i am a big Steinberg fan but have to cleary voice my frustration with W7. the jump from W6 to W7 is one of the worst moves that i have seen Steinberg make.
when W7 was released i got the upgrade mainly for its DDP capability.
i have been running W6 from the beginning and master professionally on it and have finetuned W6 to be a very fast and sharp tool. i don’t want to go into specific gripes because the list would be indeed very long.
the main thing is: after spending many hours on re-learning W7 to do just what i was able to do in W6, watching even tutorials that are making weak excuses why things have changed, and failing, i still have not nearly reached the same efficiency with W7 as i had with W6. i know that i am not alone in this. my question is why Steinberg chooses to alianate a huge client base of professionals by forcing them to go through this effort and rewarding rather small improvements? maybe that is one reason why the industry still favours other software over Steinberg products (because similar things can be said about some Cubase updates). another thing is that instead of integrating W7 and Cubase that you can interchange between them seamlessly, the two programs feel even more removed, incompatible (still cant just open an audio file from C6 into W7, work on it and jump straight back to C6 to continue) and following a different internal logic. for professionals who are not constantly chasing the latest plugin and a nip and tug in the GUI, a visually, logicallly and intuitively consistant workflow is paramount. W7 has so far failed to present that to me and i am still working with W6, only resorting to W7 for creating DDP images. very sad. 
Hmm, I don’t really think you are right about Cubase…
The big change from Cubase 5 to SX 1 was a gazillion years ago and it was more than needed, to be quite honest. Remember cutting audio on Cubase 5?
To be quite honest about WL 7…If there was an option to go back to the old interface I’d be the first one to do that…
To be even more honest: I’ve switched to Twisted Wave for 90% of my wave editing needs because I hate the new interface that keeps me thinking about how to get there rather than just getting there.
My stream of emotion was like this:
- dislike
- try to force myself to find the good in it
- fool myself into thinking I will get there
- change to twisted wave for most of the easy tasks, only open WL when absolutely neccessary
It’s a shame because I used to LOVE WL and it was the only thing I was missing when I switched my production machine to OS X. Now I hardly ever open it due to it’s over complicated and non conform GUI.
Every time I try to get something done I almost always find parts of information not shown in the parts of the window I see. It’s a constant struggle to scroll through tiny windows…I have a 3 monitor setup and WL is the only app that gives me GUI grief.
I bet that I’d get things done faster in Samplitude although I’ve never used it before…
Btw, 100% of my income is audio related and has been for last 12 years, but maybe I’m just not smart enough too see the good in the new GUI.
Ollie
Cubase-Wavelab extremely cool integration was lost with the beginning of Cubase SX.
I believe the excuse, or reason at the time…not possible because of Cubase undo’s.
Prior to Cubase SX there really was no undo or multiple undo function. When SX was released with the undo functions just like every other DAW had integrated years before…it was no longer possible to keep that wavelab integration.
Perhaps PG could add to this or even better…offer a glimmer of hope to bring back Wavelab integration and keeping Cubase undo’s.
We all were screaming for Cubase undo’s at the time…not thinking the Wavelab integration would be lost.
As far as your other comments, personally a decent owners manual would have helped me greatly overcome a lot of the WL6-7 changes. Yes, I know about the changes pdf…but that doesn’t go nearly far enough. Taking the WL6 manual as a start and converting it to a WL7 manual is what is still needed. Rant over.
What I find strange is that there are some users, myself included, that have experienced an improvement of the workflow and an increase of effectivity with WL7 and others, like the OP here, have experienced the opposite. I think we can only find out about the reasons if we go more into the details of specific tasks, way of working etc. A general praise or damnation will not lead anywhere.
+1
i hear you Lutz. i’m genuinly interested though:
you used W6 before and the transition to W7 was easy and intuitive and you perceive it as having increased your workflow? how long did it take you to use W7 in the same fashion as W6? do you use W7 often for mastering (professionally) or just for casual work (what does that mean)?
i do not say that W7 is a faulty or bad software per se. my main point is that the learnig curve for a professional user is too time consuming. i don’t have the time to spend days on re-learning a basically perfectly working tool with relatively small gain and (for my purposes) some quite significant losses.
+100
cheers
trito
It’s more than not wanting to learn the new GUI!
Some dialogs (like batch processing) never show the entire information needed (like the complete path).
What’s the use of making things worse? This never happened to me on older WL versions.
Ollie
I learnt the new GUI etc but it’s still much worse than the previous one to work with… I don’t like it and the workflow fails in terms of intuitivity and ease…
cheers
trito
Some dialogs (like batch processing) never show the entire information needed (like the complete path).
What do you mean? The entire path is displayed both for source and target.
I completely agree. It’s really a terrible interface.
gg
Unfortunately not.
What happens if the path is too long and the “window” too small?
I don’t know about the latest update, but with earlier WL7 incarnations (only tested on Mac) it was simply impossible to see the entire path (there were no scrollbars).
Maybe you have changed this recently. I cannot test at the moment because I’m 600 km away from my dongle…
Ollie
What happens if the path is too long and the “window” too small?
In that case, right. But then you must have a small screen and very long path for this to happen.
I will see if this can be improved.
+1. This me to a tee. Except using OSX that is 
WL used to be the “go-to” spot for pretty much all of my work…now it’s winding down to the point where it will only sees action for very specific, not very common workflow items.
I guess I have reached a point now where I simply refuse to have to “work” at this thing or continually burn cycles trying to figure out where everything is. This is time I could be using to bill customers and get better at my craft - instead of feeling like I am heading to Wavelab “classes” every time I fire this thing up.
I am at around 40% here - and it’s not a case of not being smart enough. It’s a case that I have customers whose needs have to be addressed and I need tools that let me work unimpeded and do not require a complete 180 (or a complete stop down) when it comes to interface interactivity.
And I find it odd that we never really had these kinds of ongoing GUI conversations when V6 ruled the roost. Yes - there was lots of chatter on items like the “dated” look etc - but I never once felt that V6 left me confused as to what to do workflow wise. That UI was killer - everything was where it was supposed to be and never felt cluttered - to me anyway.
VP
I’m just wondering if you feel a WL7 manual, similar to the WL6 manual would change your course at this point in time?
I have made no secret about my “Where’s the manual” issues since WL7 was released. That an app the size of this one with all it’s non-standard layout, design and strange methodologies does NOT have a true Operations Manual is truly sad.
And trust me - I have been a fan of the “Lab” and it’s been good to me. I really wanted to master this release but after months of trying (and no manual ever forthcoming)- it came to a point where I just found other tools and carried on. I use WL less and less now but really have no shame in admitting defeat on this one
VP
I have 419201200.
I found lots of things improved for me when I arranged the tabs above the audio into one full-width set instead of two half-width sets. It also suddenly looked much more WL6!
Paul
100% agree! I think we all should send email requests to Steinberg. I really can’t think of anything else to do. If enough people did this, maybe…slight chance…they might actually listen, and realize they are shooting themselves in the foot. This is truly sad.
I would say, the most users are “semi professionals” like me. Most of time, I do arranging, recording, mixing in Nuendo (for the Band or my own stuff) … only at the last step, it comes to mastering. So it could be, that I don’t touch WLab over several days or weeks. In WLab6, I haven’t problems with reopen after a long time, but in WLab7, most of the time I search functions. At the end … I don’t trust what I’m doing in V7 and I don’t trust what WLab doing, so I reopen WLab6 again. At the moment, I’ll wait what version 8 brings and if it not for me, I’ll definitely change (I like the Adobe Audition in workflow and GUI).