I’ve been using Wavelab for Mastering for about 3 years. Very happy with the flow and recent updates. Until recently, I was very satisfied with a single output and the external plug in for analog chain. On the monitoring chain I had the monitor controller, RME Digicheck and TC Electronics Clarity M meter (via SPIDF connection). Everything changed when I got Sonarworks speaker correction software. Fortunately, Sonarworks sits in the Playback processing slot which is perfect but my monitor meters are now compromised. TC Electronics Clarity M meter has the option to run as a Plugin which is perfect and now it sits before Sonarworks on the playback processing slot, but can’t really use RME Digicheck anymore. I know that there are plugins out there that I could try to use but I’m so familiar with Digicheck (RTA Spectrum analyzer 30 band) that I’m hurting.
Any possibility of a secondary output for Wavelab in the future?
Thanks
Phillipe, thanks a lot for your response. I’ll keep my fingers crossed! I know that some colleagues have resolved this need by including other DAW in their workflow but I am trying to avoid it. Wavelab is all I need!
Plenty of cases for a secondary output (and more) which is why I use another app (that I’ll keep nameless) for the majority of my mastering processing. The routing and other features just make it so much faster/easier to work with.
As much as I would love to stay all within WaveLab, there is a growing list of things like this that cause WaveLab to more father behind the rest of the mastering DAWs/apps.
I do love the WaveLab montage for most “In the box” projects but its routing and other modern mastering features for analog gear etc. are quite far behind. It can be done but if you like to work fast and smooth, I can’t see it happening in WaveLab right now.
If you make a new 8 channel montage using the 8 channel free factory montage template, you can’t assign any one stereo montage track to more than one stereo output. But I found by accident that you can get around this by making a surround montage using the Surround factory montage template, assigning to multiple outputs, and then changing the surround montage to an 8 channel free montage. Then you can assign one stereo montage track to multiple outputs. Not sure this was intended in the free configuration though, because it doesn’t normally work. But multiple simultaneous outputs have always been available in the surround modes.
Even if it could be made to work, doesn’t it get really messy with all the extra channels in meters and the master section? Maybe not, I don’t know, but it seems like it would be a less than ideal solution to me. But maybe worth it for the time being if it works. I don’t know.
It’s great it works in this case, but there are cases where it wouldn’t. Afaik it won’t work if the External Gear plugin is in use. Or if someone is using stereo plugins in the Master Section that don’t accept more than 2 channel input. So I think your original request, and past requests from others for better ways to get more outputs are still valid.
I may be misunderstanding but do you mean changing the montage configuration by activating the multichannel (free configuration) mode on the Info page ?
Hi Stingray. Yes, I think we’re talking about the same thing, the montage properties control at the bottom right of the montage. That’s where I changed it from Multichannel DVD to 8 Channel Free. It’s pretty easy to try it out.
Make a new empty 6 channel surround montage using the Surround montage factory template.
On one of the stereo tracks of the montage, open the output control that normally says L-R, and assign the track output to all of the 6 available surround outputs (Lf Rf Ls Rs C LFE).
Close the dialog and go to the montage properties control bottom right. Change the configuration to 8 Channel Free. Now open up the track output control again and you’ll see the stereo track is set to output to 6 different channels of the 8 channels. Then you can uncheck what you don’t need. But this is where it gets flaky, and the checkboxes start not being able to check or uncheck if you go too far trying to do this. Because the 8 Channel Free is apparently not made to work this way normally.
But it doesn’t really matter, because you can just make a 6 Channel Surround montage and route to 6 separate output channels Lf Rf Ls Rs C LFE, as long as you know what’s going where. And those output controls don’t get flaky. Maybe the 8 Channel Free could be changed in Wavelab to select multiple outputs, since the DVD Surround configurations do anyway?
But even with this, I still don’t really understand how the montage track routing can do this correctly in all cases if the External Gear plugin is used along with other plugins in the Master Section. I would think you really need an extra output just before the Post Processing section of the Master Section to do this correctly, but maybe not? Just seems like it would make it a lot easier. But maybe I’m just not understanding how to make it work correctly in all cases the way it is.
People have asked in the past to use the External Gear plugin in the Montage, so I looked for another VST ASIO plugin and found a very old 32 bit Windows-only plugin called “VST Interfaced ASIO-Host” that did that, and can be put in any position in Reaper. But it’s very problematic even in Reaper, and Wavelab 9.0 32 bit puts it in the ignored list. Wavelab 9.5 also puts it in the ignored list when jbridged. It’s a very old plugin and hasn’t been updated in many years, but I wondered if there was anything else out there like that. I haven’t found anything, but I think others would know better that I.
I don’t know what it’s like in Cubase, but in Reaper it seems you can put multiple output/input, send/receives anywhere with the reainsert plugin. Or maybe it’s even easier, I’m not really that familiar with it. I would think Cubase has the same sort of routing options. Would be nice in Wavelab to be able to do the same, I think.