Wavelab 11.0.30 - Strange crossfade behaviour

WaveLab
#1

Wavelab 11.0.30 - Windows 10

When I overlap 2 clips in ‘Free Overlaps’ mode, I expect the fade-in and fade-out to use the full overlap range; i.e. fade begin and end should coincide with the clip edges. It has been like that since ages in Wavelab. When I then move the clip edges (enlarge or decrease the overlap range), the fade curves should follow that so it remains a full crossfade.

Now, in the current version, I experienced some very strange behaviour.
When I enlarge the overlap, then at a certain point the fade curves detach from the clip edges.
Depending on the position of the crossfade, relative to the outer clip edges, the crossfade time where the detach happens is different.

I did some extra experimenting and did find a consistent behaviour.
In a basic 2-clip crossfade, the edge order is: [clip 1 left edge] - [clip 2 Left edge] - [clip 1 right edge] - [clip 2 right edge]
The crossfade is then between [clip 2 left edge] and [clip 1 right edge]
When I move the [clip 1 right edge], then the detach happens once the crossfade time becomes bigger than distance [clip 1 left edge]-to-[clip 2 left edge]
Likewise, when I move the [clip 2 left edge], then the detach happens once the crossfade time becomes bigger than distance [clip 1 right edge]-to-[clip 2 right edge]

I really hope that this is not the intended behaviour.
As it is, I need to create a few crossfades with quite long crossfade times and the current bahaviour is making that quite a challenge.

For what it’s worth: I also did the same experiments in Wavelab 10 and 9.5, and there the crossfades did correctly follow the clip edges as expected, even for crossfades of several minutes.

–Erik ‘De LoRRe’ Laurent - Belgium

#2

Yes, this was changed. If the clips overlap by more than 50%, WaveLab assumes you don’t want a crossfade but that you are doing some kind of audio layering.
I believe a crossfade of more than 50% is very uncommon, and moreover, nothing prevents you doing a crossfade manually the size you want. And there is even an easy way for this:
Click With Click + Alt + Shift in the xfade and move the mouse to resize the xfade as you like (more than 50%)

1 Like
#3

Hello Philippe,

Thanks for explaining.
Honestly, I’m sorry to hear that indeed the behaviour was changed in that way, but I guess I’ll have to learn to live with it (or revert to v10 whenever I really need a long crossfade).

Your workaround with the ALt+Shift only partially helps. It moves both start and end of the crossfade region. I really exactly want to determine where it starts and where it ends and the Alt+Shift method doesn’t make it easy to do so either.

Let me turn my question into a feature request then: please consider adding an option which allows to select the ‘old behaviour’ in some way; say a thick box for “Allow crossfades of more than 50%”

#4

Unless you do such long xfades all the time, you could also disable “Free cross fade” and do both fade in and out manually.