

Wavelab 9 now has some features that would be seriously useful to the small-studio engineer. As we’ll see, I think that Steinberg has somewhat gotten away from that generous allocation of goodies. As with the previous versions, Wavelab requires an eLicenser dongle while Elements requires only a software authorization solution.Īlthough the previous version of Wavelab had many features needed in a professional operation, Elements was so fully-featured that a small-studio operation would find it completely satisfactory for most activities. I’m confident that owners of those versions will consider an upgrade to be money very well spent. Upgrades from the previous versions are $99 USD and $25 USD respectively. Wavelab, with its list price of $579 USD, will be too expensive for the typical small-studio budget, but Elements price of $99 USD certainly is not. Wavelab and Elements certainly qualify as “capable”. Any studio, even a modest small studio, will benefit considerably from having both a great DAW and a capable audio editor. There is certainly some overlap in DAWs and audio editors, but an audio editor can do some essential tasks much more efficiently than a DAW, and in some cases can do things impossible in a DAW, however high-end that DAW might be. So why would you need more? The answer is that audio editing software has a slightly different focus than a DAW. Most of you reading this review will already own at least one fairly capable DAW which no doubt offers some serious audio editing capabilities.


Those wishing to learn of what’s not new may read the earlier review here: All the functionality present in those versions is still with us and I’m going to focus primarily on new features here. At that time Wavelab was at version 8.5 and Elements at version 8. I reviewed Wavelab and Elements, in our Jan. For brevity, hereafter “Wavelab” will be used to denote “Wavelab Pro” and “Elements” to denote “Wavelab Elements”. In this review we will look at the new releases of Steinberg’s high-end audio editor software, Wavelab Pro, and the scaled-down and much more economically-priced “lite” version, Wavelab Elements. Steinberg’s audio editors for the professional and the home studio have new versions, both of them sporting impressive new features which merit your attention.
