New Features

The design of the Startup Assistant has been optimized, with a special focus on ease of use. See Startup Assistant Window.

If the sample rate of your audio montage differs from the sample rates of the audio files that you want to insert into it, as an alternative to creating and using copies of the audio files and setting them to the sample rate of the audio montage, you can now also choose to set the audio montage to the sample rate of the audio files. See Resolving Sample Rate Mismatches between Audio Montages and Audio Files.

You can now use key commands to search for and select a particular plug-in after typing part of its name into the Search field. See Adding Effects via the Inspector Window.

You can now choose whether you want WaveLab Elements to detect any zero crossing point in the audio, or to limit the search to zero crossing points that mark an upward slope. See Editing Tab (Audio Files Preferences).

Simplified Chinese has been added to the languages available in the application.

The new Startup Assistant allows you to choose the working environment that suits your workflow, to create and open files, and to establish your audio connections – all in a single place. In addition to this, it offers you WaveLab-related information and news and provides useful links. See Startup Assistant Window.

A new Steinberg built-in ASIO driver with automatic sample rate conversion is now available. See Selecting the Steinberg Built-In ASIO Driver (Windows only).

To optimize cross-application workflows, WaveLab offers new drag and drop/copy and paste options that allow you to transfer any audio range from WaveLab to any other application, either with or without effects. See Cross-Application Copying Operations.

Tooltips are now provided for the controls in all dialog boxes. See Help System.

You can now display your mouse and keyboard input activity in real time, which is useful for screenshots and screencasting purposes, such as demos, presentations, and tutorials. See Visualization of Keyboard and Mouse Input.

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

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

You can now activate automatic crossfading for operations such as cutting, pasting, inserting, muting, cropping, or deleting segments of your audio. See Edit Tab (Audio Editor).

WaveLab now supports the Opus file format, both for decoding and encoding. See Opus Audio File Encoding Dialog.

You can now apply crossfades while adjusting the gain of a specific audio range, to create a seamless transition and to prevent abrupt clicks between the selected range and the surrounding audio on playback. See Gain Dialog.

Two new options in the Level section of the Envelope tab allow you to reduce the level of an audio selection by -6 dB or -9 dB via a single mouse click. See Envelope Tab (Audio Montage).

The Gain pane now has separate sliders for each stage of the audio chain. See Inspector Window.

You can now use context-based color-coded caption bars for plug-in windows, which make it easier to distinguish the effect plug-in types. See Color Codes for Effect Plug-ins.

The new Chapter Generator allows you to divide your audio material into chapters via marker pairs and to create a text file listing them, for use on YouTube or Spotify. See Generating Chapters for YouTube and Spotify via Markers.

You can now prevent WaveLab Elements from searching for and displaying plug-ins using the old VST 2 standard. See Plug-ins Tab (Preferences).

You can now make audio selections snap to time ruler marks and quantize the audio selection at the same time. See Quantizing Audio Selections based on Time Ruler Marks.

You can now synchronize the edit cursor position with the playback cursor position via the status bar. You can also use this option to activate a clip that is currently located at the cursor. See Status Bar.

In the File Browser window, there is now a button to manually reload the content, to reflect any updates and changes. See File Browser Window.

You can now zoom in or out while selecting an audio range. See Zooming while Selecting an Audio Range.

You can now open a second Timecode window, to display the time from two different reference points. See Timecode Window.

In the Metadata dialog, WaveLab Elements now allows you to generate BWF time references for rendered audio files, and to automatically add the creation time and date of your audio files via the BWF tab. See Metadata Dialog.

"CD", in the sense of a compilation of songs or titles, respectively, has been renamed to the more general term "album". The term "CD" is now reserved for referring to compact disks as a medium. In addition to this, "CD track" has been replaced by the more general term "title". See Audio Montage Window.

The cue point options have been revised and extended. See Edit Tab (Audio Montage).

In the Audio Editor or in the Audio Montage window, the new Keep Independent Folder for Each Source File option allows you to maintain independent render paths for individual audio montages or audio files and ensures that, when switching audio montages or audio files, the render path changes accordingly. See Render Tab (Audio Montage).

This option automatically opens the File Explorer/macOS Finder to indicate the location of selected audio files after rendering them. See Render Tab (Audio Montage).

When importing audio files into audio montages, you can now choose to create a copy of the original audio file in the audio montage folder or one of its subfolders, and whether or not to save this choice for future imports. See Import Files Dialog.

To make it easier to identify individual clips, you can now prompt WaveLab to automatically assign a random color to each of your selected clips. See Coloring Clips.

You can now easily move the edit cursor to the exact position of an envelope point via the Envelope context menu of the Audio Montage window. See Moving the Edit Cursor to an Envelope Point.

With Insert Mode activated, all plug-ins below the selected slot are automatically moved one step down when you add a new plug-in. See Effects Pane.

You can now customize the playback cursor according to your requirements, and to better distinguish it from the edit cursor. See Display Tab (Global Preferences).

You can now set the time after which tooltips appear when you move the mouse over user interface controls. See Display Tab (Global Preferences).

When you edit envelope points with the mouse, you can now set them to snap to active anchors. See Snapping Envelope Points to Anchors.