Waves' native-only Vocal Bundle packs a fair punch in terms of what's on offer, and in truth, provides rather more than just a pitch-correction facility. What you get. Waves has long been a leader in developing signal processors (commonly called plug-ins) for audio editing software. The company has also made excursions into hardware, including the L1 Limiter, which enables the processing to be offloaded from the computer's CPU. Over the years, Waves has developed an impressive collection of plug-ins, and upgraded versions of most of them are included in the new Version 3.0 Gold Native Bundle (there is another bundle for Digidesign TDM systems). The new package features resolutions up to 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz sampling rates, with internal processing running at 32 bits. As the 'Native' part of the name suggests, these plug-ins do not require any additional hardware to operate. One should be warned, however, that the suggested computer requirements are a minimum; the stronger the horsepower and the greater the RAM, the better the processors will run. Waves 'strongly recommends' using a Macintosh G3 or G4 (with at least the L2 backside cache), with 96 MB RAM for multitrack operation. On the PC side, a Pentium 266 MHz with 96 MB RAM is recommended. The plug-ins are compatible with AudioSuite and Realtime AudioSuite (RTAS) programs (Pro Tools), VST (Cubase, etc.), MAS (Digital Performer), and DirectX (for Windows). Waves Gold includes various equalizers, limiters, and compres-sors, often packaged together to form composite plug-ins. New to the set is the C4 Multiband Parametric Processor, 'with 4-band up and down expansion, limiting, compression, plus dynamic and standard EQ.' The bundle also includes plug-ins for reverberation, including the new Renaissance Reverb, along with 'effects' type processors such as Enigma (a type of phaser), Meta Flanger, SuperTap (delay), Doppler, and MaxxBass. Waves has also added the S1 Stereo Imager, the L1 Ultra-maximizer (for dithering), and the PAZ Psychoacoustic Analyzer. Space prevents us from discussing every one of these tools, but a selection of them will be reported on in more detail. Waves Gold comes with a substantial set of printed manuals. While there are redundancies—the installation instructions and description of the general interface are duplicated for each of the five booklets, for example—the information is often very useful. There are discussions of basic concepts (the different components of reverberation, for example) and specific pointers on using the parameters within each plug-in to achieve certain effects. The plug-ins are not 'dumbed down' for instant use by audio enthusiasts with no knowledge of music or engineering. The Renaissance Reverb, for example, includes settings for Reverb Type, Decorrelation (between channels), Reverb Properties Control (Predelay, Time, Size, Diffusion, Decay), Reverb Levels Controls (Early Reflections, Reverb, Wet/Dry, Gain), Damping Controls (Low Frequency, Low Frequency Ratio, High Frequency, High Frequency Ratio), EQ Controls (Low Frequency, Low Gain, High Frequency, High Gain), and Graph Displays. Thankfully, all of the plug-ins have a healthy collection of pre-sets, which can be useful starting points for exploring the possibilities of particular processors along with the manuals. Each plug-in allows two settings to be loaded for A–B comparison, and users may easily store their own settings for later recall or duplication. The graphic interfaces that are supplied with most plug-ins also help users to orient themselves to the particular features of a plug-in (see Figure 1). We ran the Waves Gold bundle on a 400 MHz G4 with 256 Mb RAM, operating within the environment of Pro Tools 5.1 LE. Installation is straightforward, the new version simplifying the process by substituting call-and-response verification for awkward dongles. In order to proceed with user verification, it is necessary to register. This can be done through the Waves Web site, or by mail or telephone. In any case, the full bundle is functional as a demo for 14 days. [End Page 102].
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