Wavelab - A Sort-Of-A-Library

[BobH]

I hope I’m not preaching to the converted here, if I am then please ignore me! But I noticed that a couple of people are using Wavelab for replay and are missing some of the basic ease of operation of iTunes and the like.

 

So, here’s a quick and dirty guide to getting a rudimentary library-sort-of-thing up and running in Wavelab.

 

READ THIS FIRST – Doing the following will fill your music folders with 1k .mrk files – one for each wav! They are Wavelab’s Marker files and define the start and end of each track. They are harmless text files and can be easily deleted if you don’t like the system. They are, unfortunately, necessary for the following to work properly. Wavelab can embed markers in the header of a wav file, but for the sake of a bunch of 1k text files it doesn’t seem prudent to me to go messing about with the wav.

 

Righto then........ the trick is to use Wavelab’s CD creation facility. (The following was done in WinXP using Wavelab 5, but for newer versions I can’t imagine the process will be that much different.)

 

 

1. First create a Basic Audio CD : File......New.......Basic Audio CD

 

This will open up a new Untitled window and a new 'CD' entry will appear on the main menu strip.

 

 

2. To add files to your cd : CD.......Add Tracks…….Select the tracks you want and click Open

 

An Informaton box will open up saying……

 

This audio file does not contain any CD-track markers. WaveLab will

create markers at the start and end of the file. You can later adjust

their positions and add other CD-track markers to the file.

 

Provided you haven’t selected the option to have Wavelab put markers in the wav headers, it will now create all of those .mrk files I mentioned earlier!

 

Click 'OK for ALL' button.

 

3. Save the selection as a Basic Audio CD : File.......Save As

 

Give it a name and location. What Wavelab does now is save a small (2k) file with all the information it needs to re-create the job later - it doesn’t do anything to the wav’s.

 

Close the Basic Audio CD window. You're done.!

 

 

4. To play back the album : Double click a Basic Audio CD file and then double click track one in the Basic Audio CD window. (Wavelab will then play all the tracks in order).

 

If you save the Basic Audio CD file in the albums’ folder then you can simply use explorer to get to them.

 

 

Alternatively, you can save them all in one place and then create a new toolbar for instant access.

 

Right click on the Task Bar……Toolbars……New Toolbar……Navigate to the folder containing your Basic Audio CD files and select it. This will place a shortcut to that folder on your taskbar. If you drag it all the way to the right, next to the System Tray, it will collapse down so that just its name and double arrows remain. Click on the double arrows and all will be revealed!

 

All a bit of a fudge, I know, but it doesn’t take long and gives you double-click access to Wavelab with an album pre-loaded and ready to go. For those albums for which a special effort would make sense, it does the job.

 

Hope this helps!