Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual

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Editing in the Wave window 6 – 71
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 provide various views of the files on the disk.
3.Click Open.
The Wave appears in a new window.
Below follow descriptions of the items/procedures which are not stan-
dard for all Windows Open dialog boxes:
The Recent Folders pop-up menu
At the top of the dialog, you will find a pop-up menu which lists the most 
recently accessed folders. Select one to open it.
The playback functions
Once you have selected a file in the list you can audition it by clicking 
Play. Click again to Stop.
You can also have files play back automatically as soon as they are se-
lected. To do this, activate the Auto button.
Opening multiple files
As in many other Windows programs, you can select and open as many 
files as you wish. The [Shift] key is used for making continuous selections 
and [Ctrl] is used for selecting any combination of files.
When you click Open the selected files will be opened, each in an individ-
ual window.
The Open in Audio Montage window option
If you check this option at the bottom of the dialog, the file(s) you open will 
be placed in an automatically created new Audio Montage.  
						

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6 – 72 Editing in the Wave window
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 down [Ctrl] and select the other.
5.Click Open.
The two files are opened as one stereo file, with the file with the first name (alphabetically) 
becoming the left channel. If this is not as desired, you can swap the channels, see “Swap-
ping channels in a stereo file” on page 111.
You can now work on the two files as if they were one. You can later save 
them as a stereo file or as two mono files. See “File handling in Wave win-
dows” on page 113.
• You may want to deactivate the “Allow opening of dual mono files” option 
when you’re done, to avoid accidentally opening two separate mono files as 
a dual mono file.
Inserting a file into the current document
You may have a file that you want to insert into an existing file. The two 
must have the same attributes (e.g. sample rate), or a warning will appear.
1.Locate the document into which you want to add material, and make it ac-
tive.
2.If you want to add the file at some arbitrary position in the document 
(rather than at the beginning or end), click to move the wave cursor to that 
position.
3.Pull down the Edit menu and select Insert Audio File and then one of the 
options from the submenu that appears.
4.Select a file and click Open.
The file is added. If you used the “at cursor position” option, a temporary marker is added at 
the insertion point. 
						

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Editing in the Wave window 6 – 73
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 be done using the Document button or from a Database window.
Opening files from the desktop
To open a file in WaveLab by double-clicking on it, you must have created 
an association between the file format and the WaveLab application. 
Such an association can be set up in two ways:
•There is an option to automatically associate certain file formats with 
WaveLab during the installation process.
•You can also do this from within WaveLab at any time by selecting “Asso-
ciate all files of this type with WaveLab” on the File menu–Special sub-
menu.
This association is made according to the currently selected file’s format, and will ensure 
that all files of this format always opens with WaveLab.
Using the Recent Files lists
On the bottom of the File menu you will find one or several hierarchical 
menu items that allow you to open recently used document files. There 
are different submenus for different file types, as indicated by the menu 
items (“Recent Audio Files”, “Recent Audio Montages”, etc.). Each sec-
tion holds up to forty files (this number can be set in the Preferences–En-
vironment tab). Selecting an item on one of the submenus opens the 
corresponding file. 
						

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6 – 74 Editing in the Wave window
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 Path.
You can also navigate in the list using the keyboard (a-z keys or the arrow keys) as usual.
•This dialog allows you to select multiple files (using standard [Shift] or 
[Ctrl] commands) for opening.
Clicking OK opens all selected files and closes the dialog. You can also double-click a file 
in the list to open it and close the dialog.
•By clicking the “Remove selected files” button you can remove selected 
files from the Recent list.   
						

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Editing in the Wave window 6 – 75
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.
• “Clear list” removes all files from the menu.
Opening Wave files from within other windows
You can also open files from the Workspace and Database windows as 
well as from Basic Audio CD windows, Audio Montage windows and the 
Batch dialog. See the respective chapters for details.
Importing tracks from an audio CD
This is described in the section “Importing audio CD tracks into Wave-
Lab” on page 594.
Importing tracks from a DVD-A disc
This is described in the section “Importing DVD-Audio tracks into Wave-
Lab” on page 599. 
						

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6 – 76 Editing in the Wave window
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 through long files. Since you 
can have different zoom factors in the two areas, the Overview can dis-
play the entire wave while the Main view only shows you a short portion. 
You can also synchronize these views – see “Synchronizing the views” on 
page 78.
Overview
Zoom controlsMain viewDisplay mode pop-up
Display mode pop-up
Left audio 
channel
Right audio 
channel  
						

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Editing in the Wave window 6 – 77
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 the time/frequency domain using the Spectrum selec-
tion tool – see “Spectrum Editor” on page 255.
•The Loudness Envelope display.
This displays the average loudness of an audio file, which can be useful in many circum-
stances. See “About the Loudness envelope display mode” on page 129.
You select which view is shown in each section from the pop-up to the 
left of the respective horizontal Zoom control.   
						

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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 the main view or the overview).
When this is selected, the horizontal Zoom control (see “About zooming” on page 80) is 
only available in the main view.
• In the rest of this chapter the Wave editing are described for the standard 
Wave display mode.
The Loudness Envelope display mode and the various options available are described sep-
arately at the end of this chapter – see “About the Loudness envelope display mode” on 
page 129. Spectrum editing is described in a separate chapter – see “Spectrum Editor” on 
page 255.  
						

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Editing in the Wave window 6 – 79
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 you click this 
value the window zooms in on the selected range.
• If Spectrum display mode is selected, the Level is substituted for Frequency. 
Sizing, moving and minimizing
WaveLab uses standard Windows techniques for resizing, moving, maxi-
mizing and minimizing windows. See your Windows documentation for 
details.
Maximizing width
Selecting the Maximize Width item on the View menu makes the window 
as big as the screen (or any other factor) permits.
The divider
The divider between the Main view and the Overview can be dragged to 
change the view sizes. See “Panes” on page 51 for details.
Mouse cursor position/Level 
Zoom factorWave cursor position/Selection length
File format details (see “Supported 
file formats” on page 113)  
						

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6 – 80 Editing in the Wave window
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, the display will only show you a smaller part of the 
total height. Exactly which section you see can be adjusted with the vertical scroll 
bars. Again, check the ruler to see which part of the waveform is currently shown 
in the display.
Zoom out all the way to 
see the entire wave.
Zoom in until you can see 
each individual sample 
point, for very detailed 
editing.