I have my interns watch your very well done WL tutorials. It gets them up to speed much quicker.
Thanks for your work and time to do these.
5 Likes
No problem, that was part of the goal but I really hesitate to call them tutorials. They are really just livestreams.
Just before COVID I actually tried a few approaches to making a proper tutorial series but each time I failed and gave up.
The reason for wanting to do them is because I was getting tired of explaining things about WaveLab and how I use it on various forums, emails, etc over and over. I thought having it in video form would be a big help.
More and more people were asking, especially as users of Soundblade realized that it was never going to be updated, or users of other PC-only mastering options wanted to move to WaveLab and Mac.
Then when COVID hit and we all thought we had extra free time, I decided to just do a livestream. It was my first livestream of anything ever so there was a lot to learn.
I know they are not very well structured, bookmarked, chaptered, organized, or searchable but itās really all I had the bandwidth and skill to do at the time. Iām not trying to market or sell them, they are really just a public service.
In recent years I no longer have the time to do them and I sort of ran out of things to cover as I really only had interest in showing how I use WaveLab, and not any interest in learning everything WaveLab can do and all the various ways to do the same thing.
It was really just a simple and basic way to show how I prefer to do things but it doesnāt mean itās the only way.
Itās possible that after the next big WaveLab update, maybe Iāll do a couple to show some things that have changed since some of the first ones I did but I canāt make any guarantees.
9 Likes
Those ālivestreamsā are better than any tutorialā¦ believe me.
Thank you VM
2 Likes
Yes, I also want to say thank you! I found them enormously helpful years ago when I moved to Wavelab.
Gotta chime in here too, Justin. Iām exactly in the demographic you mentioned, having started with Sonic Solutions/soundBlade back in the ā80ās. I was casting about wondering which platform I should grasp for. I found your videos and watched hours of them, realizing that for my workflow this software would be the way to go.
Not only are they practical and eminently educational, the lack of slick video edits and stock music beds is an asset, not a liability. Youāve created something truly valuable, and the time and work you spent making them will pay dividends to many engineers for years to come.
Thank you!
Interesting comments, thanks.
Yeah, I have no aspiration to be YouTuber or content creator. I really just wanted to help make sure WaveLab has a healthy user base so that Steinberg doesnāt cancel WaveLab like Apple did with WaveBurner.
I donāt even want to get into teaching āmasteringā because itās too subjective. I just wanted to help people get over the learning curve of WaveLab faster and offer my perspective on the best way to get audio in and out of WaveLab for mastering albums, EPs, and singles. Thatās part of why I donāt even play any audio from WaveLab in the livestreams.
My first experiences āmasteringā were with CD Architect. I wasnāt calling myself a mastering engineer but the main studio I worked at in the early 2000s was PC-based and he used Vegas Video for the multi-track recording (still mixing on a console), Sound Forge for a stereo editor, and CD Architect to do the āmasteringā.
Many of the projects we did had no extra budget for mastering (and maybe didnāt deserve proper mastering either) and this was before it was easy to just upload files to be mastered by somebody great anywhere in the world. You either had to travel many hours by car, take a flight, or FedEx/UPS the files/tapes and hope the master came back sounding good.
So for a few reasons, we did mastering and using CD Architect because I didnāt have my own computer back then. Well, I did but it wasnāt an āaudio computerā.
Then after I left that studio and became a Mac user I kind of remember using CD Architect on my Mac using some kind of thing that let you run Windows on a Mac but Iām sure it was a PITA. I only have vague memories of this.
There was also a goofy program called BIAS Peak, and Toast & Jam or something for doing basic mastering assembly. They were weird but at least they were on Mac.
I do remember buying the boxed version of Logic 8 (or maybe 9) for $1,000 USD just to get WaveBurner which seemed like Appleās answer to CD Architect. I didnāt even want or use Logic but it was the only way to get WaveBurner.
WaveBurner worked well enough for a little bit but I felt myself outgrowing it and also, Apple seemed to abandon it around the same time.
At the time, I didnāt really have it in me to get a dedicated PC just for mastering software, and SoundBlade felt a bit out of reach for me at the time in terms of budget. When I did finally have the budget for it, I couldnāt get the demo to launch without crashing so I never officially used it.
Around this time, it was announced that a mastering DAW called WaveLab that I somehow never heard of was finally coming to Mac and it was supposed to be a big deal.
So I patiently waited a few more months and the day it came out, I met a friend for lunch to buy a copy of it from him because he worked for a big music distribution company that carried Yamaha/Steinberg stuff.
From there, I never looked back. WaveLab was a little rough at first on Mac but now there isnāt really a close second in my opinion if you want to do mastering on Mac.
I didnāt mean to type all that but my point was that somewhere in there, after experiencing the learning curve and adaptation of WaveLab to Mac, I knew that it wasnāt a super intuitive or easy transition but I also knew that the learning curve is/was totally worth it if you just give it some time.
So, after helping people via various forums and other methods that involved typing, I decided the livestreams are a good option.
As an OCD person, itās hard to just let it fly without any edits, following much of a script, etc. but I think thatās part of why it worked for me.
If I were to try a scripted tutorial series, aside from not having the video skills to do the editing and post production stuff involved with video, Iād probably go too crazy on perfecting everything including cleaning up all the mouth clicks etc.
And then a year or two later, a new WaveLab version will be out and then you gotta do it all again.
Soā¦Weāll Do It Live!!!
6 Likes
Just to add my tuppence - thanks Justin! I made the switch from another mastering DAW that I had out-grown, and so faced the steep learning curve of jumping into Wavelab! The pacing of your streams gave me time to absorb enough to hit the ground running, and have been using the same basic operating principles since. There are still many corners of Wavelab to explore, but thanks for the leg up - Iāve not looked back!