WL8 and Surround?

…and so did I, however I quickly realised that one is dealing with two very different tools, CE ‘have’ to include DAW functionality; Steinberg have Nuendo and Cubase… and NO, I definitely do not want WL turning into a mini-Cubase/Nuendo.

I do not want that either (hope we’ll never see MIDI tracks in WL :laughing: ). Though, WL is an audio editor and editing (especially in classical music) nowadays means editing many tracks simultaniously.
Ok, it can be done with WL in several stereo/mono tracks and clips, but these functions seem to be more designed for arranging songs (DAW functionality, I do not need) than for serious editing. With many tracks and many edits it’s just a mess…

Why not have tracks with more than 2 channels? This would allow for editing all microphones (or surround channels) with perfect coherence in time…no more accidently moved clips or missed fades on a track/clip.

So, I am actually asking for a reduction of functionality: I just need one track but with unlimited channels. These channels cannot be shifted in time relative to each other, just like left and right in stereo.

Nils

Big +1 for multichannel tracks. I’m afraid the lack of this (and still no Retina support) is a deal breaker for me. WaveLab has been my favorite audio editor for years, but it’s really only useful for stereo files. What we need is to be able to edit multichannel recordings as easily as stereo.

+1 for multichannel audio files.
Keep in mind that they are commonly used for source media in production audio, e.g. different mics from location audio. I keep other wave editors on my sytem to monitor them.

Ollie

+1000 for multichannel audio files and editing!

I’m getting really sick of what Sony is doing (or rather, not doing) to Sound Forge but it’s the only flexible editor I know that can handle multichannel audio elegantly and quickly. It’s a must have!!

Wavelab can do DVD-Audio (an almost exclusive multi-channel format) yet cannot handle interleaved multi-channel BWF’s?

This seems incongruent? Multi-channel recording and playback systems are a must in my work and in the work of our audio archive at the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We are the largest natural sound library in the world. We have been using Sonic Solutions DAW since the early 90’s but recently I have been hoping to switch to Wavelab as our main archiving tool. The apparent surround sound editing limitations in Wavelab is a concern. If Wavelab can handle the mutli-channel requirements of DVD-A why can’t it provide the simple editing tools that are available for mono and stereo files, or does it and I am missing somthing. Thanks, I look forward to other comments and suggestions.

Interesting discussion.

And, yes, it would be nice to see WL develop into a multichannel editor.

I record live classical music typically using a maximum of 8 tracks with an older version of Samplitude. Then the tracks are mixed down to a 2 channel stereo master (although my recording technique, using a Jecklin disk with M-S arrays on both sides of the disk for main pickup [I call it the “poor man’s” Schoeps KFM-360], provides the ability to create surround recordings with simple phase changes). And then I port this stereo mixdown into WL for the final “polish” on the 2 channel mixed down audio file for CD’s. As a corollary, no client has yet to request either a multi-track or surround recording to date.

I guess the difficult question is how many tracks should be available for surround mixdowns?

Based on research conducted by Tomlinson Holman (the creator, and rumored to be the “TH” in THX), proper surround envelopement actually requires a 10.2 surround system, as a minimum! 5.1 is the current “standard”, however, most motion picture theaters utilize significantly more channels for surround, delayed and voiced accordingly.

So, again this reverts back to “how many channels are enough”, for surround sound post-production mastering?

[As an aside, time alignment of a bazillion microphone inputs for live recordings is generally a non-starter, as listeners don’t generally hear concerts time-aligned, even if they’re sitting in the midst of the players! Further, any differences below about 10-15 milliseconds is also inaudible due to the physiological and psychoacoustic response functions of human hearing.]

+1 for multichannel audio files.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Phillipe, this is fast becoming an truly essential requirement.
Many guys I know (including myself) using Cubendo that work with large 5.1 (Polywav) RF64 files, would find the error checking facility (and all the other great functions that ONLY Wavelab has) as totally invaluable.
Please consider at least support in handling RF64 multichannel wavs the same way as stereo, even if for time being, we only have stereo output for monitoring!

This is seriously considered for version 9.

This would save WaveLab in my eyes.

I can see that there would be a problem with resources in the first iteration of this, but please try to find a way that at least some of the non-basic facilities work with multi-channel files as well (for me that means noise-reduction and spectral editing).

“considered”? That is even not funny anymore …

Is multi-channel file support planned for Wavelab 9? If not, I’d like to revive this request. We’ve previously only received and sent multi-mono 5.1 files, so Wavelab has worked out for us, but we’re now being asked to receive and send 6-channel files.

just bumping this hoping that PG will implement it

I’m not buying into WL updates/upgrades anymore if there is no multi-channel file and editing support. My two licences are therefore stuck at WL6 and 7.

Yes, I think that Steinberg is not going to stay behind other companies who do their best to support multichannel wave files natively. Especially spectral view editing in multichannel would be marvelous for the workflow. Simultaneous editing of many channels in spectral view is my dream.

I just want to say that the only reason #$$@?!!)#%! Sound Forge is still my go-to editor is because of this multichannel issue. I really love so many things about WL but I just can’t use it in my work, where I have to manage anything from 3 to 6 channel wavs for various uses on a daily basis.

Refashioning the GUI to handle multi-channel files isn’t as complicated as it might seem. A way of choosing and routing channels for editing through the plugin grid needs to be worked out as well as a more comprehensive plugin management implementation; let’s not forget that one of VST3’s virtues is the ability to handle multi-channel audio. But none of this is impossible and frankly, once done may prove to be a real asset to many. Imagine just batch exporting to different formats, stereo included from a multi-channel master. Or auto rendering a surround export from a stereo track…

I can imagine a similar conversation in the 1950’s: “Yes! Please include this new stereo feature!” “Nah, it’ll never catch on; mono is quite sufficient”… Or what Gates said about 640k being enough… :wink:

Ultimately all that’s needed is a little optimism, positivity and elbow grease. IMO, WL would be much richer for it.

Hi,

I agree 100% multi channel/track support included is very useful
let’s hope for WL 9 indeed :wink:

thanks

regards S-EH

Most who have lost work because of a system or drive failure will tell you that when rebuilding the project, things have a tendency to go much faster because much of the decision making is still in your mind and you also have a clearer idea of where you want to take the project.

In a similar way, working out how to deal with WL wonderful analysis tools and processing for multi-channel files is no small enterprise, but in the end I am sure that the methodologies developed to handle this will add incredible flexibility and power to the program.

Musings: surround of any kind is essentially a reduced set of infinite 3D audio; perhaps the real breakthrough here is to conceive of a meta-format that encapsulates 3D audio, editing in that environment and rendering into whatever format we need to monitor and publish in. All built-in tools then would essentially apply to that environment until channel distribution, after which conventional channel assignment would be used to process different channels using conventional 1-to-n-channel plugins. Actually, in principle even mono and stereo could be seen as reduced portholes into a 3D environment. However, note that this introduces the idea of 2 ways of dealing with multi-channel audio: there are also cases where multi-channel audio is used for other things, like alternate languages or mixable layers, in which case the “3D” concept is completely irrelevant.

Free ideas; feel free to use them, by all means! Before someone else does… :wink:

That format exists and is known as Ambisonics. You need at least third-order for effective use of some of the more recent “standard” speaker layouts. There is a company that sells audio software for game programming based on it (http://www.blueripplesound.com/). Some Waves plugins use lower-order Ambisonics internally (the main inventor of Ambisonics, Michael Gerzon, consulted for them).

My interest in (and use of) Ambisonics is the reason I want multi-channel file handling.

Paul