I have started experimenting using WL as my complete pitch and catch to my analogue chain. (usually use my Protools HDX for this and just edit and assemble / final limit deliver in WL)
I have my reference track with any plugins feeding my chain, and capturing the result to a new track.
I have gotten used to being able to define an exact range in PT to record to, so that should I do a revision it is exactly the same start, end and length.
Thus i can easily substitute it into my WL montage
How can I do this in WL?
My ideal is I select the source file, add a second to the front and end and that exact range is recorded into the nature track.
You can just approach this. There is an option “Stop recording when last marker is reached”. And you can start where you like. This is a poor-man punch-in/out solution.
Now that WaveLab is more capable of recording back in to the montage for a play/capture session like you’d expect in any other DAW, I do think some additional improvements could be made to make it 100% perfect.
Playlists: Ability to have more than one capture or version on the same track and manage it all with playlists/lanes, not unlike how you might comp a vocal track to take the best pieces of each one. This would help with the occasional punch-in, reprint of a new mix version, and doing external edits with RX/Spectralayers without losing the chance to get back to what you had to start with. Playlists/Lanes are sorely needed in WaveLab now.
Improved sync and latency reporting so that assuming the pre-analog clip FX are the same, and all other settings are the same, that all recordings of a given song and any new revisions are sample perfect. In my limited testing, I’ve noticed some drift between captures even though no settings have changed.
Ability to select just a range to record like in Pro Tools. This way, you don’t have to worry about it recording forever if you step out for a moment. The marker trick is indeed a poor man’s something or other and something good for the initial recording of an entire EP or album, but if you just need to redo a song or section, it would be great if highlighting a time range meant the recording would start and stop in that range. No time selection could still mean endless recording.
Ability to easily define a range on the capture track, and create a region for future use. I do this in REAPER now and it’s so great. After the capture from analog, I trim up the heads and tails of each song appropriately, and then listen for clicks and pops and edit them with the external editor, so the song ends up being made of up of MANY connecting clips, even though it sounds correct when you play it. The problem here is that we need to create a fresh new file with of the entire song with all the edits locked in, to bring into the final assembly montage.
In REAPER, I can copy the official song name from my email or project manager, select any of the many clips that make up a given song, and press a key command, and now a region has been made that is the same exact perfect length as the clips that make up the song and as a bonus, the region name is made from what’s in my clipboard, so when I render it to a fresh new file, it has the correct song name automatically. Doing this now in WaveLab takes too long and is a bit of a wrestling match.
As a bonus, any new reprints of the song are the EXACT same length too because the region is defined by markers and can’t change…so if I receive a new mix of a song to redo, everything ends up being EXACTLY the same length and sample accurate in the final assembly montage.
I used the end recording on last marker trick, and defined the start based on my source region -1 second.
Crude and a bit slow, but OK.
Annoying if you work non sequentially as you have to make sure the last marker is where it needs to be.
Justin some nice ideas there- though I hesitate to make WL any more complicated: I’ve only just got up to speed with it!!
I completed my first album done start to finish analogue loop and all, in WL. Enjoyed the workflow a lot.
It was mixes from one of my favourite mixers so I knew there wouldn’t be unexpected surprises to deal with.
Yeah, I know it looks like a lot in writing but I think it’s a simple concept. By using a region to define the eventual file length, that creates a reliable constant for any revisions, but also makes it easy to create a file from your capture after any trimming, basic fades, or spot edits, and then you can reliably bring that file into your assembly montage.
This is one of the big things keeping me from using WL 100% but I know I can be very particularly about workflow. For most people, WaveLab is already 100% usable now with WL10.
That being said, the new features in WL10 open the possibility for additional improvements.
