whole thing confirms: Waves are just not good people.
As if we needed another reminder.
An autogain that may simply sound better and have the breath detection figured out well enough. Well, it had to happen at some point.
Some lollygaggers might mistake this for a mixer 🙂 . Some folks think this will actually be really nice for post production folks, but I’m not too sure of that, judging what I’ve worked with so far in terms of autogain plugins.
Speech detection is damn hard in the midst of other noises. The Souffleur plugin, which specializes in dialog autogaining didn’t do as well as I’d hoped in this regard, though it’s not a micro-leveing plugin, but more of a level-down of non-dialog spots type of deal.
It’s not quite as unique as you think. On the one end of the spectrum we have the free plugins of Terry West. His Steady plugins don’t detect speed or singing AFAIK, but they do a decent job of averaging levels.
Then there’s Souffleur, which I’m not even sure is available yet, but has been around for over seven months now for beta folks. Then there’s Waverider and now Vocal Rider.
We probably wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t Waves, which is a shame, because their plugins are pretty good. They have the engineering down well, and very good support actually. That WUP crap really hurt them bad though.
I’ll remain very sceptical for Vocal Rider being used on anything but singing and studio VO recordings.
thanks for your detailed comment, maybe next time sign up with a nickname 🙂
I agree on Waves having a great range of plug-ins, of course. They just do not need copying others in a so explicit way.
I did not discuss if the plug-in is actually useful or not, but I kind of agree with your conclusion. It’s not something I’ve wished to have in the past, but I’m sure it could be useful to other engineers.
I don’t like these Waves guys and i never liked their plugins.