Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual

WAVELAB
Master Section 10 – 221
About the signal path
The three panes in the Master Section window correspond to the Master 
Section’s three “processing blocks”: Effects, Master Level and Dithering. 
The signal passes through these blocks from top to bottom, as shown in 
this figure:
Audio from WaveLab
Slot 1
Slot 2
Slot 3
Slot 8
Master Level
Dithering 
(or post-master effect)
Effects
Audio Hardware 
(or file on disk)
Note that the signal passes through the effects in 
series (from top to bottom) –...

WAVELAB
10 – 222 Master Section
The Master level pane
The Faders
The faders in the Master level pane govern the final output level. Use 
these in conjunction with the level meters (those next to the fader, or even 
better, the meters in the Level/Pan Meter window) and the clip indicators 
to optimize the level of the signal sent to the audio hardware.
It’s particularly important to avoid clipping (signal levels exceeding the 
available headroom), especially when mastering. Clipping is indicated by 
the...

WAVELAB
Master Section 10 – 223
About the Unlink mode
The Unlink button determines whether the faders should be individually 
adjustable (indicated by a lit Unlink button) or “ganged”. Normally, you will 
probably want Unlink deactivated, so that moving one fader also moves 
the other by the same amount. Turning on Unlink allows you to correct im-
proper stereo balancing by adjusting the channels’ levels individually. 
Note:
• If you offset the faders (with Unlink turned on) and then deactivate Unlink...

WAVELAB
10 – 224 Master Section
The Mono button
If you activate the Mono button, the two channels will be summed to 
mono. Furthermore, the output level is automatically reduced by -6dB, to 
avoid clipping. The Mono button is useful for checking mono compatibility 
of stereo mixes, etc.
• If the Mono button is activated, the red indicator for the Master level pane 
will be lit, even if the master level isn’t adjusted.
This helps you avoid accidentally leaving the Mono button activated.
The Dropout...

WAVELAB
Master Section 10 – 225
The Effects pane
WaveLab allows you to insert up to eight effect plug-ins in series (plus an 
additional, post-master fader plug-in, normally used for dithering, see 
“The Dithering pane” on page 231). Three plug-in formats are supported 
in the Master Section:
• WaveLab-specific plug-ins, included with the program. This also includes a sub-
menu; “ASIO”, which by default contains the Audio Input (see “Audio Input” on 
page 251) and External Gear (see “Using External...

WAVELAB
10 – 226 Master Section
Selecting effects and managing slots
To select an effect plug-in for a slot, click on the slot (or the numbered 
button to the right of the slot) and select an effect from the pop-up menu 
that appears. Note that effects can be organized in groups (see “Organiz-
ing plug-in processors” on page 753), in which case they will appear in 
hierarchical submenus.
Selecting an effect from the VST group.
The number of effects available on the menu depends on which plug-ins 
you...

WAVELAB
Master Section 10 – 227
• You can change the order of the slots (and thus the order in which the signal 
passes through the effects) by clicking a slot and dragging it to a new position.
When you drag, a dotted outline shows the position of the slot.
• To remove an effect from a slot, right-click the slot and select Remove from the 
pop-up menu that appears.
This is the same as selecting “None” from the effect selection pop-up menu.
Making settings – The Effect control panels
The control panel...

WAVELAB
10 – 228 Master Section
Bypass, Mute and Preset
As you can see in the figure above, the three buttons above the actual 
panel are common to both kinds of control panel windows. They have the 
following functionality:
• Clicking the Bypass button will temporarily bypass the effect.
Unlike turning off the On button for the slot, the bypass function does not free up any pro-
cessing power. Note that you can bypass all effects except one by using the Solo button for 
a slot. It’s also possible to...

WAVELAB
Master Section 10 – 229
Working with effect processor presets
With WaveLab comes a number of “factory presets” for the included pro-
cessors, which you can either select and use as is, or use as a starting 
point for your own settings. Additional plug-in processors may provide 
their own “factory presets”.
• To access the presets for an effect, click the Preset button in its control 
panel window.
The result and available functions depend on the type of plug-in:
WaveLab specific plug-ins
Applying...

WAVELAB
10 – 230 Master Section
About the effect plug-ins supplied with WaveLab
Included with WaveLab is a large number of plug-ins for all kinds of pur-
poses, audio compression, chorus, stereo enhancement, reverb, etc. The 
parameters for each plug-in are described in the “Plug-in Processor Refer-
ence” in the online documentation.
Installing additional effect plug-ins
If you have purchased or downloaded additional plug-ins (VST or Di-
rectX), you need to install these to be able to use them in...