Steinberg WaveLab Essential 6 Operation Manual

							61
Playback and recording
 CD (input-fader plus on/off check box)
 Line (input-fader plus on/off check box)
 Mic (input-fader plus on/off check box)
In addition to the above, the card might have custom con-
trols for monitoring, etc., which cannot be accessed from 
the WaveLab Essential mixer. Again, please use the appli-
cation(s) included with the card.
Using the meters
In the lower part of the Record dialog, you will find a meter 
display. This is useful for checking the input level, as well 
as the frequency spectrum of the input signal.
ÖThe meters in the Record dialog are “miniature” ver-
sions of the Level and Spectrum Meters in the Meter win-
dows.
For detailed descriptions of the functionality and features, see “Level 
meter” on page 64.
For the meters to register the signal, you need to activate 
the Monitor checkbox. This can be done automatically, if 
the option “Activate meters when opening record win-
dow” is activated in the Record Settings dialog. The pop-
up menu in the lower left corner allows you to select be-
tween Level or Spectrum metering.
When the Level Meter is selected, horizontal bars show 
the peak level (outer bars) and average loudness (VU, in-
ner bars) of each channel.
Values are also shown numerically. If the Phase Scope option is acti-
vated on the pop-up menu next to the Reset button, a Phase Meter is 
displayed to the right of the Level Meter.
When the Spectrum Meter is selected, a “bar diagram” 
will be shown, providing a continuous graphical represen-
tation of the frequency spectrum.
See “Spectrum meter (60 bands)” on page 65.
You can reset the meters by clicking the Reset button – 
this instantly resets all meters and numerical indicators, in-
cluding the Maximum Peak and RMS values to the right in 
the Level Meter.
You can also select one of five presets for the Level Meter 
on the pop-up menu next to the Reset button. These pre-
sets (containing settings for meter ranges, colors, etc.) 
can be edited by selecting “Settings…” from the pop-up 
menu. The options are described in the chapter “Making 
settings for the level meter” on page 65.
Checking disk capacity
The Disk Capacity indicator above the meters helps you 
make sure you have enough disk space for the recording. 
This indicator shows the amount of available disk space 
on the hard disk specified in the Named File path, or the 
hard disk you have selected for your temporary files (see 
“Temporary files” on page 15). Please note that this value 
is approximate.
Start recording!
When all the preparations are done, click Record to start 
the actual recording.
If you have selected one of the Auto-start options, the 
recording will go into Pause mode (the Record button will 
blink), until the specified Auto-start criteria are met.
When recording starts, the Record button will be “lit” and the Recorded 
Time value will indicate how much you have recorded. 
If you have selected the “Auto-stop after given duration” 
option, the “Remaining Time” value will indicate how much 
recording time you have left.
If you like, you can pause the recording by clicking the 
Pause button at any time.
The Record button will blink to indicate Pause mode. To resume record-
ing, click the Pause or Record button again. A short section of audio just 
before you resume recording (according to the Pause memory value in 
the Record Settings dialog) will be captured.
!Not all audio cards have a mixer application and can 
therefore not access the WaveLab Essential mixer. 
This is especially true with digital I/O cards.
!Use the Level Meter to check the audio input level. 
Adjust this (with the mixer controls or the audio 
card’s applications), so that the Peak Level Meters 
go as high as possible without ever reaching 0dB!
!When there is less than ten seconds of available 
hard disk space, the disk capacity indication is dis-
played in red. 
						

							62
Playback and recording
You can drop markers in the file during recording by 
clicking the Drop Marker buttons.
See below.
If you want to abort the recording, click the Discard but-
ton.
This terminates recording and discards the recorded file. 
When you have finished, click Stop. You can also have 
recording stop automatically by using one of the Auto-
stop options. Either way, the recording by default appears 
in a new window behind the dialog.
If you want to perform more recordings after the first, click 
the Record button and record again. If you have selected 
the Named File option, and the Auto number option is de-
activated, you have to specify another file name to avoid 
overwriting the previously recorded file.
When you have finished recording completely, click the 
Close button (in the lower right corner) to close the dialog.
ÖIf you have created temporary files, and want to save 
the file(s) permanently, click on each document you have 
created and use Save As on the File menu to save each 
one.
See “Saving in another format (Save as…)” on page 51 for details.
About dropping markers during recording
When you are recording, you can click the marker buttons 
at any time, to add a marker to the recorded file. The yel-
low button will generate a numbered, generic marker (see 
“The various marker types” on page 98), while the white 
buttons will generate numbered, generic region start and 
end markers.
If you want to name the markers you drop rather than us-
ing generic, numbered markers, you can do this in the fol-
lowing way:
Type in the desired name in the box below the buttons. 
You can type in a new name for each marker before you drop. This works 
well if you know beforehand where you want to drop the markers and 
what their names should be. If you want to be able to drop markers not 
planned beforehand though, use the dialog that will appear each time 
you click a button to drop a marker. In this dialog, you can either type in a name for the marker, or you can confirm that you want to use an already 
entered name. The benefit of using this method is that the marker will be 
dropped at the time position when you clicked the marker button, regard-
less of how long you take to type in a name for the marker.
Furthermore, this dialog also allows you to specify a delay value for the 
marker. The marker will then be dropped at the position when you clicked 
the marker button, minus the delay value you specify. So if you clicked 
the marker button after 10 seconds of recording and specify a delay 
value of 2 seconds, the marker will be dropped 8 seconds into the re-
cording.
ÖNote: if you insert two or more region start markers in 
a row (with no region end markers in between), only the 
last of these start markers will be kept (the first marker(s) 
will be removed).
In other words, the last region start marker doesn’t become “permanent” 
until you insert a region end marker.
The same goes for region end markers – if you insert several end markers 
in a row, only the last one will be kept.
This is a very useful function, because it allows you to 
“change your mind” when inserting markers during re-
cording. For example, let’s say you are recording a contin-
uous performance and want to mark all takes worth 
keeping. At the start of a take you insert a region start 
marker. However, this turns out to be a false start or a 
flawed take. When the next take starts you insert a new re-
gion start marker again and the previous, unwanted start 
marker is removed. 
						

							8
Metering 
						

							64
Metering
Introduction
WaveLab Essential offers very detailed and versatile me-
tering, allowing you to monitor level and spectrum during 
playback, and also featuring an oscilloscope display. This 
chapter describes how to display, set up and use the var-
ious meters.
Monitor playback
The meters reflect the audio being played back. Note that 
metering occurs after the Master Section, which means 
the results of effects, dithering and Master faders are 
taken into account.
The meters can be used for monitoring all kinds of audio 
playback: Wave windows, Audio CD Montage, audio CD 
track lists, audition in file dialogs, etc.
The meters
There are three different meters in WaveLab Essential, 
each with its separate window. The meters are opened 
and closed from the Analysis menu.
As with any standard window, you can resize the meter 
windows by dragging the window borders, and fold the 
windows by clicking the fold icons (or by double clicking 
the title bars).
On the following pages, the available meters are de-
scribed.
Level meter
This meter window shows the peak level and average 
loudness, in the following way:The Peak Level meters display the peak levels of each 
channel, graphically and numerically.
By default, the meter segments and numerical peak values are displayed 
in green for low levels, yellow for levels between –6dB and –2dB, and 
red for levels above –2dB. You can change both the colors and the 
range boundaries if you wish, as described on “Making settings for the 
level meter” on page 65.
The VU (Volume Unit) meters measure the average 
loudness (RMS) of each channel.
These meters have a built-in inertia, evening out loudness variations over 
a user-defined time span. 
If you are monitoring playback, you will also note two vertical lines follow-
ing each VU meter bar, seemingly “trying to reach” the current RMS 
value. These lines indicate the average of the most recent minimum RMS 
values (left line) and the average of the most recent maximum RMS val-
ues (right line). To the left, the difference between the minimum and max-
imum average values is displayed (the level value in brackets) – this gives 
you an overview of the dynamic range of the audio material.
If you are monitoring audio playback, the maximum peak 
and loudness values are displayed numerically to the right 
of the meter bars.
Numbers in brackets to the right of the Maximum Peak values indicate 
the number of successive clips (0dB signal peaks). 1 or 2 clips can be 
acceptable, but if you get a larger number, you should lower the master 
level to avoid digital distortion.
Resetting the meters
You can reset the level meters by clicking the Reset icon, 
or by selecting Reset from the Options pop-up menu. This 
instantly resets all meters and numerical indicators, includ-
ing the Maximum Peak and RMS values and the number of 
signal clips.
The Reset icon
VU meters Peak level 
meters
Meter presets (see “Selecting meter presets” on page 65)
Reset button
Recent minimum Recent maximumDifference value 
						

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Metering
Making settings for the level meter
You can adjust the behavior, scale and color of the meters 
as desired. It is also possible to save five sets of meter 
settings as presets, for instant access. Proceed as fol-
lows:
1.Pull down the Options pop-up menu and select “Set-
tings” (or click the “tool” icon).
The Level Meter Settings dialog appears.
2.Adjust the settings as desired.
By using the Apply button, you can check the results of your changes 
without closing the dialog. The following settings are available:
3.If you want to store your settings for later use (or as-
sign them to a preset), select “Save as…” from the pop-
up menu at the bottom of the dialog, and specify a name 
for the preset in the file dialog that appears.
4.To make the settings instantly available for selection in 
the Meter window, use the “Assign to preset button” sub-
menu on the pop-up menu.
5.When you are finished, click OK to close the dialog.
Clicking Cancel closes the dialog and discards any changes you have 
made (even if you have used the Apply button to apply them to the 
meters).
Selecting meter presets
If you have assigned your settings to the Preset buttons in 
the Settings dialog, you can quickly switch between differ-
ent level scales and display modes, by clicking one of the 
Preset icons [1]-[5], or selecting the desired preset from 
the Options pop-up menu.
Spectrum meter (60 bands)
The Spectrum meter shows a continuous graphical repre-
sentation of the frequency spectrum, in the shape of a “bar 
diagram” with 60 frequency bands.
Setting Description
Global colors Click these buttons to select colors for the meter back-
ground, marks (scale units) and grid lines.
Global range This is where you specify the low and high end of the 
displayed level range. Typically, you may want to create 
a preset showing the full level range, and other presets 
for detailed view of a smaller range.
Peak meter – 
BallisticsThese settings determine how fast the peak level meter 
falls after a peak (Release rate) and for how long the 
numerical peak indication remains displayed after a 
peak (Peak hold time).
Peak meter –
ZonesThe color buttons allow you to select colors for the 
peak level meters’ low, middle and top zones. You can 
also define what should be considered “middle” and 
“top” zones, by changing the “Middle zone from” and 
“Top zone from” values. 
VU meter –
ShowAllows you to activate or deactivate the VU meters.
VU meter – 
BallisticsThese settings determine how the VU meter responds:
Resolution is the sample width of the “average win-
dow” for the VU meter (the number of samples contin-
uously evaluated to calculate the average). The smaller 
this is, the more the VU meter behaves like the peak 
meter.
Range inertia determines the “average windows” for 
the recent minimum and maximum value lines, and will 
therefore affect how quickly these respond to changes 
in loudness.
VU meter –
ColorThe color button allows you to select the color for the 
VU level meter.  Setting Description 
						

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Metering
Oscilloscope
The Oscilloscope is a “microscope” version of the level 
meter, showing the area around the cursor position at 
large magnification.
If you are analysing stereo audio, the Oscilloscope will 
normally show the separate levels of the two channels. 
However, if you activate the option “Show Mix and Sub-
traction” on the Options pop-up menu (or click the +/– 
icon) the upper half of the Oscilloscope will show the mix 
of the two channels and the lower half will show the sub-
traction.
Making settings
Selecting “Settings” from the Options pop-up menu (or 
clicking the “tool” icon) will open the Oscilloscope set-
tings dialog. Here you can adjust the display colors, and 
choose whether Auto-zoom should be active or not. 
When Auto-zoom is activated, the display will be opti-
mized so that the highest level reaches the top of the dis-
play at all times. 
						

							9
Off-line processing 
						

							68
Off-line processing
Introduction
When we refer to off-line processing, we mean functions 
that “permanently” alter the file, to make it sound more or 
less different. This is in opposition to “real-time process-
ing”, which makes the file play back differently, without 
making any permanent changes to it. Real-time process-
ing is described in the next chapter.
Applying processing
Processing can be applied to a selection or to a whole file. 
For certain processing operations processing the entire 
file is necessary. This will be indicated in the respective 
section.
ÖIf “Process whole file if no selection exists” is activated 
in the Preferences–Wave edit tab, the whole file will auto-
matically be processed if no selection exists.
To apply processing to a selection, proceed as follows:
1.Make a selection.
Note that you will “Select All” to process the entire file. If the file is in ste-
reo, you can apply processing to either channel or both, by selecting one 
channel or both, see “Selecting in stereo files” on page 41.
2.Select the desired type of processing from the menus.
3.If a dialog appears, fill it out.
If the dialog uses presets, you can load one of them to fill out the settings 
automatically, see “Presets” on page 30.
4.When you have finished with the settings in the dialog, 
click the Apply/Paste/Process button.
The status bar shows the progress of the operation. If you need to inter-
rupt a long process, click the “Stop” button on the status bar or press 
[Esc].
Undo/Redo
No matter how long the selection is or how elaborate the 
processing may be, you have access to unlimited Undo/
Redo for all processing. The only limitation to this is the 
available hard disk space, as described in the section 
“Undo and Redo” on page 22.
Getting the most out of the non-modal dialogs
The processing dialogs are non-modal, which means they 
stay on screen even after the processing has been ap-
plied. This, together with the Undo allows you to try differ-
ent types of processing without ever leaving the dialog (or 
even stopping playback!):
When the dialog is still the active window you can use 
the computer keyboard for the following operations:
While the dialog is still open (but inactive) you can se-
lect from menus and use other dialogs and palettes (for 
example the Transport bar).
You can “fold in” and “fold out” non-modal dialogs, as 
described in the section ““Folding” windows” on page 24.
Presets
As described in the section “Loading presets” on page 
30, you can use presets for most processing dialogs, to 
save and recall settings. In addition, the program comes 
with a number of useful presets for each processing op-
tion.
Level Normalizer
This allows you to change the amplitude (volume) of the 
selection. The value is always related to the maximum level 
that can be obtained.
Key Command
[F3] Undo
[F4] Redo
[F6] Play selection
[Shift]+[F6] Loop selection
[F7] Stop
[F8] Play 
						

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Off-line processing
Gain Change
This also allows you to change the amplitude (volume) of 
the selection, just like the Level Normalizer. The difference 
here is that the gain change is set in absolute numbers, 
plus/minus the current level (which is indicated as 0dB).
Clipping
This processor lets you do something that most other 
functions in WaveLab Essential never do: introduce clip-
ping.
Clipping is when the gain is raised to a point where distor-
tion is added. While this is normally not wanted, mild clip-
ping in for example the attack of a drum sound can add 
some “punch”.
Dynamics
This dialog allows you to tailor the dynamics of the audio, 
to create effects like compression, expansion, limiting and 
noise gating. Since dynamic processing of audio is a big 
subject, we will not be able to describe all the possibilities 
in this short text. Please study the included presets which 
implement examples of the above-mentioned functions 
and experiment with the controls to get a feeling for what 
they do.
The Time Response controls
The settings in this section apply regardless of whether 
you use the graphic editing possibilities or not. These con-
trols govern how a variation in sound level in the material 
affects the amount of processing.
The Attack parameter, for example, is related to the begin-
ning of new sounds in the material (for example each new 
“hit” in a drum recording). Raising the Attack time means 
that more of the beginning of each sound (the attack) will 
pass through unprocessed.
We recommend that you try the Auto feature first, and if 
that doesn’t give the desired result, use the individual con-
trols instead.If you try to raise the 
level of a wave above 
0dB (100%)…
…it will get distorted 
(the peaks are 
“clipped”). 
						

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Off-line processing
The Normalize controls
These are used to normalize the sound before and/or after 
processing. Please note the following:
 The effect of all dynamic processing depends on the ampli-
tude (level) of the material to be processed. Therefore, if you 
process a number of files with slightly different levels (for ex-
ample using presets or batch processing) the effect of the 
processing will be different from file to file. To avoid this, acti-
vate “Normalize before”.
 On the other hand if you are experimenting with different set-
tings, this means that after activating “Normalize before” you 
may have to re-adjust the Threshold level. See “Level Normal-
izer” on page 68 for more information on normalizing.
 One reason for setting the “Normalize before” value to less 
than 0 dB (full level) is if you are expanding, which might intro-
duce clipping if the signal is too strong to start with.
The Dynamics controls
When the Graphic Editing switch is deactivated, the dy-
namics processor works very much like a simple compres-
sor. Use the Threshold and Ratio settings to set the 
amount of compression.
About graphic editing
When the Graphic Editing check box is activated, you can 
specify any input to output function. This allows you to 
“draw” limiters, noise gates, expanders, etc. and combina-
tions of all these. See the presets for examples.
 The curve shows input level along the horizontal axis and out-
put level along the vertical axis. With a straight line diagonally, 
each input level is represented by the same output level (the 
signal is not processed at all).
No processing
 If the curve starts at 45° and then tilts downwards from any 
point, signals above this point will have a lower output level 
than input level. In other words, a gain (compression) reduc-
tion is performed.
Compression
 If the curve is tilted upwards instead, the output level will be 
higher than the input level, which is referred to as expanding.
Expansion
 If the curve is horizontally flat from some point, the output level 
will be the same regardless of input level. This is referred to as 
limiting.
Limiting