| Product: |
Steinberg WaveLab 3 |
| Date: |
04.03.01 (1303 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Audio Montage, speed, features - everything
Disadvantages: errmm
Wavelab is an audio editor for the PC that incorporates all of the features and effects that the amateur could possibly need – and then offers hundreds more effects that can be bought individually and ‘plugged-in’ to the software to give more professional refinement to audio editing. The editing window is totally customisable making it easy to put all the features you use regularly in the same easy to reach place, and the program offers the user a large waveform on which both axis are resizable to ‘zoom’ in on particular sections of the wave.
Improvements over the previous versions of Wavelab include predictive hard disk reading that enable smooth continuous playback of the sound even when managing massive albums and 700 meg files. However the by far most impressive new feature is the addition of the ‘Audio Montage’ this is a file that is non-destructive to the source files stored on the disk but allows other files and effects to be mixed and crossfaded together – ideal for making a CD. The result of the predictive hard disk access and the Audio Montage gives an editing facility that is of professional capability. A CD compilation Audio Montage will be no bigger than 50kb as the effects are applied onto the larger wave files stored on the hard disk ‘on the fly.’
Another beauty of the package is the ease of use. Compared to other editors this one is by far superior. Having played with the package for no more than a week I am in a position to produce professional quality CDs, and furthermore the diversity of musical styles that can be successfully mixed, edited and managed in Wavelab is impressive. Dance tracks can be easily mixed – while the more refined techniques needed to touch up an acoustic set are also there in abundance. And this naturally leads me on to mentioning the quality of the incorporated pitch shift and noise reduction effects. For a package priced at only £300 to have all of t
hese features ‘as standard’ is very reasonable – but when they also work to an acceptable degree you can be sure that you are onto something good! However, for the more advanced audio engineer even better plugins can be purchased – and the investment is well worthwhile for the compilations that are to be sent to record companies and launched.
Another excellent feature is the speed of this program; while you can wait for days for effects to be applied using other packages Wavelab can do the job in SECONDS with its realtime processing. Furthermore on this theme, there is the batch processor that allows the user to edit a wave and schedule the processor to run in the background – so that there is no noticeable reduction is system performance or audio playback. Or for all the processing to be done over night or at lunch time. The performance of the processor is really really good, 6 effects that I applied to 14 tracks were completed in 29 mins! That is effectively 84 individual effects! I should mention that my PC is a P3 500 with a 7200 rpm disk and 128 ram. Having a 7200rpm disk or a SCSI system is important especially if you wish to get into this audio editing lark, simply because of the size of files involved, but more important is the ram – I recommend 384 mb for the serious user and if you know what you are doing set your virtual memory setting to 1Gb of set aside hard disk space. I know I’m getting off the point a bit here, but also if you want to develop an insight into audio editing set a second hard disk – one to read from, and one to write to. Trust me when I say that performance (and disk life) will be dramatically improved due to the read/write head not having to flick continuously between two different positions.
Anyway, Wavelab also offers support and encoding into any of the audio formats you can think of such is its through and through versatility. While an excellent CD burning facility is exc
ellent for producing the end product. Also worth a mention are the unlimited undo and level monitoring features that provide a great way of adjusting and then going back until the levels are exactly right. There is also the fantastic drag and drop nature that allow huge changes to be made in seconds while the graphical interface is so easy to let rhythms match up perfectly. Also there is the Time Bandit time stretching engine that certainly matches up to the overall performance of the product. The ability to remove DC offset is also to be found.
To conclude, Wavelab is an excellent piece of software and takes mastering into a new league, one that is accessible to the home user, its speed and versatility make it the best editor that I have ever seen and I don’t know what I would do without it. The montage, which I should also mention allows selections to be ripped out and saved as any format you could wish with all effects applied is worthy of the price on its own and certainly brings professional capability into the home.
If you want to dabble, or even if you want be create professional CDs – Waveleb 3 will cater for your EVERY need. Take a look at the demo, and you’ll see what I mean!
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