Inspector and resampling

WaveLab
1

I have a question about how the Inspector and Master Section interact with each other, especially respect to resampling.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but when rendering a montage, Wavelab will process the plugins, etc., in both the Master Section and the Inspector unless “Bypass Master Section” is checked in the rendering options. This means that I could add +1dB of gain via the gain plugin in the Master Section, and +12dB of gain to every third clip or track via the Inspector, and rendering will increase the gain by either +1 or +13 dB depending on the Inspector settings for each clip.

If I have that right, then what order does Wavelab process the plugins and other settings in as between the Master Section and the Inspector? Master Section first? Inspector first? Does the answer change if I re-order their respective tabs in the Master Section window?

Here’s why I’m asking: I have a 24/96 montage with some clips and lots of CD track markers that I need to render to both 24/96 files and then to 16/44.1 files. Using the Master Section only, this is easy. I can load resampling and Lin dithering into the Master Section and activate them for the 16/44.1 files only. The resampling comes before the Final Effects / Dithering and all is good.

Using the inspector, though, there isn’t any place to load resampling for a track or clip – which makes perfect sense – or as far as I can tell for the final output. So, the next question is, can you turn on resampling in the Inspector (and then bypass the Master Section entirely)? Or does resampling have to be done in the Master Section?

If resampling can be done in the Inspector, how do I get the resampling to come before the dithering? (I think the answer is to put it the dithering in the final output section and then it will be the last thing the Inspector does).

If resampling can’t be done in the Inspector, then it’s back to my original question: will activating resampling and dithering in the Master Section result in those processes being done last, after everything else in the Inspector is done?

By the way, importing Master Section plugins into the Inspector using the “star” icon loads the Lin dithering plugin from the final effects part of the Master Section. This seems odd if you can’t resample in the Inspector: is there ever a reason to dither if not resampling? What do I know… but maybe dithering plugins shouldn’t be imported to Inspector clip, track and group effect slots?

Thanks for any insights!

2

Resampling is only available in the Master Section and not in the Inspector, and the Master Section is ALWAYS after the Inspector section for the Audio Montage, regardless of how you change the layout visually.

When using the Reasmpler in the Master Section, you then have to (at least consider) doing your final limiting (to account for peak level changes after the sample rate conversion) and final dithering in the Master Section as the very last thing.

For all these reasons, and the fact that the Master Section settings need to be manually saved and loaded for each Audio Montage instead of easily stored with the .mon file itself automatically, I really don’t care for using the Resamlper at all. I know some people use it, but I find it to be very undesirable in workflow and function.

In addition, you have to do (at least) two lengthy renders with all your plug-in processing to get 24-bit/96k WAVs, and 44.1k WAVs or a DDP.

I much prefer to render once at 96k floating point, and work my way down from there using an external sample rate converter (RX, Saracon, or even WaveLab Batch Processor). The Customized Montage Duplicate feature makes it all very easy. Assemble the montage once, and easy render everything without having to redo any markers or data entry.

You have so much more control over the details, and it only requires rendering with all the plugin processing one time, instead of multiple times which in my opinion saves a lot of time.

1 Like
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Thanks for the explanation, and the workflow suggestion.

I don’t mind the double rendering, but I take your point about using an external editor or batch process, especially if I was making CD masters for someone.

I do think that the point about what gets processed first first would be good to have in the manual somewhere. It’s just totally absent, as far as I can tell.

4

It’s:

Clip Effets → Montage Track Effects → Montage Output Effects → Master Section