Maybe there’s a tutorial video for this, but if so I haven’t found it yet. I’m just looking for some simple procedural help in creating a DDP disc for CD plant replication from Wavelab Pro 9.
I have all the 13 songs in a Montage, and each song has a Master Rig configuration of plug-ins unique to that song.
However, it seems to me that I need to render each song separately with its own Master Rig configuaration…perhaps as an individual .wav file…before even assembling the Montage ?
If I try to render the entire Montage then only a single, global Master Rig treatment will be applied over all 13 songs, which is not what is wanted !
So, can someone break down the CD track assembly process for me in simple terms…ie where/when does each individual song receive its individual Master Rig processing.
The Montage is useful for comparing the relative levels of each song…but thus far each song has received no individual Master rig treatment…when should this happen ? What if, on assembling the Montage, I need to undo the Master Rig processing for a given track, or modify it.
If you are using the montage (as you should for CD/DDP assembly), you’ll want to put plugins that are specific to each song in the clip effects section. Look for the Effects Tab in the montage.
It sounds like you are just putting Master Rig in the global master section which can only effect the entire project as one setting.
I usually insert FX on each clip that are specific to the song to get all the songs sounding good and where they need to be.
Then I put a few FX on a montage output FX that work for the entire album like final limiter or dither.
If you look for the Effects Tab in the WaveLab montage, you’ll see that you can insert plugins in 3 places:
Clip: FX run live on all audio clips (usually each song is it’s own clip) Track: This refers to montage track/channel and not CD track Output: FX inserted here effect the entire montage
All these FX are saved with the .mon file.
Then you have the global master section which also affects all the audio in the montage, but the global master section settings must be saved and loaded in a separate step so I never use it.
In short, you want to put per song FX as clip inserts and they will be remembered per song.
Yeah, what Justin said. Plus, AFAIK Master Rig and other WL specific plugins can only be used in the (global) Master Section. So if you want to use it differently on each song, you’ll need to treat and render each song seperately and then assemble the montage.
Yes this is what I thought I might do…simply because Master Rig is such a powerful and surgical tool it seems a shame to “waste it” on only the whole montage sound globally…where ironically you’re more likely to want something a little more ‘broad brush strokes’ for the entire project. When I first saw Master Rig being demonstrated on introductory tutorial videos, it struck me as the ideal fine tuning scalpel for individual songs. Regular plug-ins of the sort that earlier versions of Wavelab came equipped with seemed better suited to the Mastering Section for the whole montage shaping. So if I need to “master rig render each song” first, then that’s what I’ll do.
However, it’s highly likely that, when assembled side by side in a Montage… after such individual song’s Master Rig treatment, I’m going to want to re-apply, or at least tweak, individual Master Rig settings yet again…in the context of how each track (song) sits against its neighbours. So it would be ideal if each individual songs Master Rig settings could remain attached to them (and tweakable) in the Montage view for as long as possible…and then “frozen” to each song …fllowed by a global montage application of plug-ins (or Master Rig) to the whole montage.
So it’s a matter of Master rig being responsive and elastic enough to adapt to a typical mastering process flow…which often entails going back a few steps and tweaking “in context” Any requirement to have to ‘freeze in’ Master Rig settings in, early in the process, is not desirable, is it ? (…and sorry for all the “…” ) !
Ok, yes…I see you referred to clip effects in earlier posts…so using them in this way is perfect, without having to ‘commit too early’ Thanks Justin, that’s cleared things up immensely !
Sorry guys, I just went by the scarce info in the documentation, where it says that about using it in MS only. Apparently Master Rig is as flexible as necessary - I just only used it on the MS myself…
The only disadvantage from not using the master section for the final plugins is not not being able to use the “Smart Bypass” feature as it lives in the Master Section and has no effect on the montage output effects section.
so perhaps PG? can we have the smart bypass able to be used in the montage effects area when not using the master section. great if it could “smart” bypass everything, clip, track and montage output effects.
I guess by the time I get most projects into WaveLab, the sound is 98% dialed in and Smart Bypass isn’t needed. I also take care of SRC outside of WaveLab and use the Custom Montage Copy to recreate a montage at the destination sample rate, after all limiting is done which can be done in the montage output section, stored with the montage file.
Dithering can be done in the montage output section when rendering the final master files at the desired sample rates and bit-depths.
Because of this, I almost never need to use the global master section, and if I do, it’s for some rare metering, encoder checking, or other utility that doesn’t need to be saved with the project.
I don’t miss the days of managing the global master section as a separate asset to the project.
From a point of view of project consolidation you still have a few separate assets to manage, don’t you? Not that it is a problem if you’re comfortable with it.
I used to work with a two-montage setup in the past. The thing I did not like about it (there were other things, too) was data redundancy. Every time one has to render a static data file of what could otherwise (i.e. in a singe-montage setup) be saved as a MON file.
For sure. After a mastering project is approved I have a few .mon variations for my 24/96 WAV renders, 24/48 WAV renders, 16/44 renders and DDP, 32/44 for mp3 encoding, vinyl pre-master etc.
It’s all easily managed with version numbers:
Band Name - Album Title 3296 DIGITAL MASTER V1
Band Name - Album Title 3296 DIGITAL MASTER V2
Band Name - Album Title 2496 DIGITAL MASTER V2
Band Name - Album Title 2448 DIGITAL MASTER V2
Band Name - Album Title 1644 DIGITAL MASTER V2
Band Name - Album Title 3244 DIGITAL MASTER V2 for mp3 encode
Band Name - Album Title 2496 VINYL PRE-MASTER V2
You get the idea.
To me it’s not a big deal to have multiple .mon files for a project since I have a good naming scheme for it.
What I don’t like is saving/loading master section settings per project, and I like using Weiss Saracon for SRC.
Custom Montage Copy and some other nice additions by PG make this all very easy to me.
Yeah. This way each project is at the correct destination sample rate after all other processing and limiting (but no dither and with 32-bit float files), with the correct dither inserted (or no dither for mp3 rendering) for the end format.
This way I can open the montage and know exactly what was rendered and what version number.
It’s somewhat similar to how I used to work though not exact. Eventually I ended up doing it all in one montage. It has it’s own adavantages. The only drawback is the master section not being included in the project. But that might change in the future. In the mean time, I just make a note on the settings of the final effects of which there aren’t many, just a limiter with dithering.
so perhaps PG? can we have the smart bypass able to be used in the montage effects area when not using the master section. great if it could “smart” bypass everything, clip, track and montage output effects.