Hi, Justin I’m hoping you can pick this up. I’m followed one of your videos on setting up a montage. I used your JP Start preset in the CD Wizard to set the markers to the clips. I then render the montage into one file. But then when I render out wave files from the montage, they have the 2 second gap thats been baked into the file. This means that this 2 seconds of silence gets added to the end of the audio files. How do I stop that happening?
Thanks.
It’s not really possible to say much without seeing some screen shots (not blurry phone photos) of your Markers Tab, Render settings, and maybe some screen shots of the results.
There should be no time added to what you see in WaveLab if the correct render setting are used. There just isn’t enough info to really help. Sorry.
Also, if you put the 2 second space between the clips on purpose, don’t you want them to be part of the audio files so the album flow remains the same when you put the master WAV files back to back?
Rendering happens until the last marker of the montage. Could it be the explanation?
And if you render without plugins, do you get the same?
Hi!
Maybe this
“Adjust Pauses before Tracks
If this option is activated, pauses before tracks are automatically adjusted according to the sub-options.”
regards S-EH
Here are some screenshots. The CD Wizard one is how I originally made the markers before rendering the montage.
Are you thinking that this would be so that if some streamed it as an album you would get the right gaps?
Yeah. My whole workflow and rendering practices revolve around this:
Arrange the songs/clips on the timeline exactly as you want them to sound. Don’t worry about markers yet. Just arrange things how they need to sound with the desired amount of space between songs, heads and tails trimmed up/cleaned up, etc. If you play it from start to finish it should sound as you want.
Use the CD Wizard to add CD Track markers for each song, The “JP Start” preset you show here is great. Don’t set the CD Wizard to move any clips or add more time between them, you’ve already dialed this in manually. It should just simply add markers for each song. The “Create Markers At Crossfade Points” is good to leave on so that if any clips are touching or overlapping, a track marker will be created there too. You may have to manually adjust it for the best placements. But again, don’t have it add any time or move clips. You’ve already put the clips where you want them. Of course, you can manually add more CD Track Splice Markers if you need to add them for cases where a long continuous piece needs to be divided into two or more tracks. For example, a band naturally recorded two songs that run together as one long thing, but on the CD/vinyl/streaming, it needs to appear as two songs. You can manually add a CD Track Splice Marker, and you can then bind it to the Audio Samples Of The Clip so that the marker moves with the clip if it’s moved. By default, markers created with the CD Wizard are bound to the associated clips which is a good and nice thing.
The CD Wizard preset uses CD Track Splice Markers which in my opinion, are the best option even if you’re dong a lot of actual physical CD work. For technical reasons, the first marker in the montage needs to be a CD Track Start Marker and the very last marker in the montage needs to be a CD Track End Marker but the rest of the markers are CD Track Splice Markers. The CD Wizard handles this automatically. CD Track Splice Markers are basically an end marker and start marker glued together so there can be no space between them and then you only have to manage one marker instead of two which can get messy.
By using CD Track Splice Markers, there is no grey area. One song ends, the next one starts. One CD track ends, the next one starts. One rendered master WAV file ends, the next one starts. This means that whether you make a DDP, master WAV files of each song/album track, or a reference mp3 of each song/album track, the spacing and flow between songs remains the same.
I’ve seen many people use CD Track End markers, have some space, and then the CD Track Start Marker. This was kind of an old practice that would result in a negative countdown between songs on CD players, and you could even hide audio between tracks which was fun. However, the streaming era basically ruined that and if you still use CD Track End markers and CD Track Start markers and leave space between them, it’s very possible to accidentally omit that space when you render a WAV of each song/track because in WaveLab, you are usually rendering “Regions/CD Tracks”. This would mean that if you made that mistake, the spacing between songs for your master WAV files would be too short and it would feel rushed between songs compared to what you originally laid out in the Audio Montage of WaveLab.
There is a special setting needed to include that space between markers at the start or end of each rendered WAV. It’s a setting that’s easy to overlook. So, it’s my opinion that to make life easier, CD Track Splice Markers are the way to go. There is really no grey area when using them, and your Markers Tab looks a lot cleaner and simpler. Much less room for any error.
So, after the markers are added I often used the “Move Multiple Markers” option with THESE SETTINGS to offset the CD Track Start Marker and all the CD Track Splice Markers so there is a 200ms breath between the start of the eventual rendered CD track and the first note or downbeat. Some exceptions occur such as songs that overlap or crossfade, live albums, or songs that already have a very slow and quiet fade in, but generally speaking, I prefer to have a little breath between the start of the track and the first note/beat.
Again, this is not moving any audio in time, it’s just adjusting the marker placements which determine what your eventual rendered master WAV files are. Also, you often need to manually put the first marker at 0:00 or at least double check that is the case. Notice that in the preset I use, the CD Track End Marker which is the last marker in the session doesn’t move to the left because that would be bad. Sometimes I manually adjust the last CD Track End Marker to the right to add a tiny moment of silence before the album ends.
When I do captures from analog, my cleaned up captures have 200ms of digital silence baked into them so that when the CD Wizard places the markers at the start of each clip, there is a nice breath before the start of the track and the first note/downbeat and I don’t need to use the “Move Multiple Markers” option. However, if I’m I"m working fully “In The Box” and trimming the unmastered files in the montage, Move Multiple Markers" is handy to offset the markers slightly from the first note/downbeat.
Anyway, that was a long message but once the markers are correctly placed, anything you render using the settings I often show in the livestreams will have the correct spacing between songs baked into them so that whether you render a DDP, master WAV files, mp3s, vinyl sides, etc., the correct song spacing is included in the rendered files so where it is used or listened to, the intended flow between songs exists.
This includes if you do my process of rendering the entire montage as one long file first and have WaveLab recreate the Audio Montage and do what I normally do, or if you choose to take a shortcut and render a WAV of each track from this point.
What is this audio file represents? Where does it come from?
Sorry for the delay in replying a whole load of work suddenly landed with tight deadlines and I had to get through that. I really appreciate your detailed reply, very useful! Thanks!
One thing about this approach of having the gap between songs as part of the rendered audio files is that I have quite a few clients who don’t like it. They complain want me to trim the blank space off the end. 
I can see the point of having the blank space myself. Even if you’re releasing a single it might be nice to ensure that the next track on a playlist doesn’t but right up against the end of your song.
So I guess I’m going to have to try and win clients who complain around to this idea. 
But for those who really don’t want a any blank space, is there an easy way to deal with this? I was thinking that if I put a CD end marker at the end of each track I could export with that as the end of the file. Is there a way to put in end markers with a command (rather than by hand) if I’ve already make Splice markers?
Q + CTRL-C = CD end marker
Also…
Q+C = CD start marker
Q+S = Splice
Thanks!
