Wavesfactory Spectre Review

Documentation

The PDF manual is accessible directly from within the plugin, which is how it should always be in my opinion.

The manual is clear and concise. It even provides some extra info that goes a little bit deeper into how to use the plugin and why certain design decisions were made, rather than just explaining what each function does. I always love when the devs put some effort to include some further insight in the manual. They are the ones who know best! Great job.

Copy protection and License Transfer

No iLok or challenge response needed for registering Spectre. You will receive a serial number at the time of the purchase.

That’s great. What about license transfers?

Unfortunately, that is when things get weird.

This is a direct quote from the Wavesfactory FAQ:

“You can transfer your license to another user. You’ll be required to pay the difference in price if you bought the plugin with a discount, plus €15 transfer fee. Once the payment has been sent via PayPal you have to fill and send a license transfer form.”

So let me get this straight. I paid 49€ for Spectre on Black Friday. The regular price is 99€.

If I wanted to sell it, I need to pay 50€ (difference) + 15€ (license transfer)? Pay you 65€ more (114€ spent in total including the initial purchase) just so I can sell the plugin?

On top of that, there is the hassle of filling and sending a form and waiting for it to be processed.

I’m ok with a small transfer fee. But this is a direct f-off to your paying customers. It’s not a policy that’s going to make or keep friends.

Compare this process to Valhalla for instance. They allow easy, direct, instant and free license transfers from within their user area. I love that. It’s fair play.

People’s needs, workflows and financial situations change over time. I often sell things I’m not using much anymore and invest that money into something that fits my current needs better.

I didn’t check the terms before buying so it’s totally my own fault. It’s a good lesson to be more careful in the future. I’ve bought two products from Wavesfactory, but I don’t think I will be buying more as long as this policy remains.

Supported platforms

macOS
– 10.7 or higher.
– 64 bit DAW and OS.

Wavesfactory have not announced Mac M1 support at the time of writing this (October 31, 2021). But it does work fine on my M1 Mini.

Windows
– 7, 8 or 10.
– 64 bit DAW and OS.

Wavesfactory Spectre Alternatives

The competition in this field is fierce! I will list a few plugins you might want to look into, and talk about a couple of them in a bit more depth.

FabFilter Saturn 2 – Not my personal fav. See below.
PSP Saturator – Sounds fantastic – bought. Spectre can get a lot more precise and includes some more extreme distortion modes. But great option for broad spectrum tone shaping and saturation.
Tone Projects Kelvin – I have bought it and use it a lot. It’s a great alternative and a little bit cheaper.
Vertigo Sound VSM-4 – Sounds as good as it looks. You may love or hate the workflow. I demoed it but the 149€ price tag made me go for Kelvin, which sounds equally good.
Voxengo HarmoniEQ – A similar concept to Spectre, but it’s EQ first and harmonic enhancer second. Also does compression and expansion. An unique plugin to bring your sounds to life and it sounds very very good. Highly recommended.

Wavesfactory Spectre vs Fabfilter Saturn 2

Fabfilter Saturn 2 is the first plugin a lot of people will think about when thinking of alternatives for Spectre. I own Saturn 2, and I prefer Spectre over it.

Although capable of doing also subtle work, Saturn 2 feels to me more like a special FX machine. I don’t find uses for most of the saturation styles in Saturn 2, where as in Spectre most of them are useful to me in their own ways. Spectre to me also simply sounds better.

Furthermore, the interface in Spectre is a lot more straightforward. This makes me focus on the sound which leads to better results. Saturn 2, albeit more feature rich, is also much more fiddly in use. I’m generally not a fan of adding complexity unless there are significant benefits to it (which there aren’t in this case).

Wavesfactory Spectre vs Tone Projects Kelvin

Kelvin is one of my absolute favs at the moment. How does it compare to Spectre?

There is a lot of overlap in these products. The algorithms are somewhat different, but I feel both plugins are very good in terms of sonic quality. In terms of reducing aliasing, Kelvin performs a little bit better. But Spectre at “Best” mode (16x oversampling) still does a good job as well. I have no complaints about that.

To me Kelvin has a clear edge on workflow. It’s a more refined product with many carefully thought out features that make it easy to work with. As I stated before, Spectre could use a few improvements.

Mainly because of the superbly fine tuned workflow, I feel that Kelvin has the edge in subtle mix bus / mastering type work.

Spectre is perhaps better when you just want to quickly pinpoint and enhance a certain frequency area, or for times when you want to do something more aggressive or experimental. Kelvin can do both of those thing, but with Spectre it’s more intuitive.

Spectre’s algorithms are more varied. But I also like that fact that Kelvin focuses on different types of tubes and transformers and does that really well.

I enjoy having both of them, but I could indeed use either one in most situations. If you are thinking of getting either one, I would recommend to demo both to see which one you like the most.

Wavesfactory Spectre Price

Updated October 31st, 2021.

The regular price is 99€. I bought it for 49€ on Black Friday sale.

For 49€ I feel it’s good value for a versatile, mastering grade saturation effect. For full price, it could still be worth it to you. But demo carefully as there is tough competition in that price range.