Steinberg Wavelab Studio - 6.0 Instruction Manual

Operation Manual

Operation Manual by Anders Nordmark,
Revision for WaveLab Studio by Stefan Zachau

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. The Mac logo is a trademark used under license. Macintosh and Power Macintosh are registered
trademarks.

© Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, 2006.

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

7 Introduction

8 Welcome!
8 Key command conventions
8 How you can reach us

9 Installing and setting up

10 Setting up the computer
10 Installation procedure
11 Register your software!
11 Launching WaveLab Studio
11 Program settings
13 Installing a CD/DVD recorder
14 Installation done! Where do I go next?
14 About the Tracer application

15 Overview

16 Get to know WaveLab Studio
16 The windows and what you can do with them
18 Find your way around in WaveLab Studio

19 Basic methods

20 Why you should read this chapter
20 Getting help
20 Undo and Redo
21 Working with windows
23 Dockable control bars
25 The status bar
25 Speed menus
26 Units of time and level
26 Setting values
28 Presets
29 About non-modal dialogs
29 Using the computer keyboard

30 Editing in the Wave window

31 About this chapter
31 Creating new empty documents
31 Opening Waves
33 Window overview and adjustments
35 Setting the zoom factor
38 Navigating through the file
38 Snapshots
39 Setting the ruler start position
39 Working with a meter based display
39 Setting the wave cursor position

40 Selecting
44 Basic editing commands
49 File handling in Wave windows
56 Editing audio properties and file attributes

57 Playback and recording

58 Playing back
63 Recording

68 Metering

69 Introduction
69 The meters

76 Off-line processing

77 Introduction
77 Applying processing
77 Level Normalizer
78 Gain Change
78 Loudness Normalizer
80 Dynamics
82 Level envelope
83 Fade-in and fade-out
83 Crossfade
85 Invert Phase
85 Reverse
85 Eliminate DC Offset
85 Waveform Restorer
85 Time Stretch
87 Pitch Correction
88 Pitch Bend
89 Harmonization
90 Hi-fi Chorus
90 EQ
91 Convert sample rate
91 Support for reNOVAtor™

92 Master Section

93 Introduction
93 The Master Section window
94 About the signal path
94 The Master level pane
96 The Effects pane
99 The Dithering pane
101 Master Section presets
102 Rendering
104 The Monitor window

107 Spectrum Display

108 Selecting Spectrum display mode

4

Table of Contents

110 Batch processing

111 Introduction
112 Opening the Batch Processor
112 Overview of the Window
113 The Input tab – Assembling a list of files
116 Setting up the processing tasks to be performed
120 The Output tab – Settings for created files
123 Scheduling
124 Running and stopping the batch(es)
124 Using presets for batch processing

125 Batch file encoding

126 Basic procedure

127 Markers

128 Introduction
129 Creating markers
130 About the marker list
130 Marker appearance and visibility
130 Editing, converting and naming markers
131 Moving and duplicating markers
131 Deleting markers
131 Operations involving markers

134 Using Auto Split

135 Introduction
135 The Auto Split dialog

136 The Audio Montage

137 Introduction
137 The Audio Montage window
139 Assembling the Montage
144 Zooming and navigating
147 Playing back
150 Recording
151 Rearranging clips
160 Editing in the Clips view
162 Managing clips and source files
164 The volume envelope
170 Using fades and crossfades in the Montage
174 The pan envelope
175 Transforming clips
177 Adding effects to tracks and clips

181 Managing effects in the Plug-ins view
182 The Meta Normalizer
183 Groups
185 Using markers in the Montage
187 Undo/Redo and History
188 File handling in the Audio Montage
191 Using video tracks
192 Mixing down – The Render function
193 Preparing the Audio Montage for CD burning
196 Creating an Audio CD report

199 Burning an audio CD

200 Introduction
200 Selecting a CD-R unit
200 Testing an audio CD before burning
201 Writing a CD
202 The audio CD format – Background information

204 Data CD/DVD Projects

205 Introduction
205 Creating a new Data CD/DVD Project
205 Source window settings
206 Destination window settings
207 The Write dialog for the Data CD/DVD

208 Importing audio CD tracks

209 Importing audio CD tracks into WaveLab Studio

212 Creating labels

213 Introduction
213 Using the Label Editor
215 Positioning objects
217 Defining user variables
218 Printing labels

220 Analysis

221 Global analysis
225 3D Frequency Analysis

228 Generating signals

229 Audio Signal Generator
230 DTMF Generator

5

Table of Contents

231 Synchronizing WaveLab Studio to ex-

ternal devices

232 Introduction
232 MTC sync

235 Sampling and creating loops

236 Introduction
236 Using WaveLab Studio with Steinberg HALion
236 Editing sample attributes
237 Basic looping
238 Using the Crossfade Looper
242 Using the Loop Tone Equalizer

276 Troubleshooting

277 General problems
277 Problems with opening files
277 Problems with saving files
278 Recording problems
278 Playback problems
279 Editing problems
279 Troubleshooting and precautions
279 Problems and solutions
279 Questions and Answers
280 Day to day precautions for trouble-free CD writing
280 Hardware and setup issues

244 Requirements

245 This is what you need…
245 Computer requirements
246 About audio cards
246 About the System Information feature

247 Customizing

248 What is customizing?
248 Preferences
248 Folder editing
249 Saving the window layout
249 Styling WaveLab Studio – Wave windows
251 Styling WaveLab Studio – Audio Montage win-

dows

254 Working with window layouts
254 Setting default size and position for windows
255 Creating a Favorites menu
255 Customizable key commands
257 Organizing plug-in processors

260 Plug-in processor reference

261 About WaveLab Studio plug-ins
264 VST Plug-ins

282 Key commands

283 File handling
283 Wave display mode
283 View
283 Zooming
283 Processing
284 Playback and cursor position
284 Selecting
285 Editing and Recording
285 Markers
285 Miscellaneous

286 Index

6

Table of Contents

1

Introduction

Welcome!

Congratulations on your choice of WaveLab Studio,
which is the audio editor of choice, not only in top-of-the­line mastering and restoration facilities, but also for any
serious engineer or musician.

WaveLab Studio is continuously developed and refined, in
collaboration with our users – from professional audio en­gineers to hobbyists. Your input helps making this pro­gram one of the most flexible and user-friendly ever!

Find out about the ease of use and workflow that makes
working with WaveLab Studio so effective.

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

Your Steinberg Team.

Key command conventions

Many of the default key commands in WaveLab Studio
use modifier keys. For example, the default key command
for Undo is [Ctrl]-[Z] under Windows.

When key commands with modifier keys are described in
this manual, they are shown with the Windows modifier
key first, in the following way:

[Win modifier key]-[key]

For example, [Ctrl-[Z] means "press [Ctrl] , then press [Z]".

Similarly, [Alt]-[X] means "press [Alt] then press [X]".

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.

Introduction

8

2

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 245 for de-

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

of colors you use on your computer

Installation procedure

The Steinberg Key

!

Please read the following section before installing
the WaveLab Studio software.

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

The Steinberg Key is, in fact, a little computer on which
your Steinberg software licenses are stored. All hardware­protected 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 Studio
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 Studio. 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 Studio installation.

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.

The Steinberg Key

10

Installing and setting up

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 Studio
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 Studio.

Launching WaveLab Studio

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

2. Launch WaveLab Studio.

WaveLab Studio starts.

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

Program settings

Before you start working, you should make some settings:

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 Studio. Select the channels you want
to use for stereo output and input.

5. Close the dialog.

• 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”.

Audio card settings

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

Installing and setting up

11

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 Studio 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.

• Use system cache.

When this is deactivated (default), WaveLab Studio 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 Stu­dio. 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 Studio. And
again, should you get dropouts, crackles or glitches
during playback, raise the Buffer Number setting on
the Preferences–Audio device tab.

Temporary files

You also need to specify where WaveLab Studio should
store its temporary files. Temporary files are used for cer­tain operations, such as WaveLab Studio’s extensive
Undo function (see “Undo and Redo” on page 20).

WaveLab Studio 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.

12

Installing and setting up

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
Studio folders are handled .

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.

Peak and view memories

A peak file is a small file with the extension “.gpk” automat­ically created by WaveLab Studio each time a file is mod­ified or opened in WaveLab Studio (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 54.

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 non­audio 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 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 Studio, 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.

13

Installing and setting up

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 Studio.

Installation done! Where do I go next?

There are three things we suggest you do:

• Read through the rest of this book and try out the differ­ent possibilities as you go along.

• Examine your WaveLab Studio directory and other disks
included in this package for files that might be useful to
you.

• If you run into problems, check the Troubleshooting
chapter in the Operation Manual.

About the Tracer application

In the WaveLab Studio directory created on your hard disk
during installation, you will find a folder called “Tools”.
Among other things, this folder contains a small applica­tion called Tracer. This is a diagnostic tool that tracks and
logs various procedures that WaveLab Studio executes
when it is launched, e.g. the loading of plug-ins.

Should you run into problems with WaveLab Studio and
need to contact technical support, you can use the Tracer
application and pass on the information it displays to the
technical support staff. This could be of great assistance
since it might be possible to see exactly which operation
caused a problem.

• To use the Tracer, locate the file Tracer.exe in the Windows
Explorer and double click on it – or use the Run command on
the Start menu to browse for the file.

• After you have activated the Tracer application, launch Wave­Lab Studio.

• All loading procedures are displayed as plain text, and you can
copy this information and then paste it into, for example, an e­mail.

14

Installing and setting up

3

Overview

Get to know WaveLab Studio

Welcome to WaveLab Studio!

This chapter is intended to get you acquainted with the
program. We will here briefly describe its fundamental
functions and main features, so as to point you in the right
direction on your road to mastering all of the possibilities
that WaveLab Studio offers.

The windows and what you can do with them

Working with WaveLab Studio, you will encounter a num­ber of different windows that let you do different things.
Editing audio files, compiling files for burning CDs or
DVDs, applying effects and much, much more. This is an
overview of the main windows in the program.

The Wave window

This is a Wave window, a graphical representation of an
audio file. It consists of two parts – the lower is the Main
view, and this is where you can perform various audio ed­iting operations such as copying, cutting, pasting, moving,
deleting, etc.

The upper part is the Overview and serves to let you easily
navigate through long files.

You can read more about the Wave window and the oper­ations you can perform in it in the chapter “Editing in the

Wave window” on page 30.

The Audio Montage window

This is an Audio Montage window. An Audio Montage lets
you compile and edit multiple clips (references to audio
files on disk) on one or several tracks.

As you can see, the window consists of two panes. The
lower one is called the Track View, and this is where you
assemble the clips. The appearance of the upper pane de­pends on which of the 10 tabs at the very top of the win­dow is selected. These tabs give you access to various
functions.

After you have imported audio files as clips into an Audio
Montage, you can arrange, edit and play back the clips.
You can also apply effects, fades or crossfades, and much
more, and last but not least, you can directly create CDs.
All in all, the Audio Montage is an excellent tool for ad­vanced music CD creation.

Read more about the Audio Montage and its features in
the chapter “The Audio Montage” on page 136.

16

Overview

The Data CD/DVD Project window

The Data CD/DVD window can be used for compiling and
creating data CDs/DVDs (discs that exclusively contain
computer data) and Mixed Mode CDs (discs that contain
both data and audio).

The window is divided into two panes; the upper is called
the source window, and the lower is the destination win­dow. You drag files from the source window to the desti­nation window, in which you can rename, remove and
move files before burning a CD or DVD.

For a detailed description of the Data CD/DVD window and
what you can do with it, see “Creating labels” on page 212.

The CD/DVD Label Editor

The Master Section

This window is the Label Editor. Here you can design and
print custom labels for the CDs or DVDs you create. You
can create labels for both the front and back of a jewel
case, as well as for the discs.

Read more about this in the chapter “Creating labels” on

page 212.

This is a very important part of WaveLab Studio, called the
Master Section. It has a number of uses including:

• Adding real-time effect plug-in processors such as Chorus,
Reverb, etc.

• Applying effects to files so that they are permanently made a
part of the files (as opposed to using them in real-time).

• Monitoring and controlling the WaveLab Studio output level.

• Adding dithering.

For details, see “Master Section” on page 92.

17

Overview

Find your way around in WaveLab Studio

Editing and processing

Where do I go if I want to…

• Edit an existing audio file?

When you open an audio file, it appears in a Wave window, in which you
can edit it in various ways. See “Editing in the Wave window” on page 30.

• Compile and edit several audio files on multiple tracks?

Create an Audio Montage. See “The Audio Montage” on page 136.

• Apply processing to a wave file?

The Process menu contains a number of options for manipulating wave
files, including fade-in/out, normalize, time stretch and much more – see

“Off-line processing” on page 76. You can also use the Render function

in the Master Section to apply effects to a file.

• Apply processing and effects to multiple files in one go?

You do this with a function called batch processing. See “The Audio

Montage” on page 136.

• Convert an audio file into another audio format?

There are several ways: You can use either the “Save as” command or
the “Save Special” command on the File menu (see “Saving in another

format (Save as…)” on page 51), or the “Render” function in the Master

Section (see “Rendering” on page 102). Finally, batch file encoding lets
you convert multiple files to another format – see “Batch file encoding”
on page 125.

CD/DVD creation

Where do I go if I want to…

• Create an audio CD that can be played back in a regu-

lar CD player?

You create an Audio Montage and use the CD Wizard and/or set individ­ual CD track markers (see “The Audio Montage” on page 136).

• Create a data CD/DVD or a Mixed Mode CD/DVD con-

taining audio, data and video?

You do this in a Data CD/DVD window. See “Data CD/DVD Projects” on

page 204.

• Create labels for the CDs/DVDs I make?

This is done in the Label Editor. See “Creating labels” on page 212.

The above are just a few pointers to some of the funda­mental functions in WaveLab Studio. While using them,
you will discover a multitude of other features and func­tions that let you make full use of the possibilities of this
amazing program.

Have fun exploring WaveLab Studio!

Playback and recording

Where do I go if I want to…

• Play back with real-time effects?

Effects are added in the Master Section, see “Master Section” on page 92.
In Audio Montages you can also add individual track and clip effects, see

“Adding effects to tracks and clips” on page 177.

• Record new audio files?

Use the Record button on the Transport bar. The new file will appear in a
Wave window, and can also be added as a new clip in a Montage. See

“Recording” on page 63.

• Record songs from an audio CD into WaveLab Studio?

You don’t – you import them directly from the disc. On the Tools menu
there is an option called “Import Audio CD tracks” (see “Importing audio

CD tracks into WaveLab Studio” on page 209).

Overview

18

4

Basic methods

Why you should read this chapter

This chapter describes general methods that you will use
when working with WaveLab Studio. Getting accustomed
with these procedures will allow you to work more effec­tively with the program.

Getting help

WaveLab Studio comes with a detailed help system, mak­ing it easy to look up procedures and descriptions from
within the program. There are several ways to access the
help system:

• By selecting “Operation Manual” from the Help menu.

• This takes you to the help in Adobe Acrobat format (ex-

tension “.pdf”). This PDF file contains all chapters of the
manual including additional sections describing plug-ins,
key commands and troubleshooting procedures.

• By pressing [F1].

Undo and Redo

For this reason, WaveLab Studio will need to store files on
your hard disk, in the folder you have specified for the tem­porary files (see “Temporary files” on page 12). These files
are automatically deleted each time you close or save the
related document.

Limiting the Undo function

If you run out of hard disk space or if you are applying pro­cessing to extremely long sections of waves, you might
want to put a limit on the Undo function (applicable to
Wave windows only):

1. Select “Preferences” from the Options menu and click

the Wave edit tab.

2. Uncheck the “Unlimited” option in the Undo/Redo

section.

3. Change the Limit number to the desired value.

WaveLab Studio has an extremely extensive Undo func­tion, applicable when working in Wave windows, Audio
Montages or the CD Label Editor. You can:

• Undo as many steps back as you like, by using the Undo
item on the Edit menu.

The only limitation is the available hard disk space. You can also use the
shortcuts [Ctrl]-[Z] or [F3] to undo. [F3] has the added advantage in that
you can undo even if a modal dialog is currently open.

• Redo as many steps as you like, by using the Redo item
on the Edit menu (or by pressing [Ctrl]-[Y] or [F4]).

Furthermore, each window has its own undo “history”, so
you can click on any window and undo the last changes
made there, even if you afterwards worked in another win­dow.

About Undo and disk space

Many undo operations require no memory or disk space.
However, operations that modify actual wave data (like
time stretch, EQ, etc.) require that a file copy of the se­lected part of the wave is stored, so that it can be brought
back when you need to redo.

Basic methods

Clearing the undo

There might be situations where you have “collected” a
large number of undo possibilities that you know you don’t
need. You might then clear the whole undo “buffer” for
one file at a time. This will free up some primary memory
(RAM) but more importantly it will also delete all the “undo
files” from your hard disk, to free up space.

1. Select “Clear undo” from the Edit menu.

A window appears informing you of how much RAM and hard disk space
you will gain by this operation.

20

2. Click OK.

!

Please note that this function works on one docu­ment at a time. It is only the undo buffer for the file in
the active window that will be cleared. Also note that
it only applies to Wave windows.

Working with windows

Quick window switching

• To “cycle” between all open windows, press [Ctrl]-[Tab]

or [Ctrl]-[F6].

• If you release the [Ctrl] key, and use any of these com-

mands again, you will switch to the previous window,
rather than the next window in the stack.

This allows you to quickly move back and forth between two windows.

Basic window handling

WaveLab Studio follows the basic guidelines for the Win­dows interface, which means standard “Windows proce­dures” apply.

Closing Wave windows

You can close a document window by clicking its close
button, by selecting Close from the File menu or by press­ing [Ctrl]-[W]. If document window(s) contain unsaved
changes, you will be asked whether you want to save
those changes before closing.

Ö If you hold down [Ctrl]+[Shift] when clicking the close
button, the window closes immediately. Any changes you
have made will not be saved.

Ö You can also close all windows in one go (either all
Wave windows, or all windows regardless of type), by se­lecting the corresponding option from the Windows
menu.

Minimizing Wave windows

WaveLab Studio windows are minimized like any other,
but there are also options for minimizing all Wave win­dows or all windows (regardless of type, as with closing,
see above), from the Window menu.

The document switch bar

A quick way to switch between the open document win­dows is to use the document switch bar.

In this example, clicking on the tab will bring the “MoonProject”
window to front.

Ö You can position the document switch bar at the top,
bottom, left or right side of the screen by using the docu­ment switch bar submenu on the View menu.

This submenu also lets you hide the document switch bar, if you like.

Panes

Several of WaveLab Studio’s windows are divided into
panes. Panes are separated by dividers. For example, a
Wave window can have two panes, the Overview and the
Main view.

Panes

Dividers

Quitting

When you quit the program, and have files with unsaved
changes, the “Exiting with modified documents” dialog,
see “Save All” on page 53, appears. Selecting all files in
the list and clicking Save Selected, ensures that all
changes made to any and all files, are saved.

Basic methods

The panes and dividers in a Database window.

21

Adjusting the size of a pane

1. Position the mouse over the divider between the two
panes.

The pointer turns into a two-way arrow.

2. Drag the divider to adjust the pane size.

Hiding and revealing a pane

In some windows, a pane can be hidden altogether.

To hide a pane, drag the border between the two panes all
the way up or double click it. To reveal the pane again,
drag the miniature divider symbol down or double click it.

The miniature divider symbol

You can also hide/show the Overview pane in the Wave
window by pressing [O] on the computer keyboard.

“Folding” windows

If you find a window takes up too much screen space, but
you still don’t want to close it, you can “fold it in” by click­ing on the fold-in icon on the title bar. For dialogs, you can
also double click on the title bar.

The fold-in icon

The normal Time Stretch dialog…
…and when “folded in”.

The Document icon

The Document icon

WaveLab Studio adds another symbol to some document
windows, the Document icon. This is used to drag the
whole document to various other windows, such as Audio
Montages or Data CD/DVD windows.

To return to normal size, just click again.

Unsaved changes indicator

When you have made changes to a document window, an
asterisk will be displayed after the document name in the
title bar until you save the document.

22

Basic methods

Working with multiple windows

You can edit the same data in more than one Wave win­dow. Among other things this allows you to work on differ­ent sections of a wave file (for example the start and end),
without scrolling back and forth.

Ö The two windows are views of exactly the same data.

Any change you make in one Wave window is immediately apparent in the
other.

Creating a second window using menus

1. Make sure the desired window is the active one.

If it isn’t, click once in its title bar.

2. Select Duplicate View from the View menu.

Creating a second window by dragging

1. Make sure “Create windows using mouse” is activated
on the Preferences–Wave edit tab.

2. Click and drag a rectangle in an empty area of the
WaveLab Studio window.

This must be of a certain minimum size or bigger. If you don’t get a new
window, try again with a bigger rectangle.

Windows sets, snapshots and Wave view
settings

In addition to the above, there are other ways to manage
windows:

• Snapshots store individual settings for one Wave window at a
time, which allows you to quickly move between various views
of a file. See “Snapshots” on page 38.

• Screen layouts store document window and dialog box posi­tions and sizes. See

254.

• View settings can be automatically stored (Preference setting)
when saving wave audio files. This will store all view settings
for an individual Wave window; i.e. window size & placement,
time ruler style, scroll positions, selection ranges, snapshots
and a master section preset. See “Saving view settings” on

page 54.

“Working with window layouts”

on page

Dockable control bars

Various tools, shortcuts and commands are gathered on
“control bars” (strips with symbols). These can be used ei­ther as “palettes” (separate windows) or you can “dock”
them to the window edges.
The following control bars are available:

• The Standard Commands

• The Transport bar

• The Meters

• The Window Controller

• The Wave toolbox

• The Wave Snapshots control bar

• The Marker toolbar

Dragging a box like this will create a new window for this audio file.

Docking a control bar

There are two ways to dock a control bar:

• Drag the control bar window (by its title bar) to any of

the sides of the application window and release the
mouse button.

The outline shows you the shape of the control bar at the docked position.

• Double click the title bar of a control bar to return it to its

last docked position.

23

Basic methods

Please note that you can stack control bars and put them
side by side, to create any type of layout you desire.

In this example, the Standard Commands, Toolbox and Transport con­trol bars have all been docked to the upper part of the application win­dow.

Turning a docked control bar into a separate
window

To “un-dock” a control bar, drag it out from the docked
position, or double click somewhere on its handle.

Ö Control bar windows are moved by dragging the title
bar, just as with any other window.

To drag a control bar on side of the application window, without docking
it, hold down [Ctrl] when dragging.

Showing/hiding a control bar

There are various ways to show/hide a control bar:

• Pull down the View menu, select Control Bars, and from the
submenu that appears, select the desired control bar, or…

• Click on a button on the Window controller (a control bar
used for showing/hiding other control bars, see below), or…

• Hide a control bar by clicking its Close box.

4. Move the pointer over an item on the control bar and
wait a moment.

A text showing the name of the button appears.

An example of a “Tip” pop-up for the control bar.

The various control bars

The Window Controller

The Window Controller acts as “master selector” for the
main windows and control bars, providing quick access
even to those that have no keyboard shortcut. If a Win­dow Controller button is “pressed”, the corresponding
window/bar is active and visible. If not, the window/bar
is hidden.

The Standard Commands

Changing the appearance of a control bar

To change the shape of a control bar to either horizontal,
square or vertical, drag the right or bottom edge as when
resizing any other window.

To change the size of the buttons in the control bar, open
the Preferences–Environment tab and adjust the “Button
size” setting.

Finding out what a button on a control bar
does

1. Select Preferences from the Options menu and click

on the Environment tab.

2. Make sure “Show Tips” is activated.

3. Close the Preferences dialog.

Basic methods

The Standard Commands bar supplies shortcuts for the
most commonly used menu items, as well as some unique
functions.

The Toolbox

The tools are used to perform various operations on the
data in the window, like selecting, playing, etc.

24

The Snapshots control bar

• For some of the fields you can also click to perform operations
related to that field.

• The status bar also indicates the progress of operations that
take some time to finish.

This is used to store and recall window “layouts”, see

“Snapshots” on page 38.

The Transport bar

The Transport bar is used for various playback commands,
see “Using the Transport bar” on page 58.

The Marker toolbar

This is used for various commands related to markers, see

“Introduction” on page 128.

The Meters

This provides shortcuts to the various level meters in
WaveLab Studio, see “Metering” on page 68l.

Speed menus

Most displays have speed menus associated with them.

Ö To bring up a speed menu, right-click in the desired
area.

In the Wave windows for example, there is one speed menu for the level
ruler, one for each of the time rulers and one for each of the waveform
displays.

The status bar

This is normally displayed at the bottom of the screen, but
it can be hidden on the Preferences–Environment tab.

The status bar shows information related to the active win­dow. Exactly what information appears depends on the
window type – for Wave windows it shows various infor­mation about the file. See “The status bar” on page 34.

Basic methods

The Wave window main view “speed menu”

The Speed menus contain the same items that can be
found on the main menus, but some speed menus also
contain unique items.

!

When searching for a function, don’t forget to check
the speed menus in the window in which you are
working!

25

Units of time and level

Setting values

For rulers

You can specify the time and level (amplitude) formats for
each ruler in each window, by right-clicking on the ruler and
selecting a format from the pop-up menu that appears.

Time formats

Menu name Description

Time Positions are shown as hours, minutes, seconds and

Samples Positions are shown as number of samples. How many

Time code Also called SMPTE. Positions are shown in the follow-

Meter Positions are shown as bars, beats and ticks, as speci-

File size Positions are shown in file size units, MegaBytes, where

Level formats

Menu name Description

% Amplitude (level) is shown as a percentage of full level.

dB Amplitude is shown in decibels, a logarithmic scale

Decimal This is the actual value of the amplitude as stored in

Ö To make a ruler format the default (to be used in new
Wave windows), you need to save it as part of the default
window style.

See “Styling WaveLab Studio – Wave windows” on page 249.

milliseconds. At large magnification factors, hundredths
of milliseconds are shown.

samples there are to a second depends on the sample
rate of the wave. For 44.1 kHz for example, there are
44100 samples for each second.

ing format:
hours:minutes:seconds:frames.
The number of frames per second is set on the Prefer­ences–Sync tab.

fied on the Preferences–Sync tab.

the decimals represent kiloBytes.

used in audio engineering.

computer memory (always displayed as 16 bits). Please
note that the range is from negative to positive with “0”
representing “no signal”.

In dialog boxes, you will find yourself adjusting values. The
following techniques apply:

Typing values

As in most other Windows programs you can “tab to” or
click directly on a value and type in a new one.

Using the spin controls/value fields

Values can be set using either the regular Windows spin
controls, or any of the other methods described below.

The spin controls

The history pop-up

• Clicking either arrow raises/lowers the value.

• Keeping the mouse button pressed over an arrow will “scroll”
the value.

• Holding down [Ctrl] makes the value change in larger steps.

• Holding down [Ctrl]+[Shift] changes the value to its minimum/
maximum.

↑

• The last adjusted control can be changed using the [

] and [↓]
keys, also in combination with [Ctrl] or [Ctrl]+[Shift] as de­scribed above.

• You can also click and hold in the value field and move the
pointer up or down to change values.

• Pointing in a value field will display the available parameter
range.

• The down arrow to the right of the spin controls brings up a
history pop-up where the last applied value change(s) in the
current dialog are shown and can be selected.

26

Basic methods

Using sliders and pop-ups

Many times, the most convenient way of changing a value is
using WaveLab Studio’s proprietary sliders and pop-ups:

1. Click with the right mouse button on the spin control
(in some windows you can also double-click with the left
mouse button).

2. If a pop-up menu appears, select one of the options
on it.

3. If one or more sliders appear, drag the handle(s) or
click the arrows to set the value.

The setting is shown in the value box “behind” the slider window.

In this case, four faders appear, one
for the integer and three for the deci­mals.

The value gets updated when you
move the sliders.

4. When you have finished, click outside the slider win­dow.

• If the value is “segmented” (for example divided into minutes
and seconds, etc.), more than one slider will appear, each
used for adjusting one of the “segments”.

• The slider window can be dragged to any position on the
screen, using the “title bar” at the top.

• The last-used slider can also be adjusted using the computer
keyboard:.

These keys Move the slider handle

[↑] and [↓] One step up/down.

[Page Up] and [Page Down] A few steps up/down.

[Home] and [End] To the top/bottom.

In effect processor panels

In the Master Section you will find either generic or cus­tom effect panels for each effect processor. In custom
panels, values are adjusted using special methods, see

“The Effects pane” on page 96.

Using a wheel mouse

If you are using a mouse with a scroll wheel or similar, you
can take advantage of the wheel for various operations in
WaveLab Studio:

Scrolling

If you point at a waveform, the wheel scrolls the view hori­zontally.

Zooming

If you hold down [Ctrl] and point at a waveform, the wheel
zooms the view horizontally.

If you hold down [Ctrl] and [Shift] and point at a waveform,
the wheel zooms the view vertically.

Changing values

If you point at an edit field in a dialog, the wheel can be
used to adjust the value.

• If you hold down [Ctrl], the value changes in bigger incre­ments.

• If you hold down [Ctrl]+[Shift] the value jumps to the minimum
or maximum.

Master Section

• When working in the Master Section window, the wheel

can be used to adjust the master volume.

You have to point in the Master Section for this to work.

Ö This functionality can be turned off in the Preferences–
Environment tab.

27

Basic methods

Presets

Many dialogs in WaveLab Studio have either a Presets tab
or a Presets pop-up menu. If you think of the dialogs as
forms, presets allow those forms to be filled out automati­cally. WaveLab Studio comes with a selection of presets
for most dialogs that use them, but the real power of pre­sets becomes evident when you start creating your own!

Ö For some WaveLab Studio effect panels there is a
Preset button instead of a Presets tab or pop-up menu.
Clicking the button opens the Presets dialog which has
the same items as described below.

Depending on how presets are displayed in a certain dia­log (tab or menu) they are handled slightly differently, but
both cases are described below.

Creating a preset

1. Open the dialog you wish to use and set up the dialog

as desired.

2. Click on the Presets tab or pull down the Preset menu.

3. Click on the name line and type in a name for the pre-

set or click the Save As… menu item and type in a name in
the dialog that appears.

4. Where applicable, click the Add button.

Modifying a preset

1. Load the preset you want to modify, as described

above.

2. Make the desired settings in the dialog.

3. Click the Update button or click the Save item.

Deleting a preset

1. In the Presets tab, click on the preset you want to de-

lete.

2. Click the Delete button.

Or…

1. From the Presets menu, select the option Explore pre-

sets.

2. In the Explorer window that appears, select the preset

file you want to delete and press [Delete].

A number of presets in the Harmonization dialog

Loading presets

1. Open the dialog you wish to use and click on its Pre­sets tab or pull down its Presets menu.

2. Select the preset you want to use.

3. Where applicable, click the Load button.

Ö A quick way to load a preset is to right-click on the
Preset tab and select a preset from the menu that ap­pears.

Basic methods

Store temporarily and Restore

Some dialogs also allow you to quickly save and load up
to 5 presets with the Store temporarily and Restore menu
items. This is useful if you want to quickly test and com­pare different settings.

1. Select the option “Store temporarily” and from the sub-

select the number under which you want to save (#1

menu

#5).

–

2. To quickly load the saved settings again, select the

corresponding number from the Restore submenu.

28

How presets are saved

The presets are automatically saved when you quit the
program. The next time you load the program, the presets
are ready and waiting, just as you left them. Furthermore
the presets are “global” to all files. No matter which file
you are working on, you still have access to all your pre­sets.

About non-modal dialogs

Many of the dialog boxes in WaveLab Studio are “non­modal”. This means that the window behind the dialog can
be operated even though the dialog box is still up on the
screen.

For example, when you have a Processing dialog up on
screen, you can still work with the Wave window and the
main menus. For example, this allows you to perform the
following operations without closing the dialog.

• Play back the wave to hear the effect of any applied process­ing.

• Adjust the selection before re-processing.

• Use the menu to undo the last processing.

Keyboard commands

Windows normally does not allow you to select from
menus and use keyboard accelerators when a dialog box
is the active window. However, we have provided a few
special key shortcuts for the most crucial commands:

Key Command

[F3] Undo

[F4] Redo

[F6] Play selection

[Shift]+[F6] Activate loop and play selection

[F7] Stop

[F8] Play

Using the computer keyboard

When you are working with WaveLab Studio, the com­puter keyboard has several different uses:

Transport controls

The Transport functions (such as Play, Stop, Record and
so on) can all be managed from the computer keyboard.
The keyboard commands for these functions are located
on the numeric keypad, to the right on the computer key­board. See “Using the Transport bar” on page 58.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts for menus

Many of the items in WaveLab Studio’s menus have a
computer keyboard equivalent – an “accelerator”, listed
on the menu. Some abbreviations might need an explana­tion:

Abbreviation Description

KP The numeric keypad. “KP 2” for example means

BkSp The Backspace key.

F1 to F12 The Function keys.

Due to the large number of functions in WaveLab Studio,
some key commands consist of double or triple key
strokes (known as “key sequences”). These are displayed
with the different keys separated by comma signs.
For example, “Alt+F12, T” means “hold down [Alt] and
press [F12], release, then press [T]”.

Customizable shortcuts

You can define your own key shortcuts for a number of
functions in the program, see “Customizable key com-

mands” on page 255.

Additional shortcuts

In addition to the above, there are key commands that are
not listed on the menus or in this manual. Check the Key
Commands chapter in the online documentation for a full
list.

the “2” key on the numeric keypad.

29

Basic methods

5

Editing in the Wave window