To truly make Wave Editor your own you will eventually want to review, configure and customize its preferences. They are accessible by visiting the menu at Wave Editor > Preferences or the keyboard shortcut ⌘-comma.
There are a great number of options available, some of which will radically change the way Wave Editor behaves and responds. We encourage you to take a look through all five categories, and we expect you will find a few items to personalize to your own liking.
Wave Editor Preference Categories
| Retain unrecognized data | Some audio files contain additional blocks of information that are extraneous or otherwise unrecognized in Wave Editor. To keep these blocks when saving or modifying files, select this option. To disregard these unrecognized blocks when files are saved, deselect this option. |
| Automatically add analysis | This option allows you to choose whether or not Wave Editor automatically adds its analysis data to the file. The analysis data allows for much greater performance when rendering waveforms. |
Select "Open automatically" to automatically open the Labels and Layers drawers when new Labels or Layers are created. To configure the side on which each drawer opens, select the "Left" or "Right" buttons.
Select "Front document only" to disable the playback capability of all background documents. Only the selected (front) document will playback a file. Selecting "Front document only" can also save CPU resources.
Select "Use dither" to apply Type II dither whenever a file of a bit depth less than 32-bit floating point is processed with Wave Editor's Processor.
Wave Editor supports unlimited Undo. To disable unlimited Undo, deselect "Unlimited" then enter the number of Undo actions you wish Wave Editor to remember. The default setting is 10.
| Default template | Use this pop-up menu to select the Template used for new files. Templates are covered extensively in the Templates chapter. |
| Waveform color | Click the color well to open the Color Picker and change the default waveform color for new Layers (also used for the Overview). |
| Background color | Click the color well to open the Color Picker and change the default background color in the Waveform and Overview bars. |
| Paged autoscroll margin | When using View > Autoscroll > Paged, this slider determines how close the Playback Bar needs to be to the right edge of the window, before paging the Waveform forward once more into view. By setting the slider to the far left, paging will only occur after the playback head leaves the view. Set the slider to the right to cause paging to occur some time before reaching the edge, i.e. to set a wider margin. |
| Waveform animation | Enables or disables waveform animation for scrolling and zooming. |
| Default zoom | This is the setting used when opening a file and is also the setting used by the "Zoom to Default" Keyboard Shortcut. To set the default magnification of the waveform, select "Zoom when opened" and enter a value in seconds in the text box. |
| Location tip size |
Set the size of Location Tips, an informational bubble that appears as you move an existing Label in the Waveform Bar. Location Tips display the following information:
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| Default SmartEdit fade | Select the default fade style for SmartEdits in the SmartEdit List in this pop-up menu. |
| On waveform focus | This option configures the behavior when clicking into the waveform from another section of the application (such as the Layers drawer). To initiate a new selection immediately when clicking in the waveform, select "Start a new selection" from the pop-up menu. Select "Keep the current selection" to retain the current selection until you click a second time in the waveform view. |
| On paste multiple items | In Wave Editor, Labels, as well as audio, can be cut, copied and pasted. This setting configures how Wave Editor will paste audio and/or Labels when both have been cut or copied. Options are "Paste audio only", "Paste Labels only", "Paste all" and "Ask." |
| Audio output | Select Wave Editor's final audio destination from the list of available system outputs. Select "Configure..." to open the Audio MIDI Setup. |
| Anti-click | Prevent clicks or snaps that occur when playback starts or ends anywhere other than at a zero-crossing. It exists only to stop potentially loud noises while actively editing. Outside of Wave Editor, your audio files will play without any smoothing. Turn off Anti-click at both Start and Stop of playback if you have any question how your resultant files actually sound. |
| Converter | Select your desired output converter from the choices available. Currently, Wave Editor offers two options: iZotope 64-Bit SRC or Apple AUConverter. |
| Quality | Adjust the Quality slider to alter the quality of the output conversion process. Choose between getting Faster results versus getting Better results that take longer to complete. |
| Latency Compensation | Choose whether or not Wave Editor should re-align playback synchronization between layers, in order to compensate for audible latencies incurred by plug-ins or sample rate conversion. |
One unique feature of Wave Editor is that you can a MIDI controller to play, in real time, the current document. This allows fine tune editing of an audio file, while also triggering the playback from higher or lower registers. If it's not yet obvious, this is perfectly suited for sound design when creating or editing audio for use in a sampler. It doesn't replace a dedicated sampler, but it is simple and convenient.
| MIDI Input Enabled | Set Wave Editor to respond to MIDI messages by checking this box. |
| Input Port | Select your MIDI input device from those that appear in the list. If don't find the controller you expect to use, make sure it is connected and powered on, then check Audio MIDI Setup in the Utilities folder. This list is dynamic and will show only currently available MIDI ports. |
| Detect Sample Dumps | Wave Editor supports the Sample Dump Standard (SDS) which allows moving audio directly to a sampler via a MIDI cable. To set Wave Editor to automatically sense incoming sample dumps from SDS-capable devices, select "Detect Sample Dumps". |
Wave Editor now supports every possible split file naming convention, because it allows you to create custom file naming schemes. The four most common conventions are provided, displayed with a small padlock to show that they cannot be deleted. Using the checkboxes you can choose exactly which schemes show up when saving your file, and opt out of displaying schemes you never need to use.
To create your own split file naming scheme, press the + button and enter in exactly the characters you need. There are two special tokens, or placeholders, that you will use to designate the file extension and channel abbreviation. These are /ext/ and /abbr/. All other text that you enter will be used exactly as is.
File naming scheme examples
If we start with a stereo file named My_Final_Mixdown and save to WAV, here are how the files would be named if we used the following schemes. Notice how each token gets replaced in its entirety, includes both forward-slashes "/":
| ./abbr/ | My_Final_Mixdown.L, and My_Final_Mixdown.R |
| -/abbr/./ext/ | My_Final_Mixdown-L.wav, and My_Final_Mixdown-R.wav |
| ./abbr/./ext/ | My_Final_Mixdown.L.wav, and My_Final_Mixdown.R.wav |
| ./ext/(/abbr/) | My_Final_Mixdown.wav(L), and My_Final_Mixdown.wav(R) |