I believe Wavelab is a very powerful environment, and I have been curious about it for years. But not curious enough to pay $300+ to find out. With the recent sale on Elements, I decided it was worth it to learn more about Wavelab. I did check the version comparison, but much of the terminology was unfamiliar to me, so I didn’t really have clear expectations. I realize I could have downloaded a trial version, but for the sale price, I thought it made more sense just to pick up Elements and go from there.
I have watched a lot of videos and made a list of things that I think would be useful. However, what I am finding is that every one of the features that I was interested in are restricted to the Pro level.
I’m not complaining. It was worth $50 to me to learn this much about Wavelab, and maybe one day I will upgrade to the Pro version.
But I have not yet found a single feature of Elements that I couldn’t already do just as easily with Cubase, Spectralayers and the various plug-ins I already have. I really see no reason to use Elements. I am just curious if I am missing anything important.
Are there Cubase users out there who find Wavelab Elements really helpful? If so, what features do you think go beyond what any DAW already can do?
I only find WLE useful for leaving the Cubase environment. Then I realize I miss Cubase. It’s fine for getting into the WL ecosystem. Or as an audio editor. For an average-to-experienced Cubase user, I don’t think it’s worth it.
It seems like a peculiar marketing strategy for Elements. If a person just wants a simple wave editor to crop files, normalize, do fades, etc, Audacity is free and much less cluttered.
If a person is doing repairs, it seems like SpectraLayers might be preferable.
If a person considering Elements is really intending to do mastering, doesn’t that mean they already have a DAW. I’d think that Elements ought to include some mastering capability that goes beyond what most of us already have in our DAWs.
I find it absurd that something as basic as layers (at least 2 layers) doesn’t work in Elements. That is fundamental to the montage paradigm, and it a basic part of StudioOne for example. I’d strongly suggest that Steinberg get some marketing people to look at this. The Elements package just doesn’t add anything I can see. And it would be very easy to enable some of the real mastering stuff in Elements without invalidating the Pro version.
In WaveLab Elements, you can burn CDs (though this is no longer common, some users still need it). You can batch convert files and save audio files with detailed metadata. It includes the MasterRig plugin—a simple yet effective mastering tool, along with a selection of other plugins. It has several real-time meters. These are just a few features not available in Audacity or SpectraLayers, to the best of my knowledge, and are only partially present in Cubase.
Thanks for those points, PG1. As a Cubase Pro user, I think I already have all of that stuff. But for a person who doesn’t have the “pro” level of a popular DAW, maybe some of this is a good deal.
It appears that Elements was introduced at V8, which is 12 years ago. A lot has changed in 12 years. I would really suggest that Steinberg put some marketing attention on this. This doesn’t seem like a very compelling value proposition as it stands, but could easily be made more compelling by enabling about 25% of the features that are exclusive to the “Pro” version today.
I once wrote an article about this topic for Steinberg. I think there might be a part 2 somewhere as well.
It all depends what you are doing and what you need. For me, WaveLab Elements falls a little short but for the current sale price of WaveLab Pro, it’s an absolute no-brainer to buy it if you’re thinking about it. You can demo it first as well.
Any DAW can process stereo audio but WaveLab is a really special vehicle for mastering, sound design, certain post-production tasks, and other things.
For me, there are things I do many times per day in WaveLab Pro that DAWs like Cubase or Pro Tools factually cannot do.
I believe that is true. But I bought the Elements on sale. All the things I thought would go beyond what a DAW easily does seem to be exclusive to the Pro version. Again, I am not complaining about Elements. I knew it was restricted and for that price, I’m not unhappy. But I figured there would be a few things in Elements I could use regularly, but I haven’t found any yet. So maybe I’ll just take advantage of the 50% upgrade price to Pro.
I am not unhappy, but I think Elements makes very little sense, being as restricted as it is. Maybe that made more sense in 2013 when Elements was launched. Steinberg needs to look at the value proposition for Elements. It just isn’t there, from my point-of-view.
Now that you have elements, I think you can buy WL for 200$ through upgrade.
In the audio editor, there is destructive editing.
Open a number of Audio Files and navigate through tabs - render effect in place and save wav file. (A reminder for PG to bring back cascading and minimizing tabs)
You can write different types of markers to wav.
Render clips from Montage to user specified folder.
There may be many I missed, that other users of Elements or Pro will know. And as PG wrote the batch converter, a few meters etc.
Yes, I did buy the upgrade this evening. I doubt there will be a better price any time soon.
I am still not convinced I will be using it a great deal, but if I take the time to learn many of the features that are part of Pro, I think that will be a good education on mastering. And naturally, if I become more educated about the finer points of mastering, I will be more likely to use Wavelab Pro frequently. I guess that’s circular reasoning.
