Best Wave Editing Software Currently

[evon]

Been using wavelab, sound forge and to a lesser extent isotope. But just wondered what the standard is for professional mastering.

[Tarekith]

There really is no standard, search on Gearslutz mastering forum and you'll quite a range; Samplitude, Sequioa, Wavelab, Triump, Studio One, etc. I like Triumph myself.

[locojohn]

I wonder if Live X (or 10, for that matter) would introduce built-in [destructive] clip editing, which would be sooo handy! And which, IMHO, should have been there since version 7

Back on topic: Both WaveLab and Soundforge have been the standards for a long time. But the new Wavelab misses a couple of things from past versions, for example their stereo expander that could bring live to otherwise dull mix downs.

Andrejs

[granted]

Sound Forge and Wavelab. I've always been a Sound Forge user but over the years I've been moving slowly to Wavelab. I just get the feeling that Sony isn't really committed to their legacy audio and video software.
I've never heard of Triumph I'll have to check it out. EDIT: It's Mac only. And it's only $79.00 on sales. Wow.

[mholloway]

I like Adobe Audition far better than all the others mentioned here, of which I've tried out most. The workflow feels faster and more intuitive, the UI is cleaner, the feature set is huge. It even offers a multi-track editor.

But.. it's subscription based, so there's that. Adobe, gah. Great program though!

[Shift Gorden]

Here's a very ignorant question - as I know very little about mastering and I am, quite frankly, terrible at it.

Why would you use something like Wavelab or Triumph? Could you not simply import your audio file into Ableton and do it that way (applying whatever you need to do)?

[H20nly]

Adobe

your input is moot.

[Machinesworking]

I've DSP Quattro for years, does everything I want it to.
It's cheap and OSX only like Triumph.

[stringtapper]

Adobe

your input is moot.

Honestly I'm probably moving over to Audition from DSP-Quattro/Triumph/Sound Forge/etc.

But that's mostly because I get the entire Adobe Cloud suite for $10 a year.

[H20nly]

even for $10 a year Adobe will eventually find a way to fuck you

[Tarekith]

Here's a very ignorant question - as I know very little about mastering and I am, quite frankly, terrible at it.

Why would you use something like Wavelab or Triumph? Could you not simply import your audio file into Ableton and do it that way (applying whatever you need to do)?

Sure, you can definitely master in Ableton, it's just going to be a much slower workflow overall and you'll likely need other tools for things like MP3 conversion. Having dedicated destructive editing, top quality SRC, Cd burning, DDP support, export options, etc all speed up your workflow if you're going to be doing that kind of stuff a lot.

[Shift Gorden]

Here's a very ignorant question - as I know very little about mastering and I am, quite frankly, terrible at it.

Why would you use something like Wavelab or Triumph? Could you not simply import your audio file into Ableton and do it that way (applying whatever you need to do)?

Sure, you can definitely master in Ableton, it's just going to be a much slower workflow overall and you'll likely need other tools for things like MP3 conversion. Having dedicated destructive editing, top quality SRC, Cd burning, DDP support, export options, etc all speed up your workflow if you're going to be doing that kind of stuff a lot.

Thank you, mate. I was poking around looking at those pieces of software and saw they could do a lot more than what I stupidly thought mastering to be - that makes a lot of sense.

[evon]

Sound Forge and Wavelab. I've always been a Sound Forge user but over the years I've been moving slowly to Wavelab. I just get the feeling that Sony isn't really committed to their legacy audio and video software.
I've never heard of Triumph I'll have to check it out. EDIT: It's Mac only. And it's only $79.00 on sales. Wow.

Thanks for the answers guys. Yes granted, I realized that I myself have started working more in Wavelab and moving away from Soundforge. However, I may not have mastered Wavelab yet, because I feel I was getting better guality CD masters with Soundforge.

Then again, I think all my earlier mixes sound better than what I am getting now, even though I have learnt so much more since. I think it just proves the old adage that infers that we loose some of the beauty of things the more knowledgeable we become of them. So, we still have to keep in mind that "less is more" and we need to be able to forget what we know and just make music and use the tools we have learnt about to achieve our goal, instead of just using everything we know just because we know them.

[Shift Gorden]

Sound Forge and Wavelab. I've always been a Sound Forge user but over the years I've been moving slowly to Wavelab. I just get the feeling that Sony isn't really committed to their legacy audio and video software.
I've never heard of Triumph I'll have to check it out. EDIT: It's Mac only. And it's only $79.00 on sales. Wow.

Thanks for the answers guys. Yes granted, I realized that I myself have started working more in Wavelab and moving away from Soundforge. However, I may not have mastered Wavelab yet, because I feel I was getting better guality CD masters with Soundforge.

Then again, I think all my earlier mixes sound better than what I am getting now, even though I have learnt so much more since. I think it just proves the old adage that infers that we loose some of the beauty of things the more knowledgeable we become of them. So, we still have to keep in mind that "less is more" and we need to be able to forget what we know and just make music and use the tools we have learnt about to achieve our goal, instead of just using everything we know just because we know them.

Amen, brother. I made a track recently using a plethora of great plugins - EQs, compressors, etc. I thought it sounded okay after mix-down. I then had to send this track off to my tutor over at Point Blank...and realized he didn't have anything but the native plugs. So, I reworked the each track with native Ableton plugs - EQ8, compressor and glue compressor mostly and mixed down. Yeah, my native mix sounded better. Sigh. I think I went overboard with the external plugins and just used them because I could.

[kitekrazy]

Been using wavelab, sound forge and to a lesser extent isotope. But just wondered what the standard is for professional mastering.

Why is that important?

The standard for professional mastering is sending it to professionals who master.