As the title says I use Wavelab everyday and have since 1995. I use it for mastering and for restoration work and lately for some forensics. It is a GREAT DAW and I love how intuitive the interface is. I hope WL 13 will continue the long list of GREAT versions. I have interns working here and after a few days they are using WL for a lot of projects and feel comfortable using it and that says a lot.
FWIW
@Thomas_W_Bethel Iāve seen you on this forum for many many years, friend. I agree, Wavelab is a great piece of software. Iāve been using it since v1 as well. I also use Cubase for music production (since pre-VST) but for complex audio imaging, restoration, audiobook production, radio & podcast production - Wavelab continues to be my daily go-to production software. Iāll admit I was intimidated and challenged by the changes in v12 as I was so comfortable in v9.5 for the longest time. However, having made the jump about 1 year ago, I havenāt looked back. So many tools, so intuitive and so STABLE. Cheers to the WL team, PG and all on this forum who contribute and support this amazing product.
Iām really wanting to like this new layout but I canāt. It has become so bloated, and common things buried into layers of submenus the program seems to hate itās user (making/labelling an MP3? pour a cup, youāll be here a while). I just want to do things like manually resize and arrange my windows the way I want to, MANUALLY without baking a cake (create file sub group blah blah blah), crop a snare drum from a loop without it creating a fade-in that I DID NOT ASK FOR etc etc. The file previewer is terrible, tiny āplayā buttons yet TONS of wasted real estate on the pane.. canāt easily navigate to my libraries like a basic Windows Explorer menu.. I have a long list.. Iām currently looking for other options. It was a good run, Wavelab, I give up on you.
For me Wavelab is my audio editor and mastering software, Nuendo is my DAW 
I switched from Sound Forge to Wavelab but Iām still learningā¦itās nothing for me to redraw waveforms to fix problems in Sound Forge but I havenāt tried it in Wavelab yet!
I agree that there is a lot āunder the skinā in WL12 and that there are too many āhidden menusā that can create real time problems for the user.
Still it is and will continue to be the best āmastering and restorationā DAW available in my opinion.
Could I suggest that you watch some of the very well done tutorials done by Justin Perkins and then make your final decision.
The other āperkā is to have PG on the forum everyday and to be able to converse with the author of WL via this forum is invaluable and something that you will not find in any other DAW forum. FWIW
Itās so hard to go back and watch tutorials for a program youāve used for 30 years (I do remember buying Cubase VST for $99 circa 1994-5, Wavelab was right after). It was so easy and effortless and intuitive before I donāt think I had to ever open the manualā¦ sooo frustrating. Even things like dragging plugins into a different order does not perform NEARLY as smoothly as in the past, itās hit-or-miss.. I canāt understand why.
Wavelab is for professional users, who like to overthink things a littleā¦
It is obviously well suited for almost every task in audio mastering, but definetely not optimized in mouse/click handling with its gui.
That needs much improvement. Every mouseclick, every action, that is not absolutely necessary is one too many. And there are tons of too many, as it stands now.
But it is, nevertheless, a fine programm.
Would Wavelab Elements be more convenient for people who do not need the extra features of the Pro?
In my opinion, nothing could be simpler in Wavelab. What kind of MP3 file are you trying to create and what steps do you usually take to do so?
What are you referring to here? Do you mean you donāt like the way the various windows are automatically docked?
Once again, IMO nothing could be simpler in Wavelab. Are you referring to the Audio editor or the Montage? What function / technique are you actually using to do this?
Do you mean the File Browser? If so, how are you actually using this?
The OP must have been referring to resizing file windows as before, but PG wrote cascading is not coming back. I hope cascading is at least part of Audio Editor for a future version of WL.
This kind of observation is very easy to make and you are entitled to your opinion, but what mouse clicks are you actually referring to?
Really? Iāll wait for the OP to respondā¦
Sunnyman you took the words out of my mouth. To me the picture you posted is the PEAK workflow setup of Wavelab. Thatās as simple, streamlined, flexible, intuitive as can be and it regressed tremendously since this era.
-Yes I can select a snare from a loop, ācopy to new windowā then save and rename but that adds a step from before with just one keystroke, and save my extracted snare as a new file (I harvest sounds I like from drum loops).
I despise this file searcher and save menu. Instead of every parameter visible (metadata, file type, etc) we get this. Letās save my file together:
- on āformatā when I click the dropdown menu, do other formats appear? NOPE. Weāll get to that a few more layers down.
-CLICK file, CLICK preset, CLICK edit, new window menu layer, select MP3 (CLICK!) , defaults to 128KB, change that (CLICK), can I start typing in artist/name/comments yet NOPE more diving into the āmeta-dataā sub-menu. Gentleman start your mouse fingers!
āInherent from source fileā thatā funny, WAVās donāt have meta-data CLICK
-specific to this configuration CLICK
-edit CLICK
ANOTHER menu pops up for MP3 metadata. ā¦. this is just one example. I so badly miss being to select āRhodes Lā and āRhodes Rā in the explorer browser (with a better transport button that has a volume control) and they immediately open into a stereo interleaved file. I havenāt dug through the new process to do this because Iām just going to start using a different audio editor.
Each to their own but Iām sure some Wavelab users prefer the new tab-based system. The old cascaded system might have one or two plus points but is largely outdated and clunky in comparison.
You must have missed the fastest method, which is to simply drag the selection up to the tab bar. This instantly creates a new file.
You must have also missed the Crop function on the āEditā ribbon (Key Command: Ctrl+Shift+Del). Follow this with Shift + S for āSave Asā and you are done in two moves.
Not true. This is what presets are for. The first time you use the save menu just save a preset of your preferred MP3 format. Next time you go to save an MP3 file simply click on the drop down format menu, select your MP3 preset from the list and save. Thatās not particularly difficult.
If you want to edit metadata use the separate Metadata Tool Window.
Your multiple click scenario is not realistic and might be the way a novice would approach using the software (without reading the user manual). It ignores the array of shortcuts and tools that are available.
I did use the ācropā function and it creates a fade-in automatically, which I donāt want- Iām sure thatās buried in a menu somewhere to unclick (I did see thereās an option to use an āexternal browserā for file-hunting, not sure what else there would be besides Explorer, which is also an option I tried but itās a stripped down version). I have this thing about being in control of my work and not being treated like low-common-denominator end user (this is why I donāt use MAC products; you donāt get to see file name extensions, or on an iPhone even know where your downloads went etc. etc.
A lot of this is subjective but itās odd none of the changes made me think āwow this is better or even SO MUCH better than the tool Iāve used for decadesā. Even changing the order of plugins in the mastering chain via dragging is clunky and unresponsive compared to prior versions (the old master section)
Ah- thanks- itās just so hard to be a professional level bike rider then have to re-attach the training wheels. Not fun
Just wait until WL13 comes out - I canāt wait to see all the new menus for surround editing. Things they are a changinā¦
There seems to be no way to quickly navigate to āMy Musicā via this hideous file browser interface without manually clicking clicking clicking clicking clicking to:
THIS PC > Local Disc (C:) > Users > PC > Music.
Also, what happened to the right-click menu options for āextend selection to the end of/beginning of fileā? Why would they eliminate something so critically useful?
