Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual

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1.To open the dialog, click in the area just below the track pop-up menu 
button for an audio track.
Click here… 
…to open the Audio dispatching dialog.
Which channels are available in the Audio dispatching dialog depends on 
the selected channel configuration, and whether the track is mono or ste-
reo. In the picture above a 6 channel (5.1) configuration has been se-
lected, and the Audio dispatching dialog was opened for a stereo track.
•The “Top” audio channels correspond to the left channel and “Bottom” 
audio channels to the right channel of a stereo track. For mono tracks the 
Top/Bottom channels are referred to as “Audio is sent to” and “Audio is 
also sent to”, respectively. This relates to how a mono channel is handled 
when using the surround panner (see “Surround panning” on page 512). 
The two channels are in fact the same (unless you use a stereo plug-in ef-
fect or clip panning in which case the output is stereo).
2.To route a track to an output channel (stereo or mono) you tick the corre-
sponding check box(es).
For stereo surround channels you select the left channel in the top area and the corre-
sponding right channel in the bottom area.
•If you have selected a surround format, you can route a track to several or 
all surround channels.
When you select more than two channels for a stereo track or more than one channel for a 
mono track, the Surround panner automatically appears in the Track Control area for the 
corresponding track (see below).   
						

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Surround panning
As described above, you can route any Montage track directly to a sur-
round channel (or to a combination of surround channels) using the Audio 
dispatching dialog. However, you may also want to position a track freely 
in the surround image. This is done using the Surround Pan function. In 
this example, we assume that you have set up a Montage in 5.1 surround 
format and that you want to use the Surround Pan for a stereo track:
1.Locate the stereo track in the Montage and click the Audio dispatching la-
bel in the Track Control area (below the track number button).
The Audio dispatching dialog appears.
2.Activate the desired surround channels by ticking the corresponding 
checkboxes.
In this example, all surround channels are activated: Left front, Right front, Center, LFE, Left 
surround and Right surround.
• It’s possible to activate different surround channel combinations for the top 
(left) and bottom (right) audio if needed.
However, for now all surround channels for both stereo sides are activated to avoid confu-
sion.  
						

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3.Click OK to close the dialog.
A surround pan indicator appears in the Track Control area. This is shown whenever a track 
is routed to a combination of surround channels.
4.Try clicking and dragging in the surround pan display.
As you see, dragging moves the blue dot – the position of the left (top) audio channel in the 
surround image. The red dot (the position of the right (bottom) audio channel) is automati-
cally mirrored horizontally. If you activate playback, you can hear the sound move between 
surround speakers.
The small surround pan display in the Track Control area can be used for 
coarse adjustments – but for more precise control of the imaging, you use 
the Surround Pan window:
5.Right-click the surround pan display in the Track Control area.
The Surround Pan window appears.
The Surround Pan window contains a larger version of the surround pan 
image and a number of settings.    
						

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•In the graphic display, the positions of the left/right audio channels are 
shown as small squares. The proportional signal levels from the individual 
speakers are indicated by colored lines from the speakers to the center of 
display.
•The graphic display shows the surround imaging of either the left/top 
(blue) channel or the right/bottom (red) channel – the color of the speaker 
lines shows which channel is selected for viewing and editing.
If you are viewing the left/top channel, you will see a blue square indicating the position of 
the audio. The other, grey square (which is mirrored horizontally) represents the other chan-
nel. Click this to view and edit this channel instead, it will be shown in red and red speaker 
lines will indicate the speaker levels.
•Each track can have its own Surround Pan window and you can have sev-
eral of these open at the same time if needed.
•You can resize the window as needed.
6.To pan the sound, click the blue square and move it to the desired position.
This pans the audio of the left/top channel – the other channel will automatically be mirrored 
horizontally.
•If you right-click in the graphical display, a pop-up menu appears allowing 
you to choose from a number of positioning “presets”.
This is a quick way to e.g. pan a signal fully left-front.   
						

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7.If needed, adjust the settings to the left.
These are:
•You can use the Copy and Paste buttons to copy surround pan settings, 
e.g. from one track to another.
Setting Description
Center This determines how center source signals should be reproduced by 
the front speakers. With a value of 100%, the center speaker will pro-
vide the center source. With a value of 0%, the center source will be 
provided by the ghost image created by the left and right speakers. 
Other values will produce a mix between these two methods.
Note that this is only available if the Center channel is activated in the 
Audio dispatching dialog.
Divergence Determines the attenuation curve used when positioning sound 
sources. If this is set to 0%, positioning a sound source on a speaker 
will set all other speakers to zero level (-∞) (except for the center 
speaker which depends on the center level). With higher values, the 
other speakers will receive a percentage of the sound source – the 
sound will be less localized.
Front/Rear ratio This determines how much the front and rear levels are affected by the 
vertical positioning in the Surround Pan window. The higher the ratio, 
the less the difference between sounds panned front and rear. If this 
is set to 100%, the rear and front levels will always be the same.
Constant Power This determines whether the power (RMS) or the level of the summed 
signals should be preserved. If set to 100%, the total power (RMS) will 
be the same regardless of panning; if set to 0% the total level will be 
the same.
LFE Gain Sets the amount of signal sent to the LFE channel.
Note that this is only available if the LFE channel is activated in the 
Audio dispatching dialog. 
						

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Using LFE
The LFE (Low Frequency Effects) channel should typically be used with 
great care – in many cases you don’t need to activate this at all for a track. 
If the LFE channel is activated in the Audio dispatching dialog, the follow-
ing settings are available:
•Low pass filtering.
When this checkbox is activated in the Audio dispatching dialog, a 12dB/octave low pass 
filter will be applied to the LFE signal, so that only the low frequency content is let through. 
You can adjust the cutoff frequency for the filter if needed.
•LFE Gain.
This setting in the Surround Pan window determines the amount of signal sent to the LFE 
channel. You can also automate this using the LFE envelope (see below).
Using Surround Pan envelopes
You can automate surround panning for individual clips using envelopes. 
This is slightly different from using regular volume and pan envelopes:
•Internally, there is a single surround pan envelope where each envelope 
point contains a complete surround state (left-right position, front-rear 
position and LFE amount).
•When you look at the envelope for a clip, you can choose to view either 
the Left-Right, Front-Rear or the LFE curve.
You select which envelope to view on the Show envelope submenu on the clip speed 
menu, as usual.
•If you add an envelope point to the Left-Right surround pan envelope for 
example, you will find that a point is automatically added to the Front-Rear 
and LFE envelopes, at the same position in the clip.
This is because there is actually only a single surround pan envelope – when you add an 
envelope point you really add it to this “full” surround pan envelope, and it is shown in all 
three views. 
						

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Using the Surround Pan window
You can use the Surround Pan window to “program” each envelope point – 
this makes it easy to set up automated surround panning for a clip. Here’s 
an example. 
Let’s say that we want the signal to start at the front center position, then 
move to the left rear speaker and finally move to the right rear speaker. 
Proceed as follows:
1.Set up a track for surround panning by activating the desired surround 
channels in the Audio dispatching dialog.
2.Open the clip speed menu for a clip on the track and bring up the Show 
envelope submenu.
3.Select “Surround Pan (Left  Right)”.
Or, you could select the “Front-Rear” envelope – it doesn’t matter at this point.
4.The envelope currently has points at the very start and end of the clip – 
we want one more point, somewhere in between. Double click the enve-
lope to add a new envelope point in the middle of the clip.
This will be the position where the signal reaches the left rear speaker. Note that it’s only 
the position in the clip that is important when you create envelope points at this stage – not 
the vertical position of the point.
5.Right-click the surround pan display in the Track Control area to bring up 
the Surround Pan window.
6.Select the envelope point at the start of the clip.  
						

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7.Use the Surround Pan window to position the sound as desired.
In our example, the panning should start in the front center position – drag the position 
square to the top middle of the display (or right-click in the display and select the “Front 
Center” preset).
8.Select the next envelope point in the clip and set the surround panning to 
the left rear speaker (move the position square to the lower left corner of 
the display).
9.Finally, select the last envelope point and set the surround panning to the 
right rear speaker (move the position square to the lower right corner of 
the display).
The Left-Right surround envelope curve now looks like this:   
						

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10.Select “Surround Pan (Front  Rear)” from the Show envelope submenu 
for the clip.
The Front-Rear surround envelope curve looks like this:
11.Play back the clip.
You should hear the sound move from center front to left rear to right rear.
•To create more complex surround panning, add more envelope points 
and program these in the same way.
Editing the envelope curves directly
It is of course also possible to edit the envelope curves in a more conven-
tional way, by adjusting their points in the clip (see “The pan envelope” on 
page 469 for details on working with envelopes). This can be useful if you 
only want to change the LFE amount without affecting panning, or if you 
only want to change the left-right panning without affecting front-rear 
panning, or vice versa. However:
• Remember that if you move an envelope point, all surround pan envelopes 
are affected!
This is because you are in reality moving a single envelope point on the “total” surround pan 
envelope.  
						

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About the “Import Surround audio file” option
This import option allows you to import multichannel interleaved files in 
the 5.1 format. This works as follows:
1.Open the Edit view : Mode menu and select the “6 channels” configuration.
2.Set the cursor where you want the imported files to be inserted and right-
click in an empty area for an audio track to open the Montage Insert 
speed menu.
3.Select “Import surround audio file” from the menu.
A file dialog opens, where you can select a single interleaved audio file, which must be in 
the 5.1 format.
4.Select the file and click Open.
The file is now automatically split into four separate files: two stereo (L/R front and L/R sur-
round) and two mono (center and LFE) files; and the Insert audio file dialog opens.
5.Here you can set various options for how the files should be inserted.
Click the question mark icon in the dialog for details. As you can see, each file is named af-
ter the original file but with the name of the surround channel it belongs to.
6.Each file is now placed on a different track, routed to the corresponding 
surround output.
Mono surround channels will be placed on mono tracks, and stereo surround channels on 
stereo tracks. 
About the 8 channel mode
To select this mode, you first need to select “Mode CD” on the Edit view : 
Mode menu. (This is merely a safety precaution, as this configuration is not 
supported in the DVD-Audio protocol – after selecting this configuration 
WaveLab will automatically switch to DVD-A Mode which is used for all 
multichannel configurations.) When 8 channel mode is selected, you can 
route tracks to one of the 8 output channels (mono tracks) or to a output 
channel pair (stereo tracks). 8 channel mode is non-surround oriented, 
and enables you to use the Montage as a straightforward 8 channel re-
cording/playback environment.
Channels are grouped as stereo pairs (1-2, 3-4, etc.), which is reflected 
in the Master Section and when rendering to multiple files, see “Render-
ing to multiple files or multichannel files” on page 530.