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) – reordering the effect 
slots affects the signal path.
Master Section meters monitor the signal here.
Meters in the Meter windows monitor the signal here 
(in “Monitor Playback” mode, see “Selecting what to 
monitor” on page 156). 
						

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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 Master Section’s clip indicators (see below) and by the number of clip 
indicators in the Level/Pan meter.
To adjust the level, use the following methods:
• To make coarse adjustments, click a fader handle and drag it.
You can also click directly anywhere along the fader scale to move the fader handle there 
immediately.
• For fine adjustments, click on the upper or lower half of the fader handle.
This raises or lowers the level by a small amount.
• To reset a fader to 0.00 dB, press [Ctrl] and click anywhere on the fader.
When both faders are set to 0.00 (and the Mono button isn’t activated), the Master level 
section will not affect the signal at all. This is indicated by the red indicator for the Master 
pane going dark.
•You can control the faders using a wheel mouse.
This has to be activated in the Preferences–Environment tab.
The fader settings are shown numerically below each fader.  
						

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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 
again, you can adjust the overall level without changing the level offset be-
tween the channels.
In other words, moving one fader will move the other one by the same amount, relative to its 
current setting. Note that the faders use an exponential scale – this means that when you 
move one fader, the other does not follow in a linear fashion on the screen. However, the 
audio result is what you expect.
• Fader offsets are not preserved at the end of the range of movement.
The Meters
The Master Section meters show the signal level of the signal before dith-
ering (or any other plug-in you have applied post-master fader – see 
“Adding other plug-ins to the Dithering pane” on page 235). Use these to 
get an overview of the signal levels.
• The numeric fields above the faders show the peak levels (the highest signal levels 
reached) for each channel.
They will hold these values until you click on them to reset them.
• The red “LEDs” above the meters are clip indicators, which will light up whenever 
the signal clips (exceeds the maximum available headroom). 
If this happens, you should lower the faders, reset the clip indicators by clicking on one of 
them, and play back the section again until no clipping occurs.
For critical level metering, we recommend using the level/pan meter (see 
“The meters” on page 159). Not only is this more detailed, it’s also applied 
after the whole Master Section (after dithering) and will thus show the ac-
tual signal level sent to the audio hardware. 
						

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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 indicator
This indicator lights up whenever WaveLab fails to properly play back as 
little as a single sample of the currently selected wave. A dropout is most 
likely to occur when your computer does not have the processing power 
to adequately handle all effect processors you have inserted.
To avoid dropouts, try the following:
•Use fewer effects.
You might be running out of processing power.
•Consider “Rendering” the processing rather than running it in real time. 
Then master from the processed file without any processors plugged in. 
See “Rendering” on page 239.
Dropouts never occur when “Rendering” to a file.
•Do not process any files in the background while mastering digitally to a 
DAT for example. See “Working with multiple files” on page 243.
•If neither of the above helps, please check the audio card preference set-
tings, you might need to adjust the audio buffer settings.
If a dropout occurs during a real-time mastering process (and if your mas-
ter needs to be flawless) we recommend that you re-master. Stop play-
back, click on the dropout indicator to reset it, and try again.
• As mentioned above, this indicator lights up as soon as even a single sam-
ple is not played back correctly. This type of precision is not often required, 
but it’s there if you need it. 
						

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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 effects” on page 252) plug-
ins. These are only available if you are using an ASIO driver.
• VST plug-ins.
Steinberg’s VST plug-in format is supported by a lot of programs and plug-in manufacturers. 
You will find a number of VST plug-ins included with WaveLab; other plug-ins can be pur-
chased separately from Steinberg or other manufacturers or in some cases downloaded 
from the Internet. 
Note also that if you have Cubase installed on your computer, the effects that were included 
with Cubase can optionally also be available in WaveLab (provided that they are installed in 
the “Shared VST Plug-ins” folder, see the Cubase documentation for details). Whether the 
effects in the “Shared VST Plug-ins” folder should be available in WaveLab or not is set in 
the Preferences–VST tab. You can also specify an extra VST plug-ins folder in the Prefer-
ences if you wish, meaning that you can have access to both the effects in the “Shared VST 
Plug-ins” folder and the effects in some other folder containing VST plug-ins.
• Plug-ins that adhere to the Microsoft DirectX standard.
These are known as DirectX or DX plug-ins and are also widely available.  
						

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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 have installed. It’s also possible to globally deactivate or exclude ef-
fects you don’t need, as described in the section “Activating and deactivat-
ing plug-ins and groups” on page 754.
When you have selected an effect, it is automatically activated (the On 
button lights up), and its control panel appears as a separate window 
(see “Making settings – The Effect control panels” on page 227 for more 
on effect control panels).
• You can turn off an effect (without removing it) by clicking its On button.
To activate the effect again, click the On button so that it lights up.
• To hide the control panel for an effect, right-click its On button (or right-click the 
effect slot and select Hide from the pop-up menu that appears).
A hidden control panel can be shown by right-clicking the On button again (or by selecting 
Show from the same pop-up). You can also have one effect panel shown and automatically 
hide all the other panels, by right-clicking the Solo button for the slot.
• Clicking the Solo button for an effect will bypass all other effect slots, allowing 
you to check the sound of that effect only.
You can also bypass effects manually in their control panels – see below.  
						

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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 window is where you make settings for an effect. Plug-
ins can either have specialized control panels (with any combination of 
knobs, sliders, buttons and displays) or use standard panels.     
						

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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 bypass all effects by using the global bypass button in the Effects 
pane. Also note that bypassing effects is for playback only, and does not affect rendering. 
To deactivate an effect when rendering, use the On/Off buttons in the Master Section ef-
fect pane.
• The Mute button turns off the signal output from the effect.
This means that you will no longer hear your signal because it won’t even reach the next 
stage (either another slot or the master faders).
• The Preset button allows you to select and edit presets for the effect.
This is described in the section “Working with effect processor presets” on page 229.
Standard panels
A standard panel shows parameter names and values in the display to the 
left. To make settings, use the slider beside the corresponding parameter.
Custom panels
An effect plug-in can actually have any control panel that the plug-in de-
signer desires. There are several examples of custom panel plug-ins in-
cluded with WaveLab.
For information about the panels for additional plug-ins, see the docu-
mentation for each plug-in.  
						

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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 and saving presets for WaveLab specific processors works ex-
actly as with any other preset, apart from the fact that there are no preset 
“tabs” or menu items as in dialogs. Instead, clicking the Preset button will 
open a separate Preset dialog. The options in this dialog are exactly the 
same as for dialogs with Preset tabs. See “Presets” on page 65 for more 
details.
VST-compatible plug-ins
VST plug-ins have their own preset handling. When you click the Preset 
button for this type of effect, a pop-up menu with the following options 
appears:
DirectX plug-ins
Here, the same functionality is provided as for WaveLab plug-ins. In addi-
tion, you can import “native” presets created for the plug-in.
Item Description
Load/Save Bank… This allows you to load and save complete sets of presets. The file format 
is compatible with Cubase.
Load/Save Default 
BankThis allows you to load the default set of presets (as will appear when 
first loading the plug-in) or save the current set of presets as the default 
bank.
Load/Save Effect Lets you load or save one preset at a time. Also compatible with Cubase.
Edit name of current 
program…This allows you to define a name for the preset, which might be displayed 
in the panel (depending on the plug-in).
Preset List This allows you to select one of the currently loaded presets. 
						

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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 WaveLab. Nor-
mally, plug-ins come with an installer application of some kind, along with 
a manual or installation notes – make sure to follow the instructions in 
these when installing the plug-in.
About installing DirectX plug-ins
Normally if the DirectX plug-in has been installed properly, it will automat-
ically be “visible” in WaveLab. If it isn’t, you need to “update the Windows 
registry” so that it is. Proceed as follows:
1.In Windows, locate the actual plug-in file on your hard disk.
These are “dll” (dynamic link library) files, which means they normally have the extension 
“.dll”. Sometimes other extensions are used as well.
2.Drag and drop the file icon, either onto the WaveLab program icon, or 
somewhere in the WaveLab application window.
A dialog box will ask you whether you want to register the plug-in or not.
Organizing plug-ins
You can specify which plug-ins should be available in the program and 
how these should be organized on the menus. See “Organizing plug-in 
processors” on page 753.