Steinberg WaveLab Essential 6 Operation Manual

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The Audio CD Montage
Mixing down – The Render function
The Render function in the Master Section allows you to 
“mix down” the whole Montage (or sections of it) to a sin-
gle audio file. 
The Render function can be used in many ways:
 It’s useful if you want to burn a CD from a CPU-intensive Mon-
tage, as it allows you to first render all clip effect processing 
and then burn the CD in a second pass (see “About the two 
CD write methods” on page 133).
 The Render function is useful for “printing” the effect process-
ing for CPU-intensive Montages prior to the “final” rendering, 
allowing you to add more effects, etc.
1.If you want to render the whole Montage from start to 
end, proceed to step 3.
2.If you want to render some of the clips only, select 
these.
3.If necessary, mute or unmute tracks.
4.Click the Render button in the Master Section window.
The Rendering preferences dialog appears.
5.Use the radio buttons in the Source section to specify 
what you want to include in the created file.
The Selected Clips option will only be available if you have selected clips 
(in step 2 above). 
6.Activate the options as desired:
7.Select whether you want to create a named file or not.
If you activate “Create named file”, you must specify a name and location 
for the file. If you don’t activate the option, a temporary file is created, 
with the bit resolution specified in the Preferences dialog–File tab. 
8.If “Create named file” is selected you can click the 
item at the bottom of the dialog to open the Audio File 
Format dialog.
Here you can specify the various audio properties for the file(s) to be ren-
dered. For certain compressed file formats (mp3/mp2/WMA/Ogg Vor-
bis), you can make encoding settings from the Encode pop-up menu.
9.Close the Audio File Format dialog when you are done.
10.Click the Schedule tab to make settings for Priority, 
Start and Completion actions (see “Options on the 
Schedule tab” on page 92).
11.Click OK to create the file.
!Only unmuted audio will be included in the rendered 
file(s)!
Option Description
No Tail When this is activated, any audio appended by the 
Master Section effects (such as echoes and reverb 
tails) will be cut off. Note that this doesn’t affect the 
Tail setting for clip effects (see “Tail” on page 125).
Create CD image and 
cue-sheetThis option (available when “Whole Montage” and 
“Create named file” are selected) lets you export an 
Audio CD Montage as a CD image with an accom-
panying cue sheet (a text file identifying the CD 
tracks in the image file). The cue sheet and the im-
age file it describes can then be imported into any 
CD recording application that supports this func-
tion, and written onto CD. 
						

							132
The Audio CD Montage
Preparing the Audio CD Montage for 
CD burning
The descriptions in this section cover preparations for CD 
burning. A CD can be burned directly from within the 
Montage:
1.Make sure the Audio CD Montage contains exactly the 
material you want on the CD.
ÖNote that CD tracks must be at least 4 seconds long. 
2.Click the CD tab to select the corresponding CD view.
This contains a CD track list with each clip in the Montage representing 
one track on the audio CD.
3.Select “Adjust pauses between clips…” from the 
Functions menu or click the horizontal double-arrow 
icon.
A dialog appears, which contains a number of settings that help you ad-
justing the pauses between the clips or CD tracks, respectively. 
4.Set the options as desired:
5.Click Apply.
The dialog closes. Now, pauses between CD tracks are adjusted ac-
cording to your settings. You can check the result in the CD view’s list of 
CD tracks.
6.If needed, you can adjust the CD track pauses manu-
ally in the CD view’s list of CD tracks, or by dragging the 
clips in the Track view.7.Select “Check...” from the CD view : Functions menu 
or click the “glasses” icon.
WaveLab Essential will check the CD list and inform you whether it’s OK 
or not (this check is also performed automatically before actually burning 
a CD from the Montage). 
8.If the Check gave a warning message, make manual 
adjustments and repeat the Check procedure until the list 
is OK.
You may get warning messages for several reasons, in-
cluding:
 You have CD tracks that are shorter than 4 seconds.
 The pause before the first CD track is shorter than 2 seconds.
 The CD is too long (the total length of the CD is displayed in 
the control bar at the top of the tab).
Editing the CD view list 
Once you have prepared a CD track list as described pre-
viously, you can go ahead and write the CD.
However, there are some additional settings you can ad-
just in the CD view track list:
You can hide or show CD track list columns by using 
the column pop-up menu (accessed by clicking the arrow 
button to the left of the column headings).
You can also drag and resize columns as usual.
You can adjust all settings in the list by clicking or dou-
ble clicking the desired item (except for the Start, End 
and “Length” values, which can be set by moving or resiz-
ing the according clip).
You can change the order of CD tracks by dragging 
tracks in the CD view list.
Edit CD-Text
This CD view : Functions menu item opens the CD Text 
editor, where you can input the track’s title, artist and 
other information. It will be burnt onto the CD as CD Text. 
Some CD Players support CD Text and display this infor-
mation during track playback.
Set specific pause time Set the amount of pause time you want to have 
between the CD tracks.
Do not create a pause
between two contiguous
clipsThis is only availale if the above option is set, 
which then will not create pauses if clips are 
connected by crossfades or snapping to each 
another.
Round existing pauses
to closest secondThis will adjust existing pauses so that they 
match exact full seconds. 
						

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The Audio CD Montage
About the two CD write methods
The final phase of CD creation can be done in two ways:
By burning directly from the CD view in the Montage.
This is an easy process, but puts some demand on your computer. Keep 
in mind that even if your Audio CD Montage plays back without prob-
lems, the CPU load will be four times as high if you burn in 4x speed 
(since the audio file has to be rendered four times as fast)! 
There is, however, an option in the CD Write dialog to 
“Render a temporary file before burning” that alleviates 
this problem – see “About the “Render to temporary file 
before burning” option” on page 135.
This method is recommended if your Audio CD Montage contains a lot of 
clip effects (or is otherwise CPU intensive), since it separates the audio 
file rendering from the CD burning process. It is also recommended if 
you want to create multiple copies of the CD.
In both cases, all clip effects are used and the Montage is 
processed through the Master Section, including any acti-
vated effects and the dithering/noise shaping stage.
Now you can proceed with burning the CD as described 
in the next chapter.
Rendering a CD image and cue sheet
This is an option that enables you to export an image file of 
the Audio CD Montage (including clip effects, Master 
Section settings etc.), which can then be used in other 
CD recording applications.
1.Open the Master Section and click the Render button.
The Rendering Preferences dialog appears.
2.Select the “Whole Montage” option in the Range sec-
tion and activate the “Create named file” option.
3.Specify a name and location for the file, and make sure 
the Wav 16 bit format is selected.
4.Select the “Create CD image and cue-sheet” option in 
the Options section.
5.Click OK.
Now, the whole Montage is rendered to a CD image file, with an accom-
panying cue sheet (a text file identifying the CD tracks in the image file). 
The cue sheet and the image file it describes can then be imported into 
any CD recording application that supports this function, and written 
onto CD. 
						

							14
Burning an audio CD 
						

							135
Burning an audio CD
Introduction
This chapter describes the basic CD burning process, as 
well as some general reference information about the CD 
format. 
It does not, however, describe the necessary preparations 
for creating a CD from an Audio CD Montage. In other 
words, this chapter assumes that the respective prepara-
tions have been completed, and that you are ready to exe-
cute the actual CD burning.
Please refer to the chapter “The Audio CD Montage” for a 
description of the respective preparations before follow-
ing the instructions in this chapter.
Selecting a CD-R unit
Before you start writing, you must specify which CD-R 
unit WaveLab Essential should use (for example, you can 
have more than one unit connected at a time, and switch 
between them from within WaveLab Essential).
1.Click the CD tab in the Audio CD Montage and select 
“Write CD” from the Functions pop-up menu.
2.Use the Device pop-up menu to select your recorder.
3.Click the “i” (info) button next to the Device name.
This will show you details about, and settings for, your specific CD-R 
unit.
Testing an audio CD before burning
There are two ways to check a CD before burning:
Check
The “Check” command on the Audio CD Montage Func-
tions menu (CD tab selected) scans through the audio 
CD and checks that the settings conform to the CD stan-
dard. This command does not access the CD-R recorder 
in any way, it only checks the setting in the list against a 
set of rules.
This check is automatically performed when you try to ac-
tually burn a CD.
“Test writing of first track” and “Test writing of 
the whole CD”
These two options in the Write CD dialog actually simu-
late writing of one or all tracks to the CD. This takes all 
settings into account, including the writing speed (1x, 2x, 
etc.), or whether a disk image should be rendered first 
(see below), etc.
 If the test fails, try writing at a lower speed.
 If the testing of all tracks is successful, you can be sure there 
will be no problems with writing the actual CD.
About the “Render to temporary file before 
burning” option
This is an additional option in the Write CD dialog that can 
be used in case you have a slow computer and/or a lot of 
CPU-load intensive effects, etc. in the Montage. If this 
item is ticked, a disk image is created before burning, 
which eliminates the risk of buffer underruns.
This option is included in the test writing if it is ticked 
beforehand.
Therefore if it was on when testing, it should be on when writing.
If this option was off, and the whole CD was test written 
successfully, there is no need to activate it when burning.
It will only make the write time longer, without providing any “extra” 
safety. 
						

							136
Burning an audio CD
Writing a CD
Once you have set up the CD Montage, we suggest the 
following work order for burning the CD. These steps are 
not mandatory though, just a recommendation.
1.Listen through the CD once more from the Montage, to 
check that all starts, ends and transitions are OK.
2.Select Check from the CD tab – Functions menu, to 
check that all settings conform to the Red Book standard.
This is done automatically before burning, but you might want to do this 
anyway at this point.
3.Insert a fresh CD-R disc into your drive.
4.Select Write CD.
5.Select the speed at which you expect to be able to 
burn from the small pop-up menu.
6.Use the test options in the dialog to check that you will 
actually be able to write the CD at that speed.
7.If you want to create a CD in the CD-Extra format, ac-
tivate the CD-Extra Support option in the dialog.
See below.
8.Once the Montage has passed the test, switch to 
“WRITE” and press OK in the dialog.
If you run into problems, check the Troubleshooting chapter in the online 
documentation.
In the progress dialog that appears while the CD is re-
corded, you will find an option called “Eject CD on suc-
cess”. If you activate this option, the CD recorder will 
automatically eject the CD once it’s finished.
CD-Extra support
When writing an audio CD as described above, it is pos-
sible to prepare it for CD-Extra support. CD-Extra is com-
parable to Mixed Mode CDs in that both of these formats 
allow for the writing of both audio and data on a single 
CD. However, unlike Mixed Mode CDs, the audio on CD-
Extra CDs is placed on the first track(s) of the CD and the 
data follows subsequently. This means that the audio will 
start to play immediately when the CD is used in a regular 
audio CD player, without having to skip to track 2. Also, 
when creating a CD-Extra CD, you can make use of all the 
functions available in the Montage.
If you are writing an audio CD and want to prepare it for 
CD-Extra, do the following:
1.Put a checkmark in the “CD-Extra compatible” box in 
the Write CD dialog.
This will prepare the CD for further writing of data later. Much like a multi-
session CD.
2.Write the audio CD as described above.
3.The next step is to create a Data CD/DVD containing 
the data you want to incorporate on the CD.
How to create a Data CD/DVD is described in the section “Creating a 
new Data CD/DVD Project” on page 140.
4.In the Write dialog for the Data CD/DVD (described in 
the section “The Write dialog for the Data CD/DVD” on 
page 142), select the options “Track At Once” for Write 
Method and “Close CD” for Closing Method.
5.Click on “Write”.
The data will now be added to the CD after the audio you added previ-
ously, and the CD-Extra is created and finalized (no further writing is pos-
sible).
!Please observe the precautions indicated in the 
Troubleshooting chapter in the online documentation 
before writing your first CD!
!Please be aware that some computer CD drives may 
not recognize CDs in the CD-Extra format. Plextor 
drives are recommended. 
						

							137
Burning an audio CD
The audio CD format – Background 
information
This text aims to provide you with some background infor-
mation on the CD format, to help you better understand 
how to create your own CDs. This is a big subject, and we 
will only be able to touch upon it here. For more informa-
tion, try a text-book on the subject, or search the Internet 
for more information.
The basic CD formats
There are a number of different formats for the contents of 
a CD disc. You are probably familiar with audio CDs, CD-
ROMS, and CD-I. These are all slightly different, although 
they use the same media – CD discs. The audio CD spec-
ification is called Red Book. It is this standard to which 
WaveLab Essential conforms.
Red Book CD is not a real file format
Those of you who are computer literate might know about 
file formats. Please note that Red Book CD is not a real 
file format. All the audio on the CD is stored in one big 
chunk, one file if you will. This is different from hard disks, 
for example, where each file is stored separately. Under-
standing the fact that all the audio is in fact one long 
stream of digital data is something that will probably help 
you better understand the limitations of the format.
The different types of “events” on an audio CD
There are three types of events that can be used to spec-
ify various sections of audio on the CD. These are:
About frames, positions, small frames and bits 
The data on an audio CD is divided into frames. A frame 
consists of 588 stereo samples. 75 frames make up one 
second of audio. Why? Well, 75 x 588 = 44100, and 
since the sampling frequency of the CD format is 
44100kHz (samples per second), this equals one second 
of audio. When you specify positions on the CD, in Wave-
Lab Essential, you do it in the format mm:ss:ff, where mm 
is minutes, ss is seconds and ff is frames. The frame val-
ues go from 0 to 74, since there are 75 frames to a sec-
ond.
Technically, there is no way to specify something smaller 
than a frame on a CD. One effect of this is that if the 
length of a track on the CD does not equal a perfect num-
ber of frames, some blank audio must be added at the 
end. Another effect of this is that when you play the CD, 
you can never locate (position) to anything closer than a 
frame. If you need some data in the middle of a frame, you 
still have to read the whole frame. Again, this is unlike a 
hard disk, where you can retrieve any byte on the disk, 
without reading the surrounding data.
But frames aren’t the smallest block of data on a CD. 
There is also something called “small frames”. A small 
frame is a container of 588 bits. 98 small frames together 
make up one regular frame. In each small frame there is 
actually only room for six stereo samples, which means 
that a lot of space is left for data other than the actual au-
dio. There is information for encoding, laser synchroniza-
tion, error correction and the PQ data (so called because 
it is stored in the “P” and “Q” bits). This PQ data is of ma-
jor importance to anyone who wants to create their own 
CD, so please let us explain it in further detail.
PQ codes and WaveLab Essentials solution to handling 
them
The PQ codes convey information about track start, sub-
indexes and pauses, as described above. They also con-
tain the timing information (minutes, seconds, frames). To 
fit all this information in, a block of PQ information is 
spread out over 98 small frames.
Event Description
Track Start There can be up to 99 tracks on one CD. Each is 
identified by its start point only.
Track  Sub-Indexes On advanced CD players, you might have noted that 
a track can be divided into sub-indexes (sometimes 
called only indexes). These are used to identify “im-
portant” positions within a track. There can be 98 
sub-indexes in each track. However, since it is diffi-
cult and time-consuming to search for and locate to 
a sub-index, many CD players ignore this informa-
tion.
Pause A pause appears before each track. Pauses can be 
of variable lengths. Some CD players indicate the 
pauses between tracks on their displays. 
						

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Burning an audio CD
Specifying PQ codes is not complex. However, when cre-
ating a CD there are a number of rules you must take into 
account. For example, there should be some silent frames 
before each track, sub-indexes should be slightly early, 
there should be pauses at the beginning and end of the 
entire CD, etc.
When creating CDs from an Audio CD Montage, these 
rules and settings are handled by WaveLab Essential to 
ensure your CD will work properly.
ISRC codes
In addition to the basic PQ codes, there is something 
called “International Standard Recording Code”, identifi-
cation that is only used on CDs intended for commercial 
distribution. WaveLab Essential allows you to specify an 
ISRC code for each audio track.
The ISRC code is structured as follows:
 Country Code (2 ASCII characters).
 Owner Code (3 ASCII characters or digits).
 Recording Year (2 digits or ASCII characters).
 Serial Number (5 digits or ASCII characters). 
UPC/EAN codes
UPC stands for “Universal Product Code”. Some CD/
DVD-R units allow you to specify this code, which is a thir-
teen-digit catalog number for the disc. Also known as 
EAN.
Pre-emphasis 
Pre-emphasis works by boosting (or pre-emphasizing) 
high frequencies before burning the CD, and cutting (de-
emphasizing) them when playing back. The theoretical re-
sult of this is that the desired audio is returned to normal 
sound, but any other high frequency content (noise) in the 
recording is reduced.
Disc-At-Once – Writing CD-Rs for duplication into “real” 
CDs
WaveLab Essential only writes audio CDs in Disc-at-
Once mode. There are three good reasons for this:
If you want to create a CD-R to use as a master for a 
real CD production, you must write the CD-R in Disc-At-
Once mode. In this mode, the entire disc is written in one 
pass, without ever turning off the recording laser. There 
are other ways of writing a CD, namely Track-At-Once and MultiSession. If you use these writing formats, the 
“link blocks” created to link the various recording passes 
together will be recognized as “uncorrectable errors” 
when you try to master from the CD-R. These links can 
also result in clicks when playing back the CD.
Disc-At-Once mode provides more flexibility when 
specifying pause lengths between tracks.
Disc-At-Once is the only mode that supports sub-in-
dexes.
Writing on the fly vs. CD images
WaveLab Essential always writes a CD on the fly, that is, it 
does not create a CD image before burning. This method 
makes writing CDs faster and requires much less disk 
space. However, if for some reason you need to, Wave-
Lab Essential lets you join all audio tracks into one large 
file that can be used as an “image” of the entire CD. 
						

							15
Data CD/DVD Projects 
						

							140
Data CD/DVD Projects
Introduction
A Data CD/DVD project is an environment that can be 
used to compile and write a data only CD-ROM/DVD-
ROM or Mixed Mode CDs.
 Data discs exclusively contain computer data. This can be files 
of any type. However, the files are stored on the CD/DVD in 
such a way that an audio CD player cannot recognize them.
 The difference between a Mixed Mode CD and a normal audio 
CD is that the Mixed Mode CDs contain both computer data 
and audio data that can be played back by a CD player.
 On a Mixed Mode CD, the computer data occupies track 1, 
and the music occupies the subsequent tracks.
Creating a new Data CD/DVD 
Project
Creating a new Data CD/DVD project for data discs or 
Mixed Mode CDs
To create a new Data CD/DVD project, select “Data CD/
DVD” from the New submenu on the File menu. A new 
Data CD/DVD window appears.The principle is simple: The Data CD/DVD window has 
two main window panes; the source window on top and 
the destination window below.
The source window shows the contents of your hard disks 
(or other storage media) in a way much like the Windows 
Explorer: with a folder hierarchy “tree” to the left and the 
contents of the selected folder shown to the right. The 
destination window shows the contents of the CD/DVD to 
be recorded, again with two panes in the same manner.
To compile a data only CD-ROM/DVD-ROM or a Mixed 
Mode CD, drag files and/or folders from the upper into the 
lower window pane.
You can record the CD/DVD as soon as you have placed all files in the 
lower pane.
In the destination window, you can rename, remove or 
open files.
You can save and open Data CD/DVD files from the File 
menu, as with other document types.
Data CD/DVD files have the extension “.cdp”.
Source window settings
You can decide how files and folders are displayed in the 
source window (as icons, as a list, etc.) by selecting one 
of the items on the Source menu (or by clicking the corre-
sponding icon) on the source window toolbar.
To help navigating, you can use the functions “Up one 
level” and “Recent paths”. The latter (only available as an 
icon on the toolbar) displays a menu listing all recently 
used paths, allowing you to quickly go back to any of the 
listed folders.
The Source window Source menu contains the following 
view options:
!An alternative to a Mixed Mode CD is the “CD-Extra” 
format, which also allows audio and data to be com-
bined on the same CD. To create a CD-Extra, you 
first create and write an Audio CD Montage and then 
add the data. See “CD-Extra support” on page 136.
!For DVD, creating a new Data CD/DVD project as 
described below will enable you to create a data only 
DVD-ROM disc.
Source window
Destination window
Function Icon Description
Refresh Click on this icon to update the con-
tents of the window. This is useful if, for 
instance, storage media has been 
added or removed.
Show Audio and
Video FilesIf this function is active, the right part of 
the window pane only shows audio and 
video files, if available.
Show All Files If this function is active, the right part of 
the window pane shows all file types.