Steinberg WaveLab Essential 6 Operation Manual
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11 Requirements About audio cards WaveLab Essential works with any Multimedia PC com- patible audio card. However, the audio quality varies dra- matically between cards. For serious work with WaveLab Essential, we recommend that you get a card with the highest possible specifica- tions. However, if you use WaveLab Essential to edit files for use with other hardware (such as a hard disk based re- cording system using its own audio converters) any loss in audio quality that you experience when listening to the files in WaveLab Essential (due to deficiencies in the au- dio card) will not affect the final audio files in any way. For professional use (mastering, etc.) we recommend that you get a card capable of playing back files in 24 bit reso- lution. About the System Information feature After having installed and launched WaveLab Essential, you can get a very detailed report describing your com- puter system by selecting “System Information” on the Help menu. This function analyses your system and lists operating system specifics; processor(s), memory, hard drives, and much more. This is especially useful if you need to contact Technical Support, since this allows you to describe your computer configuration accurately.
13 Installing and setting up Setting up the computer Before proceeding, your computer should be set up and the following items should be installed: “This is what you need…” on page 10 for de- tails on which version to use). The audio card and its driver. Checking the audio card To make sure the audio card will work as expected, you can perform the following two tests: Use the software included with the audio card to make sure you can record and play back without problems. Use the Media Player application (included with Win- dows and described in the Windows documentation) to record and play back audio. Colors At this point you might want to check and for example change the number of colors you use on your computer screen. See your Windows documentation for instructions on how to do this. The recommended setting for WaveLab Essential is 24 or 32 bit mode (“True Color”). Installation procedure Installing the software The installation procedure unpacks all the files and auto- matically puts them in the right places. 1.Insert the CD-ROM disk in the drive. The installation program should start automatically after a few seconds. If, for some reason it doesn’t – for instance if you have “Auto Insert Noti- fication” deactivated for your CD drive – perform steps 2-4 below. Oth- erwise, proceed to step 5. 2.Launch the Explorer, open the “My Computer” window or select “Run” from the Start menu. 3.Locate and double click on the drive symbol for the CD-ROM drive. 4.Double click on the “setup” symbol (setup.exe). 5.Follow the instructions on screen.6.Finally, a dialog informs you that the installation was successful. A restart may be requested – but if no dialog requests a restart it is not necessary to do so. When the installation is finished, the program is found among your other programs on the Start menu and/or the desktop. This completes the installation of your WaveLab Essential program! But, you’re not really done yet… Activating WaveLab Essential After installing WaveLab Essential you can use the pro- gram for 30 days without any restrictions. After this pe- riod, you will have to enter your permanent activation code. You will find this code in the “Essential Product Li- cence Information” document that is included in the WaveLab Essential package. Otherwise, WaveLab Es- sential will not run anymore. Proceed as follows: 1.Open the Syncrosoft License Control Center (which can be found in the Start/Programs menu under Windows or in the Applications folder on a Mac). 2.In the Syncrosoft License Control Center, open the Wizards menu and select the “License Download” option. Follow the instructions and enter your WaveLab Essential activation code. You are now ready to permanently run WaveLab Essen- tial! Register your software! Registering your software will make sure you are entitled to technical support and kept aware of updates and news regarding WaveLab Essential. Program settings Before you start working, you should make some settings:
14 Installing and setting up Audio card settings You need to specify which audio card and driver you in- tend to use. WaveLab Essential can communicate with the audio card via any of the standard protocols; ASIO, MME or WDM. Selecting an ASIO driver 1.Open the Preferences–Audio device tab. 2.Select the ASIO driver from the “Playback device” pop-up menu. Note that the “Playback device” menu heading has now changed to “Playback/Record device” and the Recording device section has been greyed out. This is because with ASIO, the same driver is always used both for output and input. 3.If you click the “Control Panel” button the audio card settings application (usually installed with the audio card) for the ASIO driver opens. In the Control Panel you may find settings for buffer size, digital formats, additional I/O connections, etc. depending on the audio card and the driver. 4.Click on the “Connections” button. The ASIO Audio connections dialog will appear, listing all available chan- nel inputs and outputs in WaveLab Essential. Select the channels you want to use for stereo output and input. 5.Close the dialog. When using ASIO, the playback resolution is set from the ASIO driver (you may find a setting for this in the ASIO Control Panel, depending on the hardware and driver). Therefore, the Playback Resolution settings will be greyed out. Selecting an MME/WDM driver 1.Select “Preferences…” from the Options menu. 2.Click on the Audio device tab. 3.Select the audio card you want to use for recording and playback from the pop-ups. If you only have one audio card you can also select the “Microsoft Sound Mapper” options (the sound mapper is a “virtual audio card” which “maps” all audio to your real card). However this does not let you take full advan- tage of the card’s driver when recording audio and is not recommended. 4.Choose your “Playback Resolution”. Additional audio settings There are other settings in the Preferences that affect au- dio playback and recording. We recommend that you try the default settings before you change anything, since these work well in most cases. On the “Audio Card” tab, you will find the following set- tings: Playback Buffer Number and Size. These determine how much RAM memory is used for buffering when playing back. If you get playback problems such as dropouts or glitches, you should try to increase these values. Recording Buffer Number and Size (not available when using ASIO). These determine how much RAM is used for buffering when recording. If you get dropouts in the recorded audio, you should try increasing these values. On the Preferences–File tab, you will find the following settings: Disk block buffer size. Governs the buffer size used when WaveLab Essential is reading data from the hard disk. If you experience problems in a read intensive sce- nario (such as playing back an Audio CD Montage with a lot of simulta- neous clips), you should try changing this value. If you change this setting, playback will stop when you leave the dialog. Use system cache. When this is deactivated (default), WaveLab Essential reads files directly from the hard disk, bypassing Windows’ file cache. The option is available since it may remedy problems on certain systems with slow disk drives. Note: If you activate this, avoid using large disk block buffer size values! After activating this option, you need to close and re- open all open files, for the setting to take effect! About latency In the Playback section of the Audio device tab, you will find an indication of the current latency (at 16bit/44.1kHz stereo). Latency is the delay between when audio is “sent” from the program and when you actually hear it. The la- !With ASIO drivers, you may find these settings in the ASIO Control Panel. !We recommend that you leave this option deacti- vated!
15 Installing and setting up tency in an audio system depends on the audio hardware, its drivers and their settings. It’s usually possible to reduce latency by lowering the number and size of the playback/ recording buffers. However, please note: Temporary files You also need to specify where WaveLab Essential should store its temporary files. Temporary files are used for certain operations, such as WaveLab Essential’s ex- tensive Undo function (see “Undo and Redo” on page 22). If you have access to more than one drive, saving your temp files on a separate drive (not partition) can consider- ably speed up performance. For example, if your source files are located on the C: drive, you could specify D: emp as temporary folder. This will not only improve performance, but also reduce disk fragmentation. 1.In Windows, create a separate folder in which to store your “temp” files. 2.Select “Folders…” from the Options menu. This opens the Folders dialog, where you can edit how various WaveLab Essential folders are handled . 3.Click on the plus sign beside the “Temporary folders” item (this is located in the “Work folders” category).4.Selecting the Temporary Folder item will show the cur- rent location where the temp files will be created in the Folder field to the right. 5.Either type in the path to the directory or you can browse the drives to locate and select the folder via a standard Windows file dialog. Click OK to select a folder and exit the file dialog. Peak and view memories A peak file is a small file with the extension “.gpk” automat- ically created by WaveLab Essential each time a file is modified or opened in WaveLab Essential (if it hasn’t been previously). The peak file contains information about the waveform, and determines how it is drawn in the wave window. View memory files (extension “.mem”) store view informa- tion relating to a specific audio file such as window and scroll positions, etc. – see “Saving view settings” on page 54. By default, peak files and view memory files are stored in the same folder as the related audio file. Setting this to an- other folder on a different drive will also improve perfor- mance to a certain degree. Regardless of whether this folder is on a different drive or not you also get the advan- tage of not having the audio file folder cluttered with non- audio files if a separate folder is used. This folder can be specified from the Folders dialog, either directly or via the Preferences–Wave edit tab: Select Preferences from the Options menu and select the Wave edit tab. If the “Save view settings in companion file” option is activated, view memory files will be saved in the same folder as the related audio file. If you select “Save in independent folder” you can click the “Edit” button, which will open the Folder dialog with the “Peak and view memories” work folder selected. From here you can navigate to a new folder location to store the peak and view memory temp files. !While a very low latency can be crucial in a real-time DAW application such as Steinberg Nuendo or Cu- base, this is not strictly the case with WaveLab Es- sential. Here the important issues are optimum and stable playback and editing precision. Therefore, you should not try to reach the lowest possible latency figures when working with WaveLab Essential. And again, should you get dropouts, crackles or glitches during playback, raise the Buffer Number setting on the Preferences–Audio device tab. !The folder should be on your fastest hard disk and you should make sure you have plenty of room avail- able on that hard disk (or partition). Putting the “temp” files on a separate drive (that is, not the same drive as your regular files) will speed up file opera- tions considerably.
16 Installing and setting up Installing a CD/DVD recorder Hardware installation/connection For general instructions on installing internal or connect- ing external recorders via USB or Firewire, please refer to the instructions that came with the computer, or the recorder itself. For WaveLab Essential, please just check the following points: Make sure to have the latest firmware version installed in your recorder unit. For CD recorders, the firmware you have must support Disc-at-Once mode! In addition, running a unit with older firmware might for example prevent you from writing CD- Text information into the tracks. Checking the installation of the CD/DVD recorder You might want to check that the recorder unit was actu- ally found by the program. Proceed as follows: 1.Select “CD/DVD Information…” from the Tools menu. The CD/DVD Info dialog appears. 2.Check that your recorder unit appears in the list to the left. The list will also contain any regular DVD-ROM drives, etc. If your CD/ DVD recorder isn’t listed, there’s either something wrong with the instal- lation or the unit is not supported by WaveLab Essential. Installation done! Where do I go next? There are three things we suggest you do: Read through the rest of this book and try out the differ- ent possibilities as you go along.Examine your WaveLab Essential directory and other disks included in this package for files that might be useful to you. If you run into problems, check the Troubleshooting chapter in the Operation Manual. About the Tracer application In the WaveLab Essential directory created on your hard disk during installation, you will find a folder called “Tools”. Among other things, this folder contains a small applica- tion called Tracer. This is a diagnostic tool that tracks and logs various procedures that WaveLab Essential executes when it is launched, e.g. the loading of plug-ins. Should you run into problems with WaveLab Essential and need to contact technical support, you can use the Tracer application and pass on the information it displays to the technical support staff. This could be of great assis- tance since it might be possible to see exactly which op- eration caused a problem. To use the Tracer, locate the file Tracer.exe in the Windows Explorer and double click on it – or use the Run command on the Start menu to browse for the file. After you have activated the Tracer application, launch Wave- Lab Essential. All loading procedures are displayed as plain text, and you can copy this information and then paste it into, for example, an e- mail.
18 Overview Get to know WaveLab Essential Welcome to WaveLab Essential! This chapter is intended to get you acquainted with the program. We will here briefly describe its fundamental functions and main features, so as to point you in the right direction on your road to mastering all of the possibilities that WaveLab Essential offers. The windows and what you can do with them Working with WaveLab Essential, you will encounter a number of different windows that let you do different things. Editing audio files, compiling files for burning CDs or DVDs, applying effects and much, much more. This is an overview of the main windows in the program. The Wave window This is a Wave window, a graphical representation of an audio file. It consists of two parts – the lower is the Main view, and this is where you can perform various audio ed- iting operations such as copying, cutting, pasting, moving, deleting, etc. The upper part is the Overview and serves to let you easily navigate through long files. You can read more about the Wave window and the oper- ations you can perform in it in the chapter “Editing in the Wave window” on page 32. The Audio CD Montage window This is an Audio CD Montage window. An Audio CD Mon- tage lets you compile and edit multiple clips (references to audio files on disk) on one or two tracks. As you can see, the window consists of two panes. The lower one is called the Track View, and this is where you assemble the clips. The appearance of the upper pane de- pends on which of the six tabs at the very top of the win- dow is selected. These tabs give you access to various functions. After you have imported audio files as clips into an Audio CD Montage, you can arrange, edit and play back the clips. You can also apply effects, fades or crossfades, and much more, and last but not least, you can directly create CDs. All in all, the Audio CD Montage is an excellent tool for advanced music CD creation. Read more about the Audio CD Montage and its features in the chapter “The Audio CD Montage” on page 103.
19 Overview The Data CD/DVD window The Data CD/DVD window can be used for compiling and creating data CDs/DVDs (discs that exclusively contain computer data) and Mixed Mode CDs (discs that contain both data and audio). The window is divided into two panes; the upper is called the source window, and the lower is the destination win- dow. You drag files from the source window to the desti- nation window, in which you can rename, remove and move files before burning a CD or DVD. For a detailed description of the Data CD/DVD window and what you can do with it, see “Data CD/DVD Projects” on page 139. The CD/DVD Label Editor This window is the Label Editor. Here you can design and print custom labels for the CDs or DVDs you create. You can create labels for both the front and back of a jewel case, as well as for the discs. Read more about this in the chapter “Creating labels” on page 147. The Master Section This is a very important part of WaveLab Essential, called the Master Section. It has a number of uses including: Adding real-time effect plug-in processors such as Chorus, Reverb, etc. Applying effects to files so that they are permanently made a part of the files (as opposed to using them in real-time). Monitoring and controlling the WaveLab Essential output level. Adding dithering. For details, see “Master Section” on page 81.
20 Overview Find your way around in WaveLab Essential Editing and processing Where do I go if I want to… Edit an existing audio file? When you open an audio file, it appears in a Wave window, in which you can edit it in various ways. See “Editing in the Wave window” on page 32. Compile and edit several audio files on two indepen- dent tracks? Create an Audio CD Montage. See “The Audio CD Montage” on page 103. Apply processing to a wave file? The Process menu contains a number of options for manipulating wave files, including fade-in/out, normalize, time stretch and much more – see “Off-line processing” on page 67. You can also use the Render function in the Master Section to apply effects to a file. Convert an audio file into another audio format? There are several ways: You can use either the “Save as” command or the “Save Special” command on the File menu (see “Saving in another format (Save as…)” on page 51), or the “Render” function in the Master Section (see “Rendering” on page 91). Finally, batch file encoding lets you convert multiple files to another format – see “Batch file encoding” on page 95. Playback and recording Where do I go if I want to… Play back with real-time effects? Effects are added in the Master Section, see “Master Section” on page 81. In Audio CD Montages you can also add individual clip effects, see “Add- ing effects to clips” on page 124. Record new audio files? Use the Record button on the Transport bar. The new file will appear in a Wave window, see “Recording” on page 59. Record songs from an audio CD into WaveLab Essen- tial? You don’t – you import them directly from the disc. On the Tools menu there is an option called “Import Audio CD tracks” (see “Importing audio CD tracks into WaveLab Essential” on page 144). CD/DVD creation Where do I go if I want to… Create an audio CD that can be played back in a regu- lar CD player? You create an Audio CD Montage and insert audio files as clips into it, with each clip representing one track on the audio CD (see “The Audio CD Montage” on page 103). Create a data CD/DVD or a Mixed Mode CD/DVD con- taining audio, data and video? You do this in a Data CD/DVD window. See “Data CD/DVD Projects” on page 139. Create labels for the CDs/DVDs I make? This is done in the Label Editor. See “Creating labels” on page 147. The above are just a few pointers to some of the funda- mental functions in WaveLab Essential. While using them, you will discover a multitude of other features and func- tions that let you make full use of the possibilities of this amazing program. Have fun exploring WaveLab Essential!