The documentation applies to the operating systems Windows and macOS.

You can access the help system in several ways. The documentation is available online, on steinberg.help.

In our documentation, we divide information into three different types of topics, according to their content.

In our documentation, we use structural and markup elements to present information according to its purpose.

The Startup Assistant allows you to choose the working environment that suits your workflow, to create and open files, and to establish your audio connections. In addition to this, the Startup Assistant offers you WaveLab-related information and news and provides useful links.

You can run WaveLab Elements together with other applications, granting the currently active application access to the audio card.

Latency is the delay between when audio is sent from the application and when you actually hear it. While a very low latency can be crucial in a real-time DAW application such as Steinberg Nuendo or Cubase, this is not as relevant for WaveLab Elements.

The ASIO-Guard allows you to pre-process all channels as well as VST plug-ins, which prevents dropouts and allows you to process more tracks or plug-ins.

To be able to play back and record audio in WaveLab Elements, you must specify how to connect the internal input and output channels in WaveLab Elements to your sound card and indicate the device to be used for audio playback and recording.

For general instructions on installing internal recorders or on connecting external recorders via USB or Firewire, refer to the user manual of your computer or recorder.

You can use Steinberg devices to remote-control WaveLab Elements.

The common editing operations apply to any Steinberg product.

WaveLab Elements adheres to the basic conventions for the Windows/macOS interface, which means that standard Windows/macOS procedures apply.

Almost all types of editing and processing that you perform in WaveLab Elements take effect on an audio selection. There are numerous ways to make an audio selection.

In various areas of the application, you can edit numerical values by using a combination of text fields and dials.

In various places in WaveLab Elements, you can change parameters and the respective values via slider controls.

You can rename items in tables in the Markers window and in the Album window.

With tab groups, you can view the content of different files, tool windows, or meters at the same time, without having to navigate through different windows. Each tab group has its own content and tab bar.

A peak file (extension .gpk) is automatically created by WaveLab Elements each time an audio file is modified or opened in WaveLab Elements for the first time. The peak file contains information about the waveform and determines how it is drawn in the Audio Editor or in the Audio Montage window.

Ancillary files (extension .vs) contain view settings for audio files.

WaveLab Elements can load audio samples in many formats. Internally, it processes them as 64-bit float samples.

The EBU loudness recommendation R-128 establishes well-defined methods to measure loudness, dynamics, and peak values, and also defines reference values to achieve for these measurements. Though the reference values are intended for the broadcast world, the measurement methods are helpful in any application dealing with audio and loudness control.

In WaveLab Elements, you can set some dialogs and warning messages to Do not show again. To show these dialogs and messages again, you must reset the default answers.

The Audio Editor provides tools and functions for sample-accurate audio editing, high-quality analysis, and processing.

In the Audio Montage window, you can assemble audio clips to create a montage. You can arrange, edit, and play back clips on stereo or mono tracks.

WaveLab Elements offers various tool windows that allow you to view, analyze, and edit your audio.

Tool windows and meter windows can be used as docked windows, as floating windows, or as slide-out windows. You can freely drag around the windows and dock them to various locations.

Slide-out windows are hidden in the frame of the Workspace window. When you hover the mouse pointer over the window name, the window slides out. It is hidden again when you click anywhere else.

The File tab is the control center of WaveLab Elements.

The Info dialog provides information about the active file and allows you to edit the audio properties of audio files and audio montages.

The command bar at the top of the editor windows allows you to create, open, and save files, and to undo/redo changes.

The status bar at the bottom of the Audio Editor and the Audio Montage window shows information about the active window using the units specified for the rulers.

WaveLab Elements offers various context menus, which contain commands and/or options pertaining to the active window.

A tab that is situated in the Audio Editor or the Audio Montage window is a container for a file in WaveLab Elements. You can open several tabs, but only one can be active at a time. The Tabs context menus offer tab-related options.

You can use WaveLab Elements in full screen mode.

WaveLab offers multiple options for opening files, either before or after starting the application.

You can close a single file, multiple files, or all files but the selected one by closing the file tabs.

You can choose to save files under an existing name, in the same location, or to specify a new name, location, and file format when saving.

You can delete active files from within WaveLab Elements.

You can rename a file and update all references automatically. For example, if you rename an audio file named India to Sitar, all open files that reference the file India are updated to reference the file as Sitar.

The File Browser window allows you to navigate to files from within WaveLab Elements.

You can have multiple files open and switch between them.

All files that you have recently used in WaveLab Elements are saved in a list. This gives you quick access to recent projects.

WaveLab Elements creates temporary files to save intermediary results of the audio file processing, and for the undo/redo functions. You can specify where WaveLab Elements saves its temporary files, and you can set the processing precision of temporary files.

You can undo and redo as many operations as you like, even after saving the file. The only limitation is the available hard disk space.

WaveLab Elements requires you to use drag-and-drop techniques to perform various operations, some of which can only be performed in this manner.

WaveLab offers you a wide range of options and tools for zooming in the Audio Editor and in the Audio Montage window.

You can create presets to save your preferred settings.

You can save your preferred file settings as templates, which saves you time and effort when creating new audio files or audio montages.

WaveLab Elements distinguishes between two types of folders: work folders and document folders.

You can copy information about the name and location of the selected audio file, including any selection information and the cursor position. This information can be pasted into an external text application.

When you are editing inside a floating window or a tool window and you want to switch the focus back to the Audio Editor or the Audio Montage window, you can use the Set Focus on Current File option.

Navigation Sync helps you to compare audio material by synchronizing different views of audio files and audio montages, so that any navigation actions you perform in one of them are automatically applied to the others in real time.

The Transport Bar allows you to control the playback of an audio file or an audio montage, to navigate to various positions in your audio, and to open the Recording dialog.

You can use the time ruler to jump to a position and start playback from there.

During playback, you can alternate between playing back the left/right, mid/side, channel clusters of multichannel audio files, or both audio channels.

You can play back multichannel files according to your audio device setup.

Playback scrubbing helps you to find a specific position in an audio file by restarting playback repeatedly while you click and drag on the time ruler during playback or using the Play tool.

The Timecode window can display the recorded time, the time offset in relation to various positions, and dynamic colors, based on the context.

You can determine how to scroll the view in Play mode.

Controlling playback in the Audio Montage window basically works just like in the Audio Editor, aside from a few features that are exclusively available for audio montages.

The Audio Editor window displays audio files graphically. It allows you to view, play back, and edit individual audio files.

You can overlay the Waveform or the Rainbow view of the Audio Editor with an RMS Loudness view and adjust the transparency of the overlay.

The channel control area to the left of the waveform in the Audio Editor allows you to select channels, and to mute and solo single channels of multichannel audio files.

Some positions, such as markers or selection edges, can be defined as magnetic. Dragged elements can snap to these positions. This makes it easier to position items accurately.

A zero crossing is a point where the waveform crosses the zero level axis. To perform editing operations such as cutting, pasting, or dragging, we recommend inserting the audio material at a zero crossing.

The tabs in the Audio Editor give you access to the tools and options you need to edit audio files.

Before you start editing files in the Audio Editor, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with some basic file handling procedures, as editing in the Audio Editor is not non-destructive, unlike editing clips in the Audio Montage window, which leaves the source files untouched.

You can render regions of an audio files or whole audio files to a single audio file.

You can change the sample rate and the bit depth of audio files.

Metadata consists of attributes that describe the audio contents; for example, the titles of an album, the author, or the recording date of a title. The availability of the data varies, depending on the file format of the selected audio file.

The Silence Generator dialog allows you to add silence to an audio file.

You can replace a part of an audio file with a beep sound, to cover up a swear word, for example.

The Pen tool allows you to redraw the waveform in the Waveform view, which enables you to quickly repair waveform errors.

In the Audio Editor, you can perform an advanced analysis of your audio to identify areas with specific properties. This helps you to find problem areas such as glitches or clipped samples. You can also check general information, such as the pitch of a sound.

Using the 3D Frequency Analysis, you can view an audio file in the frequency domain.

The Process tab gives you access to the offline processing tools.

Processing can be applied to a selection or to a whole file. For some operations processing the entire file is necessary.

In the Gain dialog, you can define a specific gain value to change the level of an audio range, and you can choose from two types of crossfades to ensure a seamless transition from the selection to the surrounding audio material.

In this dialog, you can change the peak level of an audio file.

You can use the Loudness Normalizer to achieve a specific loudness.

In this dialog, you can create a level envelope which can be applied to a selected range or a whole audio file. This is useful if you want to even-out loud and quiet parts or create a sophisticated fade in or fade out, for example.

A fade in is a gradual increase in level and a fade out is a gradual decrease in level.

A crossfade is a gradual fade between two sounds, where one is faded in and the other one is faded out, to ensure a smooth transition.

Inverting the phase turns the signal upside down. The most common use for this function is to fix a stereo recording if one of the channels has been recorded out of phase with the other.

You can reverse an audio file or a part of an audio file as if playing a tape backwards.

DC offset means that there is a too large DC (direct current) component in the signal. This most often occurs due to mismatches between various types of recording equipment.

Time stretching is an operation that allows you to change the length of a recording without affecting its pitch.

Pitch shift allows you to detect and to change the pitch of a sound, with or without affecting its length. This is useful for fixing an off-key vocal note in a live recording, or for tuning the pitch of a kick drum sample to fit a particular song, for example.

Pitch bend allows you to change the pitch of a sound over time.

You can change the sample rate of a recording. This is useful if the file that you want to use in an audio system was recorded at a sample rate that this system does not support.

WaveLab generates a designated folder for each audio montage that you create. The essential file of an audio montage, the one with the .mon extension, is automatically saved in this folder, which can contain further files or sub-folders related to the audio montage.

You can overlay the Waveform or the Rainbow view of the Audio Montage window with an RMS Loudness view and adjust the transparency of the overlay.

The Audio Montage window is where you assemble, view, play back, and edit audio montages.

The tabs in the Audio Montage window give you access to the tools and options you need for editing audio montages. For example, you can edit the envelope curves and fades in clips, adjust the settings for zooming, analyze the audio, and render the audio montage.

The audio signal follows a specific path when passing through the various areas of WaveLab Elements.

To create an audio montage, you can either take a top-down approach and start with the general setup or a bottom-up approach; that is, use individual files as the basis.

You can duplicate audio montages in various ways. This allows you to quickly create new audio montages using the same properties and audio files as for previously created audio montages.

In the Audio Montage Properties, you can define the channel configuration (mono, stereo, surround, Ambisonics) and the sample rate of the audio montage.

You can import audio files, video files, and titles of an album into your audio montage.

An audio montage consists of references to one or multiple audio files. These references can be broken if you move audio files to another location on your hard disk, for example. WaveLab Elements detects broken references and allows you to specify new file locations or replace the missing audio file with another audio file.

You assemble your audio montage by adding tracks and clips.

You can open multichannel audio files in audio montages. Each track of the multichannel audio file is organized in channel clusters. A channel cluster is a logical group of channels. It is always one channel or a channel pair.

All clips are displayed in the CD window. In this window, you can edit and rearrange clips and drag them into the audio montage.

You can edit files that are used in the active audio montage in the Audio Editor.

For clips in the audio montage, you can create envelopes for volume and fades, and for panning.

Ducking allows you to attenuate the level of an audio track so that the audio on another track is more prominent when both tracks are played back simultaneously.

A fade in is a gradual increase in level and a fade out is a gradual decrease in level. A crossfade is a gradual fade between two sounds, where one is faded in and the other faded out.

You can add VST effect plug-ins to individual clips, tracks, or the output of an audio montage. Clip effects affect individual clips only, track effects affect all clips on a track, and the montage output affects the whole audio montage.

The Album window displays the clips of the active audio montage and allows you to write the audio montage to an audio CD.

The Render function allows you to mix down the whole audio montage or a region of it to a single audio file.

The Meta Normalizer is an essential mastering tool for managing the loudness and peak levels in audio montages. It allows you to adjust the peaks of the clips or their loudness levels before you start mastering, and to fine-tune the output loudness and maximum peaks at the end of the mastering process.

This window allows you to enter notes about the current audio montage session.

You can import audio CD files. The imported audio CD opens as an audio montage.

Input monitoring means listening to the input signal after it travels through the effects while preparing to record or while recording. This allows you to listen to the effects that your WaveLab Elements setup has on your input signal.

When you are recording, you can click the marker buttons to add markers to the recorded file.

In this window, you can apply effect plug-ins, adjust the master level, apply dithering, and render the audio file or audio montage.

By default, the Master Section is active. You can bypass it for each file individually or globally.

By rendering the effects using the Render function in the Master Section, they become a permanent part of a file. So instead of performing all processing in real time during playback, you can save the audio output to a file on disk.

You can save any settings that you apply in the Master Section as a preset, which can be loaded again at a later point in time.

When rendering, you can monitor the process, and you can pause or cancel tasks.

A dropout most likely occurs when your computer does not have the processing power to handle all used effect processors.

You can use different marker types to locate certain positions quickly.

In the Markers window, you can create, edit, and use markers while working on an audio file or an audio montage.

You can create markers in the wave window and montage window in stop mode or during playback. You can create specific markers if you already know what you want to mark, or create generic markers.

Markers can be deleted in the wave window or the montage window, and in the Markers window.

You can adjust marker positions in the Audio Editor or in the Audio Montage window.

You can jump to the previous or next marker using the corresponding marker buttons.

For a better overview, you can hide marker types.

You can convert markers of a specific type to another type.

You can change the names of markers.

There are several ways to select markers.

You can select the audio between two adjacent markers or between any two markers. This allows you to select a section that has been marked.

In the Audio Montage window, you can bind markers to clips. By doing this, the marker remains in the same position, relative to the clip start/end, even if the clip is moved or resized in the audio montage.

WaveLab Elements can optionally use MRK files as a way to save marker information that is independent of the file format.

If you intend to upload your audio material to YouTube or Spotify, you can divide it into chapters so that your audience can select and play particular parts of the content.

WaveLab Elements contains a variety of audio meters that you can use for monitoring and analyzing audio. Meters can be used to monitor audio during playback, rendering, and recording. Furthermore, you can use them to analyze audio sections when playback is stopped.

You can set up most meters in the corresponding settings dialogs. For example, you can adjust the behavior, scale, and color of the meters.

You can reset the display of some meters, for example, the Level Meter.

The Level Meter displays the peak and average loudness/decibel levels of your audio file.

The Phasescope indicates the phase and amplitude relationship between two stereo channels.

The Spectroscope shows a graphical representation of the frequency spectrum, analyzed into 60 separate frequency bands, represented as vertical bars.

The Spectrometer uses FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) techniques to display a frequency graph, providing a precise and detailed real-time frequency analysis.

The Bit Meter shows how many bits are used.

The Oscilloscope offers a highly magnified view of the waveform around the playback cursor position.

The Wavescope meter displays a real-time waveform drawing of the audio signal being monitored. It can be useful when recording or rendering a file if File Rendering metering monitoring mode is active.

In this dialog, you can write your audio montage to an audio CD.

In this dialog, you can quickly or fully erase an optical disc before writing.

You can write audio montages to an audio CD.

Knowing background information on the CD format helps you better understand how to create your own CDs.

You can loop the audio selection or use loop markers and tweak the loop during playback.

A basic loop can contain clicks or abrupt changes in timbre at the turning point. To create a seamless loop, you can refine the loop. Use the Loop Tweaker dialog to tweak an existing loop selection so that it loops perfectly or use it to create a loop from material which is not perfectly suited to create a loop.

Sounds that constantly decay in level or continuously change in timbre are difficult to loop. The Loop Tone Uniformizer dialog allows you to create loops from these kinds of sounds.

Sample attributes allow you to define settings for an audio sample before loading it into a hardware or software sampler.

In this dialog, you can import one or multiple titles from an audio CD.

You can import audio from audio CDs into WaveLab Elements projects.

You can search for information about your CDs using the gnudb database of CD information.

You can submit information about an audio CD to the gnudb database of CD information.

Sometimes, a small bit of a title is not properly retrieved, which results in unpleasant clicks and pops in the audio. This depends on the quality of your CD drive. To solve this issue, you can activate the Ultra-Safe Mode in the Import Audio CD dialog options.

You can convert titles of an audio CD to an audio montage.

The video track in the audio montage allows you to add video files to your audio montage.

A video clip is created automatically when you import a video file to an audio montage.

If you import a video to your audio montage and start playback, the video plays back in the Video window. You can resize the Video window and undock it to place it on another screen, for example.

When working with video files in WaveLab Elements, you must make sure that the video file type is supported.

WaveLab Elements supports different video and film frame rates. The video frame rate must match the audio montage frame rate.

You can open Cubase/Nuendo events in WaveLab Elements. This allows you to use the editing capabilities of WaveLab Elements and apply them to Cubase/Nuendo events.

When you are working on an audio file or clip in WaveLab Elements, you can open the project of the audio file in Cubase/Nuendo. This allows you to correct issues that you have identified during mixing and correct these issues in the audio file in Cubase/Nuendo.

WaveLab offers a special copy-and-paste feature that allows you to transfer your audio material to other applications and to continue working on it without interrupting your workflow.

This dialog allows you to convert the file format of a group of audio files.

You can convert multiple audio files to another format in a single batch operation.

Podcast host services allow you to host and distribute Podcasts. WaveLab Elements allows you to directly upload your Podcast to various host services.

If the audio file or audio montage that you want to upload to a host service is a non-encoded audio file, you can encode the audio file. Some host services only accept encoded audio files. Encoded audio file formats are MP3, MP4, M4A, or MP2, for example.

You can upload the audio that you have created in the Audio Editor or in the Audio Montage window as a Podcast episode.

The Publish tab allows you to select the host service to which you want to upload your Podcast episode. You can select different host services and select the encoder for the audio file that you want to upload.

You can set up the Audio Editor and the Audio Montage window by adjusting colors of waveforms, backgrounds, cursor lines, etc., and changing the look of the ruler and other details.

In WaveLab Elements, you can control many functions via shortcuts to speed up your workflow. You can edit existing shortcuts and create new shortcuts.

You can hide or show individual command bar buttons. This way you can customize command bars by removing unwanted commands.

WaveLab Elements comes with various plug-ins, and additional plug-ins can be added. To retain an overview over the plug-ins that are relevant to your project, you can organize your plug-ins in groups.

The Touch Bar at the top of your keyboard gives you shortcuts to the WaveLab Elements functions. The Touch Bar changes automatically based on where you are in WaveLab Elements and offers a subset of the available options. You can customize the Touch Bar according to your needs.

Global Preferences are preferences that apply throughout WaveLab Elements. Before you start working with WaveLab Elements, it is recommended to edit these preferences according to your needs.

This dialog allows you to define settings for editing in the Audio Editor. However, these settings also affect other parts of WaveLab Elements. You can choose defaults for editing and playback, adjust the visual appearance of the waveform displays, and determine how WaveLab Elements works with audio and peak files.

This dialog allows you to set up general parameters for all audio montages or for the active audio montage only.

You can make some reference settings available to other WaveLab Elements installations. These settings can then be used by other WaveLab Elements workstations to keep the settings synchronized on several computers.

If you use multiple WaveLab Elements stations in your studio or in your school, for administration, etc., you can set up one WaveLab Elements station to be the master station. The shared preferences and presets of this station can then be used by other slave stations.

By default, WaveLab Elements uses the file browser of your operating system when you browse for audio files, for example. However, you can specify an alternative external file browser in the Preferences.