Workflow tips for converting cassettes to individual songs?

I spent the past two weeks ripping my demo tapes from years past into WaveLab 8. They were all regular 2-track stereo cassettes, and now I have a couple dozen 600-700MB files that look like this:

Up to now I’ve only used WaveLab as a (really nice) sample editor. I’m pretty sure it has all the tools I need to easily convert all these giant WAVs into individually processed tracks, but I’m not sure what the best route to take would be. For example:

  • Should I use the Audio File workspace or the Audio Montage workspace?

  • Which marker types (if any) would be best for isolating and naming individual songs/regions within the files?

  • If my goal is to end up with a bunch of individual song files that are normalized for loudness, what’s a productive workflow for getting there?

I am indeed reading the manual, but learning what individual functions do hasn’t yet helped me find the best path for completing this task. Thanks for any tips.

The Montage for sure.

No markers necessary, but CD markers may come in handy to enter metadata for individual songs. In the montage, you first see your audio file just like above (as one clip), then use the scissor tool to cut the separate songs. Now you have multiple clips, which are just representations of that particular part of the source wav file. By adjusting the sides of the clips, you can change the cuts after the fact. Clips can have their own processing, but also the tracks on which they reside can. You can create another stereo track and drag clips over if you want the same proces done to them by track effects.

You could apply effects on individual clips, or use the meta normalizer. I’d be careful with cassette recordings though, since they possibly are quite close together already.

Thanks! I’m gonna spend some time ramping up on Montage view, then.