I’ve been noticing that Wavelab has been crashing on me some lately-probably just because I use it more-and hten I lose work and have to recreate what I was doing. I feel like autosave should be an expected feature in all modern music software-like it is in Dorico, Cubase, and Nuendo. Will it be in the next version of Wavelab? If not, why? Thanks!
EDIT: To clarify-I do see in the manual there is an autosave feature in the montage section, but I master individual songs 99% of the time so I never use montage.
What are the advantages-would love to learn more? (though I suppose autosave is one, haha).
Poking around the montage, I don’t really see an advantage when working with one song-in fact most of the features that I use aren’t even in the montage-like loudness view of the waveform, quick access to loudness and peak analysis in the process tab, even rendering itself takes several more steps in montage. While I can certainly see the benefit if you have more than one track, it seems like everything I use is slower to get to in Montage. Even just bringing in the audio, you have to go through the extra steps to create a montage session.
Well, I have been working mainly ITB now for some time … and WL offers a workflow in this context that’s hard to beat.
Like you, I do all my initial setting for the ‘sound’ in the master section and then edit the file as required (clicks, sibilants etc). No argument the ability to switch views (Spectrogram M/S etc) and quickly adjust plugs makes this so quick and easy. Agree that functions like SHIFT+Y are just ‘there’.
However, once edited, a simple SHIFT+T creates a montage from the wav file … and it’s way easier/faster to top and tail in that environment (if for no other reason than it is non destructive).
The star emblem in the montage effects tab imports the master section settings with a single click. From there it’s easy to make final adjustments. Maybe easier as all the plugs are presented in tab form.
The render dialogue comment I don’t quite get as it is basically the same dialogue as the master section?
There’s also a quick save settings from that tab so you can save the settings separately in your session folders (if that’s how you are organized.
If you get a recall, it seems so easy to deal with because everything is already there and ready to go. No need to even re-load the master section again. This is particularly so if you are organizing your sessions in ‘projects’.
So the efficiencies are subtle,but arguably worthwhile.
I don’t have time to get into all the details but a big one for me is that the editing in the montage is non-destructive. You can adjust the heads and tails, fade ins and fade outs until it’s just right. You also have much easier access to volume/level envelops, and pan envelopes if needed.
You can also use makers to determine the length of the final rendered master as we don’t always want the rendered master file to be the same length as the file. Sometimes a small buffer if needed before or after the audio, especially at the start.
The other big thing is that all the plugins are automatically saved and loaded with the montage file because you insert the plugins directly in the montage as clip and/or montage output FX.
No separate saving and loading of the global master section which has always driven me nuts, so I don’t use the global master section for any actual plugins. I can see this being a problem for years later as it’s never been clear to me where the plugin chain is being saved in a standalone file. Too much room for error later.
If you need to see loudness view of the waveform, quick access to loudness and peak analysis in the process tab, you can simply press E to open the file over in the audio editor and then analyze it. The analyzation doesn’t take into account any plugins unless you do a temporary render any way so to me, it’s all the same.
The last big thing is metadata. It’s very fast to enter in the basic info as CD-Text in the montage, even if you’re not making a CD master, and then have the right metadata preset as part of your new montage template and without even having to do anything, your rendered WAV and/or mp3 has metadata embedded if you care about this.
I don’t think rendering in the montage is any extra steps than the audio editor. You still have to determine the render source, format, and other details. Render Presets make this very easy.