WaveLab Pro 9 and WaveLab Elements 9 now available!

[Compyfox]

So you didnt realised that I'm talking about version 9 which is main topic? And 'new' mastering suite is nothing more than old plugins under new gui.

Oh, I am fully aware that this is a WL9 thread - you however insisted that WL9 doesn't bring anything new to the table and you rather stick to WL4. WL4 on he other hand is way over 10 years old and a lot of improvements have been seen outside of the plugin realm (like I said: native DDP usage, burning out of the host without a specific disc burner, HD audio support, rendering of various more audio formats, etc).

Can't confirm "old plugins under a new GUI" either to be honest. Yes - certain things are(!) just under a new hood. Then again - why change anything that has been worked for years? And honestly... your criticism on the new "Mastering Suite" is a bit of a moot point as well.

You can of course always build any module to your liking with a modular subhost. But what these "suites" or "plugins in a new GUI" usually do, is simplify things for users that don't want to jump hoops.


I'll give you an example:
I am a Tone2 user. And I do like the concepts of Warmverb MultiFX and UltraSpace. From a "joe normal guy" viewpoint, this thing is either great or just sounding like crap. So either you get it, or you don't. Simple. For me as AE however, I look a bit closer under the hood and realize "wait a minute... this is that module, and this module, and that module - connected like this and that... I could in theory build my own version of that". So I am hesitating to get this module. This is what I call "the curse of being an audio engineer".

Now in case of the new "simplified suites" in WL9 - the same rules apply. There are users that won't like to go more-indepth or build their own tools. They want something that is easy to access, pre set up and ready to use. And this is all there is to it.


What I'd call a "gimmick" in terms of an add on, would be with Cubase and adding a Synth that's not really needed. But in this case - it's adding to the workflow. Yes - it is heavily inspired by iZotope's Ozone. But then again... Steinberg did collaborate with both iZotope and Sonnox in recent WL versions. So can you be really sure that this is just a rehashed plugin collection?

The only real(!) issue I see is - what happens in future versions of Wavelab? What will be dropped plugin wise? For example with WL4 to WL5 - the MP3pro codec by Fraunhofer was dropped. After 2 versions of Wavelab having it (WL3 and WL4). WL8.5 started with the "re-branded" Fraunhofer ProCodec... so my my question is... when will this implementation vanish?

That is what you should be worried about.

SxX resampler - I'm using it for ages in Foobar. It's open source. Not big deal really.

Yes it actually is(!) a big deal, because Foobar isn't that userfriendly either in terms of SRC works.
And SoX in itself is a command line tool. So bundling it with Wavelab and making it accessible through(!) the Batch Processor does add a lot to the workflow.

Also... SoX is currently considered to be the best low budget SRC tool on the market.

Yes, new version have improvements. I just mentioned stuff that is annoying because it's making customer fool

Wavelab is IMO a bit more balanced in terms of "new features" compared to Cubase - which recently only focused on new plugins rather than the "good new features". So looking a bit closer under the hood does indeed help.

And I say that as somebody, that turned highly skeptical of Steinberg in recent years.

[aMUSEd]

One thing that is very annoying is it doesn't prompt you to save your work if you try and close it - I have just lost a piece due to this, this is standard app functionality.

[Jperkinski]

One thing that is very annoying is it doesn't prompt you to save your work if you try and close it - I have just lost a piece due to this, this is standard app functionality.

I don't think this is 100% true. I find that if I have an unsaved change, there is a red line on top of the tab for that file/motnage and if I try to quit the app when with any unsaved changes, it asks me if I want to save the changes or discard them and quit without saving.

Maybe you're making a change in the master section which must be saved separately and also doesn't change when you close a file or montage incase you do that by mistake.

[Compyfox]

Wait, they removed the plugin recall functionality of the master rack?

[Jperkinski]

Wait, they removed the plugin recall functionality of the master rack?

No, that would be silly. My point was that the person saying that WaveLab doesn't prompt you to save your work might be talking about how the master section must be saved and recalled manually with the montage or audio file it's associated with.

Any changes within the montage or audio files at all will prompt WaveLab to ask about saving if you try to quit with unsaved changes.

[aMUSEd]

One thing that is very annoying is it doesn't prompt you to save your work if you try and close it - I have just lost a piece due to this, this is standard app functionality.

I don't think this is 100% true. I find that if I have an unsaved change, there is a red line on top of the tab for that file/motnage and if I try to quit the app when with any unsaved changes, it asks me if I want to save the changes or discard them and quit without saving.

Maybe you're making a change in the master section which must be saved separately and also doesn't change when you close a file or montage incase you do that by mistake.

OK so I can set up a bunch of effects to apply to the audio file and that doesn't count as a savable change? It would in any DAW.

[Jperkinski]

Changing effects settings on the clip, montage track, or montage master counts as a change but the master section works differently.

If you process an audio file or part of it, it counts as a change to the file but the master section saving (and recall) must be done separately.

I think it's because the master section can apply to many different files and montages.

I personally never use the global master section except for occasional removal of noise/clicks/pops with RX5 plugins.

Otherwise, all plugins stay in inside the montage where any adjustments count as a change and get saved with the montage file.

[aMUSEd]

tbh I just got it and haven't even started with the montage thing, not really sure what that's for. I was just trying to use it as a standard audio editor and apply fx to audio files created in a DAW. I'm more used to Audacity for audio editing and finding it a bit hard to get to grips with Wavelab, can't even see how to apply a plugin apart from in the master section which seems to be the only place I can see where I can load them. eg how would I apply a plugin just to a selected part of an audio file rather than the whole file?

[chk071]

You need to select the part you want to apply the plugin to, then load the plugin in the master section, and then click the "render" (i think it's called like that in english) button in the master section. Then you can choose if you want to render the whole file, or just the selection. It's pretty straight forward really.

[Jperkinski]

tbh I just got it and haven't even started with the montage thing, not really sure what that's for. I was just trying to use it as a standard audio editor and apply fx to audio files created in a DAW. I'm more used to Audacity for audio editing and finding it a bit hard to get to grips with Wavelab, can't even see how to apply a plugin apart from in the master section which seems to be the only place I can see where I can load them. eg how would I apply a plugin just to a selected part of an audio file rather than the whole file?

The audio montage is typically for sequencing an album master and writing master files. The montage has a variety of places to insert real-time VST effects (clip, track, montage master). For basic stereo editing/processing, you add effects to the global master section. You can choose if you want to hear the effects on playback of each file, or have the master section bypassed on playback.

Other than a few utility style processes such as gain, Remove DC Offset, and fades as you see in the process ribbon tab, all other effects are applied to an audio file by inserting plugins into the master section slots.

To process only a certain section: Dial in your effects in the master section as needed, highlight the section of the audio file you'd like to process with the cursor, go to the render tab, change the render source to "selected audio range", choose "in place" (make sure you have a safety copy of the file), I personally choose "crossfade at boundaries" so a slight crossfade (crossfade length adjustable in preferences) is applied to avoid clicks and glitches. There are other options in the options tab.

There are of course shortcuts for some of these things but that's how you process only part of a file with a plugin effect.

If you're looking for something more "non-destructive", the audio montage might be a good choice to work in.

I have suggested an offline style plugin processor similar to AudioSute in Pro Tools, so maybe something like that will be added later. For now, any audio file processing is done by inserting a plugin in the master fader and rendering the entire file or just a highlighted section.

You can save the master section settings with the audio file for recalling later. With the montage, all plugins on audio clips, montage tracks, montage output are stored within the montage file as you'd expect with other DAWs. The master section must be thought of as a separate thing to save.

[aMUSEd]

Other than a few utility style processes such as gain, Remove DC Offset, and fades as you see in the process ribbon tab, all other effects are applied to an audio file by inserting plugins into the master section slots.

OK thanks - that's what I was doing, which is why it was disconcerting to find it didn't prompt me to save what I had set up. Even though I get now that the master section has a seperate save function you would still expect if you have setup some effects that it would prompt to you save those, or not, on close.

[Compyfox]

Two other quick Q's:
Does WL load AAC/M4A files? I've read on the Steinberg boards, that this was possible with WL8.5 but it seems to be broken "again".


And it would surprise me if this works, but... did WL9 get multi-track recording?

[Jperkinski]

Two other quick Q's:
Does WL load AAC/M4A files? I've read on the Steinberg boards, that this was possible with WL8.5 but it seems to be broken "again".


And it would surprise me if this works, but... did WL9 get multi-track recording?

No, WaveLab is not intended for multi-track recording though WaveLab 9 Pro can have >1000 simultaneous tracks in a montage. I've never used more than ~10.

WaveLab 9 can read AAC/M4A files but it needs to "decode" them first in order to do any work. What would be your need to read AAC/M4A in WaveLab? Being a lossy file, if you load an AAC and then encode again to AAC or mp3, it would be transcoded which is not ideal. Anyway, you can load an AAC and see all the metadata etc. I didn't test on Windows but on Mac, it works no problem to load an AAC.

[Compyfox]

What would be your need to read AAC/M4A in WaveLab? Being a lossy file, if you load an AAC and then encode again to AAC or mp3, it would be transcoded which is not ideal.

HD-AAC is lossless, and I do (sadly) get a AAC from clients from time to time being like "can you fix this?!". I'm not surprised that this works on Mac, but Windows is most important to me. And here I already read that it's broken (again).

Do you also read at the Steinberg boards? If so, did you answer me similar over there as well?



Which brings me to the "multitrack recording":
According to Philippe Goutier (the main dev of WL), multi track recording up to 6 channels are possible, but not properly implemented to further edit yet. I think this will be something for WL9.5 or even WL10. So it's still basically a Stereo WAV editor, and in the montage and rendering, 5.1 is possible.




@SJ:
Got word by Steinberg - they completely exchanged the Crystal Resampler in favor for the SoX one. So it's not either/or - it's just SoX.

[Googly Smythe]

http://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandeven ... -3644.html

1st update already!