Wave Form Editor, a simple explanation

[Armageddon]

I'm not sure it's a matter of 'faith", as you mention, because many DAW's have always had this option. Back in my Windows days Sonar allowed you to open a track in a third party editor. I'm sure there are others as well. Might have been as simple as keeping the costs down. When I switched to Mac/DP6, i found the Wave Editor to be very capable, more so than Sonar's basic WAV editing.

I never assumed it was any more or less full-featured than similar features in other DAWs (my only other extensive DAW experience in this regard was with Vision DSP, and while the waveform editing feature was more or less the same as DP's, minus the ability to allow it to open a third-party editor, it allowed you to do it all right in the Sequence Editor without opening extra windows). In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that it would be kind of hard on any DAW to have overly-extensive capabilities in that regard (AND MIDI, AND audio mixing, AND track comping AND etc.), so it's not anything I would fault MOTU for. I always preferred working in a dedicated waveform editor, anyway, back when Peak was still cool and now in Wave Editor.

[Klaus]

Editing / analyzing beats / tempo info is what I use the waveform editor for...
helped to correct problematic tempo anlyzes..

Best

Klaus

[AnthonyS]

I'm not sure it's a matter of 'faith", as you mention, because many DAW's have always had this option. Back in my Windows days Sonar allowed you to open a track in a third party editor. I'm sure there are others as well. Might have been as simple as keeping the costs down. When I switched to Mac/DP6, i found the Wave Editor to be very capable, more so than Sonar's basic WAV editing.

I never assumed it was any more or less full-featured than similar features in other DAWs (my only other extensive DAW experience in this regard was with Vision DSP, and while the waveform editing feature was more or less the same as DP's, minus the ability to allow it to open a third-party editor, it allowed you to do it all right in the Sequence Editor without opening extra windows). In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that it would be kind of hard on any DAW to have overly-extensive capabilities in that regard (AND MIDI, AND audio mixing, AND track comping AND etc.), so it's not anything I would fault MOTU for. I always preferred working in a dedicated waveform editor, anyway, back when Peak was still cool and now in Wave Editor.

Exactly. I used Sound Forge/CD Architect for those 2 track tasks. Haven't checked out the Mac side of things (Peak or DSP Quattro) because aside from full fledged CD Architect style CD burning, I haven't had the need for it. Who burns CD's anymore? LOL

[mikehalloran]

>you can get expensive, like Peak or DSP Quattro,<

Peak, yes... but DP Quatro expensive? Not the way I look at it.

[AnthonyS]

>you can get expensive, like Peak or DSP Quattro,<

Peak, yes... but DP Quatro expensive? Not the way I look at it.

Yeah, I think I saw it for $79

[martian]

for me the waveform editor was for removing clicks and pops ?

but I started just spitting files to Izotope now.. much easier...

clip gain? I was doing that in the Seq editor.... if you needed to "print: it - just merge clip?

[Armageddon]

BIAS also had a multi-track audio program (or they may indeed still have it), though it lacked MIDI capabilities. I have Adobe Soundbooth on my machine as part of CS5, but the fact that it only used its own proprietary plug-ins turned me off of it right away. I think $79 is the magic number for most two-track editors these days: Amadeus II, Wave Editor and DSP Quattro are all in that price range and seem to share similar features. There's also Steinberg's Wavelab, which now works with Macs, but I'm not a VST fan.

Admittedly, I've been eyeballing Harrison Mixbus lately, especially since Waves 9's analog summing emulation plugs don't work with DP. I know that's outside of the purview of two-track editors, but I'm intrigued to the point where I might try to download the demo and see how mixing with that software matches up to a similar mix in DP. All of the MIDI work and rendering VIs would still have to be done in DP, since Mixbus doesn't support MIDI or VIs, but I'm interested to see what's gained or lost between the two programs. Apparently, Mixbus emulates 8 tracks of summing and tracking/mastering tape emulation.

(Edit: what I meant to add was, what drew me to Harrison Mixbus is, I believe it can actually be used in conjunction with DP as sort of an "in-the-box" summing mixer, though I was initially prepared to, if I liked the sound, having to do all my composing and VI recording in DP, then port audio files replete with silences-as-placeholders into Mixbus and create audio mixes that way. Since Mixbus works off of Jack -- an IP audio system I'm not a huge fan of, to date -- I believe you're actually able to stream all of your audio from DP into Mixbus and route it through its eight summing channels, or even through its audio input channels while allowing DP to use it as a slave via MIDI or MTC. The downside, especially on a slower computer like mine, is that you would now have two DAWs open, competing for CPU and RAM, which is why I contemplated even doing it by recording all my audio in DP, then loading and mixing the audio in Harrison Mixbus. The upside, aside from whatever audio gains you might make, is that Mixbus appears to be 64-bit. So far, I've delved very little into the demo, so I have no idea if it'll even be worth experimenting with)