I’m posting this here just in case it is helpful, or if it might help someone else, and also if perhaps it could be fixed in a future update.
Mac OSX 13.1
Protools 2023.6
Waves Ultimate v14
Licenses on the computer
I recently had an issue where installed and activated plugins were not available (the Protools error message is that they “don’t exist” which is inaccurate and unhelpful but that’s a Protools problem, I’m sure). I couldn’t figure out why that had happened, as just at the beginning of October they were working just fine. After a couple of chats where we attempted the “repair” and “version organization” options in Waves Central, and a support link saying I should trash InstalledAAXPlugins and restart, all to no avail.
I was directed to phone tech support, where they assisted me with trashing my InstalledAAXPlugins file as well as the Waves preferences folder (and also disk access, which may have contributed to the original issue). After that call, everything was working again.
This afternoon, I was opening another session, and had to rescan my instrument library for Kontakt 7. It got hung up, and I realized I could continue working without it for today, so I force quit Protools, and restarted.
Upon restart, the same error regarding Waves plugins showed up. I immediately trashed both InstalledAAXPlugins and the Waves preferences folder, restarted and all was well.
I continued working in the evening with all Waves plugins in full effect, and then after I was done and saved, for the hell of it, I force quit. Lo and behold, Waves plugins are nowhere to be found. Out of curiosity, I repeated this process three times. Every time I force quit Protools, it would deactivate Waves plugins (and as near as I could tell, only Waves plugins).
I can’t imagine this is expected behavior, so I figured it might me helpful to write it down and share, in case that is helpful to other users or the Devs. Thank you!
tl;dr: Force quitting Protools 2023.6 in Mac Ventura will deactivate your Waves plugins.