Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual

 
3
 
Installing and setting up 

 
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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...

 
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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...

 
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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”...

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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. Wave-
Lab can communicate with the audio card via any of the standard proto-
cols; ASIO, MME or WDM. Note:
•For...

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•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...

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• Use system cache.
When this is deactivated (default), WaveLab reads files directly from the hard disk, bypass-
ing 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...

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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 ex-
tensive 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...

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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 option-
ally any Master...

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Installing a CD/DVD recorder
Hardware installation/connection
For general instructions on installing internal or connecting external re-
corders 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...