Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual

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Opening Waves
For a list of supported file formats, see “Supported file formats” on page 113.
Using the Open dialog
1.Select Open Wave from the File menu, press [Ctrl]-[O] or click the Open 
icon on the Standard commands control bar and select “Wave…” from 
the pop-up menu that appears.
2.Use the standard controls to locate and select the desired file.
The file format pop-up allows you to only view files in a certain format and the buttons in the 
upper left half...

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Opening dual mono files
If you have two mono files which are actually the left and right channels of 
a stereo recording (some systems handle stereo this way), you can open 
these as if they were a stereo file. Proceed as follows:
1.Open the Preferences from the Options menu, and click the File tab.
2.Make sure the option “Allow opening of dual mono files” is activated, and 
close the dialog.
3.Select Open Wave from the File menu.
4.Select the first file, hold...

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Using drag and drop
To open files from the Windows desktop, use one of the following possi-
bilities:
• Drag and drop the file(s) on the WaveLab application window.
• Drag and drop the file(s) on the WaveLab program icon or a shortcut for it.
If the program isn’t already running, it will be launched. This works even if the application is 
running but minimized.
To Nuendo
• It is also possible to drag and drop files from WaveLab to Steinberg’s Nuendo!
This should...

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At the bottom of these submenus there is an item named “Open file se-
lection box”. If you select it, a dialog opens. This is a handy file manager 
dialog which lists all recently used files of the corresponding type. Up to 
200 files can be shown (this is set in the Preferences–Environment tab) in 
the dialog. 
•Files in this list are by default sorted according to when the files were last 
used, but you can click on a column header to sort the list by Name or...

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Using Favorites
Just above the “Recent…” items is the Favorites menu. This lets you cre-
ate a “library” of files that you want to be able to open quickly.
• The “Add current document” option, adds the currently active document to the 
menu.
The list is sorted alphabetically.
• “Validate list” checks whether each document on the menu is still residing in the 
specified location on your hard disk(s).
If a document can’t be found, it is removed from the list.
•...

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Window overview and adjustments
About the window sections
Main view
The lower waveform area is where the main action is going on. It is here 
that you select, apply tools, drag and drop, etc. 
• There are both time and level rulers. These can be hidden and displayed (see the 
ruler and wave display speed menus). You can also set which units of time and 
level they show (see “Units of time and level” on page 61).
Overview
The overview is mainly used for navigating...

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About the Display modes
Both the main view and the overview can independently be set to show 
the audio in one of three display modes:
•Wave display.
This is the standard waveform display, as shown in the main picture.
•The Spectrum display. 
This displays the audio as a “spectrogram” which allows you to view the level intensity of 
each area in the frequency spectrum across the time line. This mode allows for very precise 
and specialized editing operations in...

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Synchronizing the views
You may find it useful to work with separate display modes for the main 
view and the overview, as this gives you the option of viewing the audio in 
two different ways. In such cases you might want the two views to display 
the same part of the audio file simultaneously, so that the cursor position 
is synchronized in both views.
•This is done by selecting “Synchronize top and bottom views” from the 
Display mode pop-up menu (either for...

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The status bar
The status bar can be hidden. This is done on the Preferences–Environ-
ment tab. The status bar provides the following information:
• The Wave and Mouse cursor time positions are shown using the same unit of 
time as in the rulers and dialog boxes.
• Level positions are always shown in dB.
• The “Selection length” field shows the length of the entire wave if nothing is se-
lected, and the length of the selection (in brackets) if there is one. If...

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Setting the zoom factor
About zooming
Horizontal zoom
• When you zoom out all the way the entire file fits the window.
• When you zoom in as far as possible, each sample will occupy several pixels on 
the screen. This allows for single sample-accurate editing of waveforms.
Vertical zoom
• When you zoom out all the way, the complete height of the wave fits into the win-
dow. You can note this by checking the ruler on the left side.
• As you progressively zoom in,...