STEINBERG WaveLab 6 User Manual

Operation Manual

Operation Manual by Anders Nordmark Quality Control: Cristina Bachmann, Heiko Bischoff, Sabine Pfeifer, Claudia Schomburg

The information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. The software described by this document is subject to a License Agreement and may not be copied to other media except as specifically allowed in the License Agreement. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or otherwise transmitted or recorded, for any purpose, without prior written permission by Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.

All product and company names are ™ or ® trademarks of their respective owners. Windows XP is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Table of Contents

11 Introduction

12 Welcome! 12 What’s new in WaveLab 6.0? 14 How you can reach us

15 Requirements

16 This is what you need… 16 Computer requirements 18 Sampler requirements 18 About audio cards 19 About the System Information

feature

21 Installing and setting

22 Setting up the computer 23 Installation procedure 24 Register your software! 25 Launching WaveLab 25 Program settings 30 Installing a CD/DVD recorder 31 Installing samplers 33 Installation done! Where do I

go next?

33 About the Tracer application

35 Overview

36 Get to know WaveLab 36 The windows and what you

can do with them

43 Find your way around in

WaveLab

45 Basic methods

46 Why you should read this

chapter

46 Getting help 47 Undo and Redo 49 Working with windows 56 Dockable control bars 59 The status bar 60 Speed menus

61 Units of time and level 62 Setting values 65 Presets 67 About non-modal dialogs 68 Using the computer keyboard

69 Editing in the Wave

window

70 About this chapter 70 Creating new empty

documents

71 Opening Waves 76 Window overview and

adjustments

80 Setting the zoom factor 86 Navigating through the file 87 Snapshots 88 Setting the ruler start position 89 Working with a meter based

display

89 Setting the wave cursor

position

91 Selecting 99 Basic editing commands 113 File handling in Wave

windows

127 Editing attributes and getting

information

129 About the Loudness enve-

lope display mode

133 Playback and

recording

134 Playing back 146 Recording

155 Metering

156 Introduction 156 Selecting what to monitor 158 Multi-channel metering 159 The meters

WAVELAB

4 Table of Contents

175 Off-line processing

176 Introduction 176 Applying processing 178 Level Normalizer 178 Gain Change 180 Loudness Normalizer 183 Pan Normalizer 184 Dynamics 189 Level envelope 191 Fade-in and fade-out 192 Crossfade 195 Invert Phase 195 Reverse 195 Eliminate DC Offset 196 Waveform Restorer 196 Time Stretch 201 Pitch Correction 204 Pitch Quantize 205 Pitch Bend 207 Harmonization 208 Hi-fi Chorus 209 EQ 210 Convert sample rate 211 Effect Morphing 215 Support for reNOVAtor™

217 Master Section

218 Introduction 219 The Master Section window 221 About the signal path 222 The Master level pane 225 The Effects pane 231 The Dithering pane 236 Master Section presets 239 Rendering 244 Smart bypass 247 The Monitor window 251 Audio Input 252 Using External effects

255 Spectrum Editor

256 Introduction 256 Basics 260 Defining a region 262 Surgical processing 269 Master Section processing

273 Batch processing

274 Introduction 276 Opening the Batch

Processor

277 Overview of the Window 278 The Input tab – Assembling a

list of files

285 Setting up the processing

tasks to be performed

292 The Output tab – Settings for

created files

299 Scheduling 301 Running and stopping the

batch(es)

301 Using presets for batch

processing

303 Batch file encoding

304 Basic procedure

307 Batch renaming

308 Introduction 308 Setting up which files/clips/

markers to rename

312 Renaming operations 321 About regular expressions

327 Markers

328 Introduction 331 Creating markers 332 About the marker list 333 Marker appearance and visi-

bility

Table of Contents 5

WAVELAB

334 Editing, converting and

naming markers

336 Moving and duplicating

markers

337 Deleting markers 338 Operations involving markers

341 Using Auto Split

342 Introduction 342 The Auto Split dialog

347 Preparing a

Basic Audio CD

348 Creating, opening and saving

Basic Audio CDs

349 About the Basic

Audio CD window

350 Adding files to a Basic

Audio CD

353 Setting the order of the tracks

on the CD

353 Deleting files from Basic

Audio CDs

354 Managing list columns 355 “Unfolding” a track 356 Opening CD tracks for wave

editing

357 About the relation between

the track list and CD markers

358 Working with CD markers 360 Adjusting pauses 360 Naming tracks 360 Other settings 361 Checking the total length of

the CD

361 Playing files in the track list 362 Creating a disc image 363 Exporting audio files from a

track list

364 Preparations done!

365 About the DVD-Audio

format

366 Background information

371 The Audio Montage

372 Introduction 373 The Audio Montage window 378 Assembling the Montage 392 Zooming and navigating 399 Playing back 406 Recording 408 Rearranging clips 433 The Zoom view 436 Editing in the Clips view 441 Managing clips and source

files

445 The volume envelope 457 Using fades and crossfades

in the Montage

469 The pan envelope 470 Transforming clips 474 Adding effects to tracks and

clips

483 Managing effects in the

Plug-ins view

486 The Meta Normalizer 489 Groups 492 Using markers in the Montage 496 Undo/Redo and History 498 File handling in the Audio

Montage

504 Using video tracks 506 Multichannel operation in the

Montage

527 Mixing down – The Render

function

531 Preparing the Audio Montage

for CD/DVD-Audio burning

541 Creating an Audio CD report

WAVELAB

6 Table of Contents

546 Using DVD-A picture and text

tracks

547 Exporting and importing

AES-31 files

549 XML Export/Import of Audio

Montages

551 DVD-Audio projects

552 Creating and opening a

DVD-Audio project

553 Adding Montages to a

DVD-Audio project

554 The DVD-Audio project

window

556 The Main settings dialog 558 Generating DVD menus 566 DVD-Audio text 568 Final preparations

571 Burning an audio CD

572 Introduction 572 Selecting a CD-R unit 573 Testing a basic audio CD

before burning

574 Writing a CD 576 Validating an audio CD after

burning

577 The audio CD format –

Background information

583 Data CD/DVD Projects

584 Introduction 585 Creating a new Data

CD/DVD Project

586 Source window settings 587 Destination window settings 590 The Write dialog for the

Data CD/DVD

593 Importing audio

CD/DVD tracks

594 Importing audio CD tracks

into WaveLab

599 Importing DVD-Audio tracks

into WaveLab

603 Creating labels

604 Introduction 606 Using the Label Editor 614 Defining user variables 616 Printing labels

619 Analysis

620 Global analysis 631 Audio error detection and

correction

637 Audio file comparer 638 3D Frequency Analysis 641 Loudness distribution tool

643 Generating signals

644 Audio Signal Generator 646 DTMF Generator

649 Synchronizing

WaveLab to

external devices

650 Introduction 650 MTC sync 656 Sync to ASIO Positioning

Protocol (APP)

657 Using samplers and

creating loops

658 Introduction 658 Background information 661 Setting up your sampler(s) 663 Transmitting samples

Table of Contents 7

WAVELAB

664 Receiving samples 664 Deleting and getting informa-

tion about samples

665 The Transmit Back feature 665 In case of problems 666 Using WaveLab with

Steinberg HALion

667 Editing sample attributes 669 Basic looping 671 Using the Crossfade Looper 679 Using the Loop Tone

Equalizer

683 Audio Databases

684 What is an Audio Database

and why do I need it?

685 Creating and opening Audio

Databases

685 How Audio Databases are

saved

686 Window overview and

adjustments

687 Adding files to the Audio

Database

693 Customizing the File List 693 Selecting in the File List 694 Finding out where files are

located

694 Opening a file for editing 694 Playing a file 695 Other file operations 699 Working with categories 702 Location operations 703 Filtering the list 704 Finding files 705 Changing the default

categories and keywords

707 Workspaces

708 What are Workspaces? 709 Creating and opening

Workspaces

709 How Workspaces are saved 710 Creating, renaming and

deleting groups

710 File operations

713 Using WaveLab for

backup

714 Background 715 Creating a Backup Plan 723 Performing the backup 725 Opening an archive 728 Other functions

729 Customizing

730 What is customizing? 730 Preferences 731 Folder editing 733 Saving the window layout 734 Styling WaveLab –

Wave windows

739 Styling WaveLab –

Audio Montage windows

744 Working with window layouts 745 Setting default size and posi-

tion for windows

746 Creating a Favorites menu 746 Customizable key/MIDI

commands

753 Organizing plug-in processors

759 Plug-in Processor

Reference

760 About WaveLab plug-ins 768 VST Plug-ins

WAVELAB

8 Table of Contents

791 Sampler Details

792 SDS - Generic Sample Dump

Standard

792 SMDI (Standard SCSI

transfer)

793 Akai S1000/1100 including

PB models

793 Akai S2000/S2800/S3000/

S3200, including all “i”, CD, and “XL” derivatives etc.

794 Ensoniq, EPS, EPS16+,

ASR-10, ASR-88

794 E-mu Esi-32 795 E-mu EIV, e64 and other

samplers running the EOS

operating system

795 Kurzweil K2000 and K2500 796 Roland S-760

797 Troubleshooting

798 General problems 799 Problems with opening files 800 Problems with saving files 800 Recording problems 801 Playback problems 802 Editing problems 802 Audio database and

workspace problems

803 Troubleshooting and

precautions

803 Sampler communication

problems

804 Problems and solutions 805 Questions and Answers 806 Day to day precautions for

trouble free CD writing

807 Hardware and setup issues

809 Key commands

810 File handling 810 Wave display mode 811 Zooming 811 View 812 Playback and cursor position 813 Selecting 815 Editing and Recording 817 Processing 817 Markers 818 Database 818 Miscellaneous

819 Index

Table of Contents 9

WAVELAB

10 Table of Contents

Introduction

Welcome!

Congratulations on your choice of WaveLab! Ever since its early versions WaveLab has enjoyed a high reputation among professional and semiprofessional users. WaveLab is the audio editor of choice, not only in topof-the-line mastering and restoration facilities, but also for any serious engineer or musician.

This new version of WaveLab continues in the tradition of introducing new powerful and exciting features while maintaining the ease of use and workflow that makes working with WaveLab so effective. We are quite confident that version 6.0 will define a new standard in applying psychoacoustic tools to professional audio editing and mastering. WaveLab 6.0 will integrate seamlessly into your existing studio environment, and with your outboard gear.

Steinberg has always shown a strong commitment to protect the investment of loyal customers. WaveLab 6.0 follows this route by introducing the Steinberg key to preserve your competitive advantage.

Your Steinberg Team.

What’s new in WaveLab 6.0?

This section lists the main new functions and features added to the 6.0 version of WaveLab:

• The main wave window and the overview can independently be set to display one of three display modes: Standard waveform display (Wave), the loudness envelope of the sound (Loudness envelope), or as a spectrogram (Spectrum).

• New Spectrum editor offers powerful audio restoration and processing functions. High quality linear-phase filters allow you to remove unwanted artefacts in the audio with surgical precision. You can also process a selected frequency/time region separately via the Master Section.

• New Rename function that can automatically update all file references in other documents such as Audio Montages. Files, clips and markers can also be batch renamed.

• Marker regions can be rendered as separate audio files.

• Improved file read/write performance.

• No limitation on audio file size.

• DIRAC engine - perhaps the highest quality algorithm for Time stretch/Pitch shift processing available today.

• Crystal Resampler plug-in, a professional sample rate converter providing exceptional transparency and preservation of the frequency content.

WAVELAB

1 – 12 Introduction

• External gear plug-in allows you to process audio via external equipment.

• New Audio input plug-in replaces the Live input feature, with the option to record the incoming signal.

• Option to save an audio selection as an Audio Montage clip.

• Redesigned graphic user interface in all menus and dialogs.

• Auto Split enhancements includes Split to specific file length and Split according to a text file (XML support).

• Clip files can be created when using Auto Split.

• The Loudness Normalizer allows you specify the desired loudness of a file to a given value. A high quality limiter coupled with multi-pass analysis ensures very accurate results.

• The Pan Normalizer allows you to process the left/right audio channels in a stereo file to the same loudness.

• The Level envelope processor can control the level of an audio file or selection using an envelope curve.

• The Pitch Quantize processor can automatically detect and correct the pitch of an audio file.

• Effect morphing - gradually blend two processed audio ranges with a custom envelope for sample accurate effect transitions.

• Global Bypass tool compensates for the loudness difference between processed/unprocessed audio.

• New Edit folders dialog manages all default file folders used by WaveLab.

• Define up to 3 temporary file folders to further improve file performance.

• View settings files (extension “.mem”) can store/recall information relating to a specific audio file such as window/zoom/scroll positions, Master Section preset etc.

• Audio peak files (extension “.gpk”) can now be stored in a separate folder.

• Improved graphic speed for displaying large files. Peak files can also be created in the background with graphical progress monitoring.

• Updated preference dialogs.

• Advanced “Insert silence” function allows you to insert user specified ambient background noise instead of silence, with optional cross-faded insertion.

• K-System support for loudness metering.

• New Audio Montage tab can manage all plug-ins used in a Montage in a variety of ways. Copy and paste plug-ins between clips or tracks, or load and save whole plug-in chains.

• Batch processing of Audio Montages.

• WaveLab can now be slaved to the ASIO Positioning Protocol, for sample accurate synchronization.

• You can now assign MIDI commands for WaveLab functions.

Best of all, WaveLab is continuously developed and refined, in collaboration with our users – from professional audio engineers to hobbyists. Your input has helped make this version of WaveLab the most complete, flexible and user-friendly ever!

Introduction 1 – 13

WAVELAB

How you can reach us

After having installed and launched the program, you will find a number of useful Steinberg Web links on the Help menu (“Steinberg on the internet” submenu). These allow you to get online support, check for updates, get answers to frequently asked questions, etc.

These features require that you have a working Internet connection.

WAVELAB

1 – 14 Introduction

Requirements

This is what you need…

To use WaveLab you need the following:

• A PC with Windows XP or 2000 installed and ready.

A free USB port is also required. For more details about the computer requirements, see below.

• A Multimedia PC compatible, 16-bit (or better) audio card.

By audio card we mean a card capable of recording and playing back audio, using the computer’s hard disk as storage media. See “About audio cards” on page 18.

To take advantage of WaveLab’s more advanced features, you need the following:

• To utilize WaveLab’s CD burning capabilities, you will need a CD recorder.

Your CD recorder must support the disc-at-once write mode.

• To utilize WaveLab’s DVD-A burning capabilities, you will need a DVD recorder.

• To utilize WaveLab’s surround and multichannel capabilities, you will need an audio card with multiple inputs and outputs.

Furthermore, the audio card must have an ASIO driver

• DirectX 9 or later must be installed.

Computer requirements

Below, the minimum computer requirements are listed, with recommendations where applicable. The following sections describe each system component (processor, RAM, etc.) in more detail.

Minimum requirements

• Intel Pentium III/AMD Athlon 800 MHz (Intel Pentium IV/AMD Athlon or AMD Opteron 2,4GHz).

• Newer dual core CPUs are recommended.

• 256 MB RAM (1 GB recommended).

• A monitor and video card with a resolution of 24 bit (32bit recommended).

• 50 MB of free hard disk space (10 GB recommended).

• Windows XP or 2000 (Windows XP recommended).

• Windows MME compatible audio hardware (ASIO compatible audio hardware recommended).

• CD or DVD ROM drive for installation (CD/DVD writer recommended).

• USB port.

• DirectX version 9 or later is required for using video and some export functions.

WAVELAB

2 – 16 Requirements

RAM

Since WaveLab is disk based, the amount of RAM does not limit the size of audio files you can work with. Even with moderate amounts of RAM, you can have many files open at the same time. However, when more RAM is available, some processes can be accelerated by WaveLab.

Processing power

The difference between running WaveLab on a faster computer and a slower one is noticeable in many cases:

• More real-time processing

The faster the computer, the more real-time plug-ins you will be able to use.

• Faster “off-line” processing and analysis tasks

Certain types of processing which make heavy demands on the computer will be completed more quickly on a faster machine.

• Screen updates

Scrolling, editing and manipulating objects is “snappier” on a faster machine.

Hard disk

Audio files are relatively big. Approximately 10.6 MB of hard disk space is used up for every minute of 16 bit stereo/44.1 kHz audio recorded. For 24 bit/48 kHz audio or higher, the audio files are of course a lot bigger. Therefore we recommend that you get the largest hard disk you can afford. The speed of the hard disk will affect some of the processing operations. This is mainly noticeable when you work with very long files.

In addition, a fast hard disk is absolutely crucial for CD-R and DVD-R burning. If the hard disk is slow, your recorder might not be able to write at its maximum possible speed.

Do not use file compression on hard disks where audio files are stored!

Requirements 2 – 17

WAVELAB

Sampler requirements

To communicate with samplers, you need the following:

• A MIDI interface, or…

• A SCSI card, or…

• Both a MIDI interface and a SCSI card.

Exactly which of the three is most appropriate depends on the capabilities of your sampler and how you intend to communicate with it. See “About

the various communication methods” on page 658.

SCSI card considerations

WaveLab works with SCSI cards that are 100% Windows compatible.

If you are buying a SCSI card specifically to communicate with the sampler, we recommend that you get an original Adaptec card. Small deviations in SCSI implementations can cause transfer problems.

About audio cards

WaveLab works with any Multimedia PC compatible audio card. However, the audio quality varies dramatically between cards.

For serious work with WaveLab, we recommend that you get a card with the highest possible specifications.

However, if you use WaveLab to edit files for use with other hardware (such as a hard disk based recording system using its own audio converters) any loss in audio quality that you experience when listening to files in WaveLab (due to deficiencies in the audio card) will not final audio files in any way.

For professional use (mastering, etc.) we recommend that you get a card capable of playing back files in 24 bit resolution.

affect the

the

Surround

To use the surround capabilities of WaveLab’s Audio Montage, you need an ASIO compatible audio card with multiple inputs and outputs. In a surround configuration, each WaveLab channel can be routed to separate outputs and inputs on the audio card.

WAVELAB

2 – 18 Requirements

About the System Information feature

After having installed and launched WaveLab, you can get a very detailed report describing your computer system by selecting “System Information” on the Help menu. This function analyses your system and lists operating system specifics; processor(s), memory, hard drives, and much more. This is especially useful if you need to contact Technical Support, since this allows you to describe your computer configuration accurately.

Requirements 2 – 19

WAVELAB

2 – 20 Requirements

Installing and setting up

Setting up the computer

Before proceeding, your computer should be set up and the following items should be installed:

• Windows (see “This is what you need…” on page 16 for details on which version to use).

• The audio card and its driver.

Checking the audio card

To make sure the audio card will work as expected, you can perform the following two tests:

•

Use the software included with the audio card to make sure you can record and play back without problems.

•

Use the Media Player application (included with Windows and described in the Windows documentation) to record and play back audio.

Colors

At this point you might want to check and for example change the number

of colors you use on your computer screen. See your Windows documentation for instructions on how to do this. The recommended setting for WaveLab is 24 or 32 bit mode (“True Color”).

WAVELAB

3 – 22 Installing and setting up

Installation procedure

The Steinberg Key

Please read the following section before installing the WaveLab software.

Included with the WaveLab package, you will find the Steinberg Key (sometimes referred to as a “dongle”), a hardware copy protection device that is part of the WaveLab copy protection scheme. WaveLab will not run if there is no Steinberg Key.

The Steinberg Key

The Steinberg Key is, in fact, a little computer on which your Steinberg software licenses are stored. All hardware-protected Steinberg products use the same type of key, and you can store more than one license on one key. Also, licenses can (within certain limits) be transferred between keys – which is helpful, e.g. if you want to sell a piece of software.

•

If you already own copy-protected Steinberg software, you must remove any existing Steinberg Keys from the computer’s USB port before starting the WaveLab installation routine.

•

If you are using other copy-protected Steinberg products, you may want to transfer all licenses for your applications to only one Steinberg Key, thus using only one USB port of your computer. More information on the transfer of licenses between keys can be found in the help for the Syncrosoft License Control Center (which can be found in the Start/Programs menu of your computer).

The Steinberg Key must not be plugged in before the installation of WaveLab. Otherwise the operating system of your computer will register it as new USB hardware and try to find drivers that won’t be present before WaveLab installation.

Installing and setting up 3 – 23

WAVELAB

Installing the software

The installation procedure unpacks all the files and automatically puts them in the right places.

1. Insert the CD-ROM disk in the drive.

The installation program should start automatically after a few seconds. If, for some reason it doesn’t – for instance if you have “Auto Insert Notification” deactivated for your CD drive – perform steps 2-4 below. Otherwise, proceed to step 5.

2. Launch the Explorer, open the “My Computer” window or select “Run” from the Start menu.

3. Locate and double click on the drive symbol for the CD-ROM drive.

4. Double click on the “setup” symbol (setup.exe).

5. Follow the instructions on screen.

• If you are updating from WaveLab 4, WaveLab 5 or WaveLab Essential

you will need to enter both the serial number and the original CD that came with the previous version.

6. At one point of the installation a dialog appears requesting you to connect your Steinberg Key – do so.

The first time the copy protection device is plugged in, it will be registered as a new hardware device, and a dialog will appear asking you whether you would like to find drivers for the device manually or automatically. You should select to find drivers automatically, and click OK to proceed and close the dialog.

7. Finally, a dialog informs you that the installation was successful.

A restart may be requested – but if no dialog requests a restart it is not necessary to do so.

When the installation is finished, the program is found among your other programs on the Start menu and/or the desktop.

This completes the installation of your WaveLab program! But, you’re not really done yet…

Register your software!

Registering your software will make sure you are entitled to technical support and kept aware of updates and news regarding WaveLab.

WAVELAB

3 – 24 Installing and setting up

Launching WaveLab

1. Make sure the Steinberg Key is plugged into the USB port.

2. Launch WaveLab.

WaveLab starts.

• The Steinberg Key has to be plugged in at all times when running WaveLab.

Program settings

Before you start working, you should make some settings:

Audio card settings

You need to specify which audio card and driver you intend to use. WaveLab can communicate with the audio card via any of the standard protocols; ASIO, MME or WDM. Note:

• For multichannel operation and other WaveLab features like the External gear plug-in you must use an ASIO driver.

Selecting an ASIO driver

1. Open the Preferences–Audio device tab.

2. Select the ASIO driver from the “Playback device” pop-up menu.

Note that the “Playback device” menu heading has now changed to “Playback/Record device” and the Recording device section has been greyed out. This is because with ASIO, the same driver is always used both for output and input.

3. If you click the “Control Panel” button the audio card settings application (usually installed with the audio card) for the ASIO driver opens.

In the Control Panel you may find settings for buffer size, digital formats, additional I/O connections, etc. depending on the audio card and the driver.

4. Click on the “Connections” button.

The ASIO Audio connections dialog will appear, listing all available channel inputs and outputs in WaveLab.

Internally there are 8 fixed WaveLab channels that can be freely mapped to ASIO outputs and inputs on your audio interface. “Surround channels” are the available surround speaker channels. See

nections dialog”

dio connections

on page 507

dialog.

for more information about the ASIO Au-

“The ASIO Audio Con-

5. Close the dialog.

Installing and setting up 3 – 25

WAVELAB

• When using ASIO, the playback resolution is set from the ASIO driver (you may find a setting for this in the ASIO Control Panel, depending on the hardware and driver).

Therefore, the Playback Resolution settings will be greyed out.

Selecting an MME/WDM driver

1. Select “Preferences…” from the Options menu.

2. Click on the Audio device tab.

3. Select the audio card you want to use for recording and playback from

the pop-ups.

If you only have one audio card you can also select the “Microsoft Sound Mapper” options (the sound mapper is a “virtual audio card” which “maps” all audio to your real card). However this does not let you take full advantage of the card’s driver when recording audio and is therefore not recommended.

4. Choose your “Playback Resolution”.

Additional audio settings

There are other settings in the Preferences that affect audio playback and recording. We recommend that you try the default settings before you change anything, since these work well in most cases.

On the “Audio Card” tab, you will find the following settings:

• Playback Buffer Number and Size.

These determine how much RAM memory is used for buffering when playing back. If you get playback problems such as dropouts or glitches, you should try to increase these values. Click the question mark icon in the dialog for details.

With ASIO drivers, you may find these settings in the ASIO Control Panel.

• Recording Buffer Number and Size (not available when using ASIO).

These determine how much RAM is used for buffering when recording. If you get dropouts in the recorded audio, you should try increasing these values. Click the question mark icon in the dialog for details.

On the Preferences–File tab, you will find the following settings:

• Disk block buffer size.

Governs the buffer size used when WaveLab is reading data from the hard disk. If you experience problems in a read intensive scenario (such as playing back an Audio Montage with a lot of simultaneous clips), you should try changing this value. If you change this setting, playback will stop when you leave the dialog.

WAVELAB

3 – 26 Installing and setting up

• Use system cache.

When this is deactivated (default), WaveLab reads files directly from the hard disk, bypassing Windows’ file cache.

We recommend that you leave this option deactivated!

The option is available since it may remedy problems on certain systems with slow disk drives. Note:

• If you activate this, avoid using large disk block buffer size values!

• After activating this option, you need to close and reopen all open files, for the setting to take effect!

About latency

In the Playback section of the Audio device tab, you will find an indication of the current latency (at 16bit/44.1kHz stereo). Latency is the delay between when audio is “sent” from the program and when you actually hear it. The latency in an audio system depends on the audio hardware, its drivers and their settings. It’s usually possible to reduce latency by lowering the number and size of the playback/recording buffers. However, please note:

While a very low latency can be crucial in a real-time DAW application such as Steinberg Nuendo or Cubase, this is not strictly the case with WaveLab. Here the important issues are optimum and stable playback and editing precision. Therefore, you should not try to reach the lowest possible latency figures when working with WaveLab. And again, should you get dropouts, crackles or glitches during playback, raise the Buffer Number setting on the Preferences–Audio device tab.

Installing and setting up 3 – 27

WAVELAB

Temporary files

You also need to specify where WaveLab should store its temporary files. Temporary files are used for certain operations, such as WaveLab’s extensive Undo function (see “Undo and Redo” on page 47).

WaveLab allows you to specify up to three different folders for storing temporary files. If you have access to more than one drive, saving your temp files on separate drives (not partitions) can considerably speed up performance.

For example, if your source files are located on the C: drive, you could specify D:\temp and E:\temp as temporary folders.

This will not only improve performance, but also reduce disk fragmentation.

1. In Windows, create a separate folder in which to store your “temp” files.

The folder(s) should be on your fastest hard disk and you should make sure you have plenty of room available on that hard disk (or partition). Putting the “temp” files on a separate drive (that is, not the same drive as your regular files) will speed up file operations considerably.

2. Select “Folders…” from the Options menu.

This opens the Folders dialog, where you can edit how various WaveLab folders are handled (see “Folder editing” on page 731).

3. Click on the plus sign beside the “Temporary folders” item (this is located in the “Work folders” category).

Three possible folders can be specified for temp files.

4. Selecting one of the Temporary Folder items will show the current location where the temp files will be created in the Folder field to the right.

5. Either type in the path to the directory or you can browse the drives to locate and select the folder via a standard Windows file dialog.

Click OK to select a folder and exit the file dialog.

WAVELAB

3 – 28 Installing and setting up

Peak and view memories

A peak file is a small file with the extension “.gpk” automatically created by WaveLab each time a file is modified or opened in WaveLab (if it hasn’t been previously). The peak file contains information about the waveform, and determines how it is drawn in the wave window.

View memory files (extension “.mem”) store view information relating to a specific audio file such as window and scroll positions, etc., and optionally any Master Section effects used – see “Saving view settings” on

page 124.

By default, peak files and view memory files are stored in the same folder as the related audio file. Setting this to another folder on a different drive will also improve performance to a certain degree. Regardless of whether this folder is on a different drive or not you also get the advantage of not having the audio file folder cluttered with non-audio files if a separate folder is used.

This folder can be specified from the Folders dialog, either directly or via the Preferences–Wave edit tab.

Select Preferences from the Options menu and select the Wave edit tab.

• If the “Save view settings in companion file” option is activated, view memory files will be saved in the same folder as the related audio file.

• If you select “Save in independent folder” you can click the “Edit” button, which will open the Folder dialog with the “Peak and view memories” work folder selected.

From here you can navigate to a new folder location to store the peak and view memory temp files.

Installing and setting up 3 – 29

WAVELAB

Installing a CD/DVD recorder

Hardware installation/connection

For general instructions on installing internal or connecting external recorders via USB or Firewire, please refer to the instructions that came with the computer, or the recorder itself.

For WaveLab, please just check the following points:

• Make sure to have the latest firmware version installed in your recorder unit. For CD recorders, the firmware you have must support Disk-at-Once mode! In addition, running a unit with older firmware might for example prevent you from writing sub-index markers into the tracks.

Checking the installation of the CD/DVD recorder

You might want to check that the recorder unit was actually found by the program. Proceed as follows:

1. Select “CD/DVD Information…” from the Tools menu.

The CD/DVD Info dialog appears.

2. Check that your recorder unit appears in the list to the left.

The list will also contain any regular DVD-ROM drives, etc. If your CD/DVD recorder isn’t listed, there’s either something wrong with the installation or the unit is not supported by WaveLab.

WAVELAB

3 – 30 Installing and setting up

+ 801 hidden pages