WaveLab has become a permanent fixture on the pro-audio scene, and offers a huge collection of features; including sample creation, audio mastering and basic audio editing. But never one to stand still, Steinberg has introduced a whole host of improvements.

Many additions are subtle, such as faster peak creation, more intelligent use of folders – you can keep those annoying peak files in a separate temporary folder – and even support for external hardware. You can even plug in an external processor using your soundcard, and WaveLab will treat it like an audio plug-in.

The basic workflow of waves, montages and effects collections hasn’t changed, but there’s a new 64-bit float audio format. This offers almost terrifyingly high levels of audio resolution, but it’s good news for editing because there won’t be any creeping errors sneaking up to take away effective resolution.

However, it’s the major new features that will attract the most interest. The new Pitch Quantize feature could take any X Factor wannabe and turn them into a tuneful singing sensation. It’s a good idea, but in practice is rather gargly and can’t compete with processors from the likes of Antares or Waves. More successful is the new Timestretch, which is based on the DIRAC process created by DSP guru Stephan Bernsee. Instead of time-slices and granular processing – chopping the audio up into tiny overlapping pieces and hoping no one notices – DIRAC time stretching uses a spectral technique that handles amplitude and frequency information independently.

While the WaveLab dialog features some fairly complex options for specifying tempo, duration, bar length and so on, it becomes a lot less intimidating once you realise that you only have to set one of these and the rest will be calculated automatically. There’s also a Quality option that ranges from fast and grungy to slow but smooth. The mid-way compromise worked best in our tests, taking a couple of minutes to stretch a 50 second file. The sound quality is much better than older stretch algorithms, but still not quite perfect. It’s by no means a miracle cure, but it’s still better than what was previously available.

Chop and slash
The other big new feature added to WaveLab 6 is spectral editing. Usually you need to chop and slash your way through individual samples. Spectral editing offers a frequency versus time plot, where you can select a specific area and process it separately. Adobe’s Audition had included a similar feature for a while, although the WaveLab version is not directly comparable.

The new Surgical mode is limited to 10 seconds of processing, and offers a fairly small selection of filters, which are designed for micro-edits. Much more impressive is the Master section mode, which can route the selection or its inverse through the real-time effects. This enables you to compress, limit, delay, chorus or equalise a certain frequency range, while leaving everything around it untouched. Quality stuff!

Depending on your own personal collection of processing plug-ins, the options here are almost endless. The filter slope that defines the difference between the selected and unselected areas can vary from infinity to 6dB, so you can easily duplicate analogue-like ducking and de-essing effects, or dial it up to maximum for extreme strangeness.

On the downside, WaveLab 6 isn’t yet multiprocessor-aware, so don’t expect any speed advantage from a dual-core machine. Plus the interface is still downright weird in places. It’s usable, but you can’t help but wish that someone would give the designers a crash course in ergonomics to make the program more intuitive.

Those caveats aside, the overall verdict looks good. Upgraders will be particularly interested in the time stretching and the spectral processing. These appeal to anyone who wants to go that bit further with their editing, such as sound designers and games music programmers.

For newcomers, Wavelab remains far too daunting and involved to take on in one go. If you’re looking for simple cut and paste editing, this will seem like complete overkill, and there are any number of cheaper available options. However, if you want a pro-level audio equivalent of a Swiss Army knife that’s piled high with exceptional creative features, WaveLab 6 is sitting pretty at the top of the tree.