Hello dear WaveLab people!
I’m puzzled by a frequently appearing issue where the Create Customized Audio Montage Duplicate feature fails to match new audio files in a Montage. This has been happening to me with at least all versions of WaveLab 12, and now the issue seems to continue after upgarding to WaveLab Pro 13.
Description of the issue:
I always work in 96k, and use the Create Customized Audio Montage Duplicate function to render deliverables on different sample rates.
When creating a customized duplicate of a Montage, WaveLab sometimes gives an error message saying “The following file could not be matched”, pointing to a seemingly randomly chosen file from the Montage. Usually it’s just one file out of the whole montage, but on rare occasions it has been two files.
Now let me be clear – each time this happened, the file to be matched did exist in the correct folder, and was named correctly. This has been checked, re-checked, double and triple checked over dozens of Montages where this has happened over time. My solution has usually been to just replace the “missing” audio file by hand in the resulting Montage duplicate just to get the job done and move on.
I’d like to point out that this has never happened to me on Montages with only one file. Only on Montages with multiple files.
For me this is quite a frequent phenomenon – approximately it happens once in every 2-3 montages, on both of my machines:
- Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max / MacOS Sequoia 15.7.4
- Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra / MacOS Sequoia 15.7.4
- (also happened in Sonoma)
- System language is English (US)
- Wavelab Pro 12 (all versions)
- Wavelab Pro 13.0.0
So let’s dive in the details:
My workflow:
-
For each new project I always create a new Montage in 96k and place it in a new folder named after the project. For instance, “Artist - Albumname”.
-
Inside this project folder, next to the Montage file, there is a folder called “Audio Files”, inside which are all the original 32bit 96k files used in the Montage.
-
Next to the 96k files in the Audio Files folder, there is a subfolder called “_SRC”. I convert the original 32bit 96k files to either 44.1k, 48k or both with RX, and place them inside this folder. The converted files will get a suffix of either “_32-44100” or “_32-48000” according to their respected sample rates.
-
I open the Create Customized Audio Montage Duplicate dialog, point the path to the “_SRC” folder, and enter the appropriate suffix into New Files field.
-
Either everything goes smoothly, or I get the above mentioned error message. Despite trying, I haven’t been successful in finding any logic behind this happening.
Example of a common scenario where this happens, where it clearly should be impossible:
Let’s say that in the “Audio Files” folder are the following 32bit 96k files:
- SongA.wav
- SongB.wav
- SongC.wav
- SongD.wav
These files are used directly in the Montage.
Inside the subfolder “_SRC”, there are equivalent 32bit 44.1k files, converted with RX:
- SongA_32-44100.wav
- SongB_32-44100.wav
- SongC_32-44100.wav
- SongD_32-44100.wav
Next, I proceed to the Create Customized Audio Montage Duplicate dialog and enter the following settings (exemplified):
After clicking OK, I get an error saying that, for instance, “SongC.wav” couldn’t be matched, and an empty clip will be created. I click OK, and the new Montage duplicate loads up in 44.1k. Everything is in place, except SongC is an empty clip, as expected from the error message.
*Note: If I’m in a hurry at this point, I just replace the clip by hand with the Replace Audio File function and select the file from “ _SRC” folder and call it a day.
Obviously, my next instinct is to close the new montage and restart WaveLab and try again.
After doing the restart, I will randomly get one of these three results:
-
WaveLab will still claim “SongC.wav” cannot be matched.
-
WaveLab will now – seemingly randomly – claim that “SongA.wav” cannot be matched, even though it just did on the previous try. Instead, now “SongC.wav” that was ‘missing’ last time, is matched fine, without obvious logic.
-
WaveLab will suddenly match everything fine without any problems, even though it previously claimed it could not.
I have tried very hard, but can’t find any logic as to what contributes to this happening.
This problem is also very difficult to reliably reproduce, as it does not happen with every montage, or even every time with a specific montage even if it happens once. Also, like mentioned above, sometimes upon restarting WaveLab the issue goes away by itself, only to appear again in one of the next few new montages.
Let me know what you think of this! I tried searching around but apparently this is not a common problem for people and couldn’t find a solution.
Could this be something that happens on my specific machines only, for some specific reason? Any help figuring this out would be highly appreciated!
I’m happy to provide any further details if needed.
Thank you & best regards,
Daniel