Indeed, even experienced users will probably find the context-sensitive tooltip help system handy at times. However, newcomers will still find themselves negotiating a moderately steep learning curve that isn't helped by the icon- heavy GUI. Version 8 improves these tools and makes some nice visual and operational tweaks to what came before. WaveLab is a powerful, complex application, but the wealth of features on board means that whether you're editing just a single audio file or collating multiple Audio Montages within a Master Project, you always have access to a truly excellent set of tools. If you'd rather not use the Master Transport Panel at all, you can fold it away.īeyond that, there are also some useful additions to the editing tools, including 'Raise selection with envelope' (raise or lower the volume envelope of the selected audio section only) and 'Create clip from selection', both of which are the sort of operations you'd normally expect to find in a DAW rather than an audio editor.įinally, the new 'Super Clip' option simplifies an Audio Montage by rendering multiple clips into one, while still retaining the original layout as a sub-montage should you wish to go back to it later - sort of a cross between bounce and freeze. Some of the buttons also use drop-down menus for further functions and customisation, and once you have a setup you like, you can save the whole thing as a preset. It's window-specific (and so has far more buttons in the Montage window than in the Batch processor) and brings together many useful controls, including range selection and anchor points, as well as more obvious functions such as play and record. 'The new Master Transport Panel brings together many useful controls, including range selection and anchor points' First, the new Master Transport Panel, which sits either above or below the waveform display. However, there are some new operational changes that are worth mentioning. WaveLab 8 remains largely unchanged from WaveLab 7 in terms of workflow and functionality. It's worth noting that this is available to the various Montage effects sections (clip, track and master), but not the overall Master Output section. On the subject of plugins, effects chains are now presented in a tabbed window, enabling you to add, remove and switch processors around all within the one panel. CurveEQ is a Voxengo classic (also bundled with Cubase 7): a 64-band spline design that's about as flexible and easy to use as EQ plugins get. Particularly notable are the compressor's three sidechain options (low-pass, high-pass and band-pass, with adjustable cutoff and Q width), tube drive and mix balance control. Of the three new plugins, Brickwall Limiter is the most basic however, both Tube Compressor and CurveEQ are excellent.

It's a good idea that we found worked pretty well. This aims to match the loudness of audio clips within an Audio Montage, either to the loudest clip or to a specific value.

The most interesting new loudness-related feature is the Loudness Meta Normalizer. You can also customise the ranges and colours. The meters are highly configurable, with both EBU and custom scaling, and overall standardised presets (Classical R-128, for example). This is complemented by your more typical loudness meters, indicating momentary, short-term and integrated loudness (levels only), along with a handy histogram.

'The Loudness Meta Normalizer matches the loudness of audio clips within an Audio Montage'

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