The complete plugin collection for mixing and mastering, covering equalisation, dynamics, reverb, restoration, and the modelled hardware channels that a great deal of commercial output has passed through.
Overview
The Ultimate bundle is the entire Waves catalogue in one installation, which is somewhere north of two hundred processors covering every stage of a mix. If you have listened to commercial music or watched a film in the last two decades, a substantial share of what you heard passed through several of these on the way to you.
The collection breaks down into the categories a mix engineer thinks in. Equalisers ranging from surgical digital curves to the modelled console strips with their particular colouration. Compressors and limiters covering everything from transparent level control to the aggressive character processors used on drums and vocals. Reverbs including convolution spaces, plate emulations, and algorithmic halls. Then the corrective set: de-essers, noise reduction, hum removal, and the restoration processors that rescue a location recording nobody expected to use.
The pitch and vocal tools deserve separate mention because they are what pull a lot of people to this bundle. Real time pitch correction with formant preservation, harmony generation from a single take, doubling that produces a convincing second performance, and the tuning processors that fix a take without leaving the artefacts that give the process away.
Post production is covered as thoroughly as music. Loudness metering against the broadcast standards, dialogue processing chains, surround and immersive format support, and the mastering limiters that get a mix to delivery level without crushing it. The metering set alone replaces several separate purchases.
Everything installs as standard plugin formats and appears in any host that reads them. This build is configured so the licence manager does not need to run and no connection is required at load time, which is the usual failure point with this vendor.
Feature set
Over two hundred processors covering equalisation, dynamics, reverb, modulation, restoration, and metering.
Console strips, tape machines, and outboard units modelled with their original colouration intact.
Pitch correction with formant preservation, harmony generation, doubling, and tuning that leaves no artefacts.
Noise reduction, hum removal, click repair, and de-essing for recordings that were never meant to be used.
Broadcast loudness metering, dialogue chains, and surround and immersive format support.
Configured so the plugins load without the licence service running and without a connection at load time.
Changes in this build
Installation
Hardware
| Processor | Intel or AMD, 64-bit, four cores minimum for large sessions |
|---|---|
| Memory | 8 GB minimum, 16 GB recommended, more for convolution reverbs |
| Graphics | Any adapter, though high resolution displays benefit from a dedicated one |
| Storage | 20 GB free space, SSD recommended for impulse response loading |
| Display | 1920 x 1080 or higher |
| System | Windows 10 version 22H2 or Windows 11 |
Package
| Title | Waves Ultimate 17 |
|---|---|
| Version | 17.0 |
| Developer | Waves Audio |
| Category | Video Editing |
| Platform | Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit) |
| Package size | 6.34 GB |
| Interface languages | English |
| Release identifier | BS-17002607 |
| Listed | 2 years ago |
| Last rebuilt | 3 days ago |
| Total downloads | 123,343 |
Questions
The standard desktop formats are all present, so any host that reads them will find the collection after a rescan.
No. This configuration loads the plugins without it, which is the point of the package.
Yes. Plugin instances load with their settings, though a processor removed from the catalogue between versions will report as missing.
Two hundred plugins have to be loaded, queried, and cached. Subsequent scans read the cache and finish quickly.
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