Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual

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Spectrum Editor 11 – 261
•If you point the mouse cursor inside a set region, a pop-up appears show-
ing the currently set frequency range in Hz and the time range in seconds/
milliseconds for the current region.
To apply Surgical processing, the region length must not exceed 10 seconds.
•To deselect a region, right-click in the window and select “Deselect” from 
the speed menu.
•A selected region can be moved in any direction by click-dragging the re-
gion manually.
If you press [Shift], you can...

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Surgical processing
Surgical processing can be used to process short regions (up to 10 sec-
onds) offline. This type of processing is mainly used to reduce, remove or 
replace unwanted sound artefacts in the audio material, which can be 
done with great precision. 
As with all Spectrum editor operations, you first have to define a time/fre-
quency region. Once a region has been set, you can select one of the two 
Surgical processing modes. These are as follows:
•Filtering...

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Common filtering parameters
There are two pop-up menus in the “Filtering operations” section; the up-
per selects the type of filter processing to be performed, and the lower 
selects a filter type (only available for some of the filter operations). Addi-
tionally, you can specify the Gain of the filtering (i.e. the attenuation level) 
as well as the Filter steepness.
Filter steepness determines how sharply or quickly frequencies above or 
below a certain point are...

WAVELAB
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Damp
This is used to attenuate the level of a region. The Gain parameter speci-
fies the level of the attenuation (although less commonly used it is also 
possible to set positive gain values, i.e. to boost the frequencies in the re-
gion). Three filter types are available to perform the damping:
•Pass-band filter
All frequencies in the region are equally attenuated.
•Low-pass filter
Higher frequencies in the region will be attenuated more.
•High-pass filter
Lower...

WAVELAB
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Fade out
This can be used with any of the three filter types (Pass-band/Low-pass/
High-pass). It gradually filters the frequencies in the region along the time 
axis (from nothing at the left edge of the region, to maximum allowed by 
the gain parameter at the right edge), useful for gradually removing fre-
quencies from a region.
Fade in
This works like Fade out but inversed.
Fade out then in
This is a mix of the two previous options; the filtering effect gradually...

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•You can also do the same in the frequency domain; have the Source and 
Destination regions in the same time line position, but in different frequency 
ranges. 
This could be used to mask a spurious sound artefact with few harmonics, by copying the 
audio placed a bit “lower” or “higher” in the frequency range. Note that when copying be-
tween different frequency regions pitch shifting takes place. Tip: Copying a source region 
to the destination region using the “Move...

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3.Click the “Show” button in the Source section if the Source region isn’t 
currently shown.
If the region is active but outside of the current view you can right-click to bring up the 
speed menu and select “Jump to selected region”.
4.Click the “Mark” button in the Destination section of the dialog.
Now an exact copy of the source region has been selected as the Destination region. 
5.Now you can move the Destination region to where you wish to copy the 
Source region...

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From here, you can select one of two Copy methods, using the pop-up 
menu above the Copy button.
•“Copy exactly” will, as the name implies, copy the Source region exactly 
as it is.
•“Copy ambience” copies an average of the source frequencies, and pro-
duces a blurring of the original dynamics and pitch variation information. 
This mode can be useful as the copied region will appear more “transparent”, whereas the 
“Exact copy” might cause a “repetition” effect. There is...

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Master Section processing
Another application of the Spectrum editor is Master Section processing. 
This allows for frequency selective processing. A selected region’s fre-
quency spectrum can be routed to the Master Section where you can 
choose to process it separately from the non-selected frequency spectrum.
The signal is split so that one part (region spectrum or non-selected 
spectrum) is sent to the plug-ins, while the other part can be mixed with 
this processed...

WAVELAB
11 – 270 Spectrum Editor
To apply Master Section processing, proceed as follows:
1.Select the Spectrum selection tool and define a region using the normal 
methods.
The selected region should preferably be longer than one second. The frequency spectrum 
of the region will be used to filter the sound. Note that if you intend to use the Render func-
tion, the selected region time range is what will be rendered – see “Rendering the Master 
Section processing” on page 271.
2.Select “Master Section...