Stagger on two alternating tracks - Bug?

Right, in those cases and some other cases, but I’m pretty sure I tried it with some other longer titles ending in l or r (sorry can’t remember them offhand), and they came out ok, so I thought it was more complicated than just any title ending in l or r. Besides, it probably would have happened much more often if it was just a case of all titles ending in l or r.

Putting it to the test now. Using different sets of files, randomly changing names and adding in r or l as the last letter. In every case so far, the result is multiple extra tracks.

EDIT: Also, in file sets that have one or more files ending with l and/or r, I get extra tracks, and renaming the files removing the l and/or r consistently makes it work as it should.

What if you find another project that has a filename that already ends in l or r, so you’re not changing names to add or remove l and r?

That’s what I did. They come up on multiple tracks.

I guess you’re right. I can’t reproduce what I was talking about, so I guess the problem is any filenames that end in l or r, unless somebody finds otherwise.

So crazy that in my 10 years of using WaveLab, this only happened once and it was not long after the original post. Either it’s a new bug, or necromorbus found a needle in a haystack.

My takeaway here is that if it ever happens again, play with the file naming, or deal with reorganizing the files on two tracks as intended.

Hopefully when PG has time he can look into the true cause of it.

Hi Everyone,

I had the same issue. I had 18 wave files I was trying to import, but Wavelab [10.0.40 - build 127] just keeps scattering the files on multiple tracks (10 in all). No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to stagger the files on two tracks as advertised.

Here’s the link to the video: https://streamable.com/8p2z7e

After playing around with the filenames I got it to work. I also found out what the problem was: I’ve tried multiple file naming conventions and it seems that Wavelab doesn’t like a dash in combination with L, R, C and S at the end of the filename (no space). So anything like Master-C.wav or Master-L.wav will not work. Master_C.wav (with underscore) will work and Master - C (dash with space) will also work. Also, L and R work neither with dash nor underscore.

The rule for C, which doesn’t work with - (dash) but works with _ (underscore)

-C at the end of filename, does not work (dash, no space)
_C at the end of filename, works (underscore, no space)
_ C at the end of filename, works (underscore with space)

  • C at the end of filename, works (dash with space)
    C at the end of filename, works (space, no dash, no underscore)

The rule for S, which doesn’t work with - (dash) but works with _ (underscore)

-S at the end of filename, does not work (dash, no space)
_S at the end of filename, works (underscore, no space)
_ S at the end of filename, works (underscore with space)

  • S at the end of filename, works (dash with space)
    S at the end of filename, works (space, no dash, no underscore)

Special exception for L, which works neither with - (dash) nor _ (underscore)

-L at the end of filename, does not work (dash, no space)
_L at the end of filename, doesn’t work either (underscore, no space)
_ L at the end of filename, works (underscore with space)

  • L at the end of filename, works (dash with space)
    L at the end of filename, works (space, no dash, no underscore)

Special exception for R, which works neither with - or _

-R at the end of filename, does not work (dash, no space)
_R at the end of filename, doesn’t work either (underscore, no space)
_ R at the end of filename, works (underscore with space)

  • R at the end of filename, works (dash with space)
    R at the end of filename, works (space, no dash, no underscore)

I actually went through the whole alphabet to see which letters work and which once will not work.

To avoid the bug: When using a dash with a letter at the end of your filename, either add a space between the dash and the letter or use “underscore” instead of a dash. Using a dash with either the letter C, L, R or S (caps or small) without a space (between dash and letter) at the end of a filename will cause the “stagger on two tracks” feature in WaveLab to fail. Also, L and R don’t work with dash or underscore. All of the four letters will work when a space is added.

The easiest way to avoid problems, is to use dash or underscore in combination with numbers instead of letters (to designate filename version at the end of filenames). So ending your filename with “master-1” or “master_01” or “master 01” will always work.

Cheers!

I can see at least one of your files is ending with “L”

Please re-read my post, just updated it. I was able to narrow the issue down to 4 letters in combo with dash and underscore.

It is too much of a coincidence that the dashed letters at the end of the file names that do not work are?:
(-R)ight
(-L)eft
(-C)entre
(-S)urround

Definetly not a coincidence. These are probably reserved by Wavelab…

I’m getting it regardless of dashes or not, always when an “l” or “r” is at the end. Strange that you are not seeing the same.

@necromorbus: I tried l and r at the end with and without space and it works absolutely normal. Only when using L and R or l and r with dash or underscore preceding it at the end of the filename does the staggering feature fail. And for C, S it fails only with a dash. And as JimP has remarked, this is most likely connected to some internal Wavelab filename flags for Left, Right, Center and Surround. I’m certain for the Wavelab Dev team it’s no issue to fix, now that we have narrowed it down. A moderator just needs to make a bug report or CAN entry…

If you want me to recreate your issue with l and r, please post a video in which I can see your filenames. My guess is, you have a dash or underscore somewhere preceding the letter r or l (or a dash before c or s). If you have a filename with dash-r and one r without, it will still fail. But it will fail because of the former not the latter. Wavelab will stagger correctly until the file name with above criteria comes up, then it fails and starts staggering on multiple tracks. So its pretty simple to narrow it down.

See my previous posts for examples of file names that have caused issues. No dashes or underscores or spaces before the last letter.

I tried the filename “Wolves of Ardeal.wav” and it worked as it should for me. So I wasnt able to recreate that.

You could try to clear any xml chunk tags in your wavs, in case you are using broadcast WAV that have tags. Not sure if that can be an issue. I was able to rule it out as an issue in my tests, but it might be worth a try. You could also post your wav that is causing issues, and I can take a closer look at it.

You could also try importing the wavs from a different folder or hard drive (just to rule out any “external factors”).

@necromorbus: Here is a video of your import issue I was trying to recreate using exactly the filenames in your video. As you can see below, it worked fine for me, which leads me to suspect that you are dealing with another issue here (not the filename issue which I described above).

Recreating your Video: https://streamable.com/d85kh1 - WORKS!

Using same filenames but add -r (dash r): https://streamable.com/iaoh0y - FAILS!

Cheers

I don’t work with broadcast wav but I do include XML from Cubase, which is where I do my processing. I tried now to strip all Metadata from the files hoping that it would fix it but still the same result.

I think you’re definitely onto something with that it involves L, R, C and S. I tried now with another set of files that funnily enough contains files ending in all these four letters. The result is that I’m getting 6x tracks: first track is with a file ending with L, second track a file ending in S, third track with a file ending in C, fourth track with a file ending in R, and the last two tracks (5-6) containing all the other files. So it definitely seems like Wavelab is splitting up the files in belief that it’s multi-channel file sets.

I can’t post any of the wavs I’m afraid, don’t think the labels would be very happy about that. :wink:

EDIT: I think I found it! It seems to be dependent on the settings for how Wavelab handles dual mono files. In Preferences>Audio Files, in the “Dual Mono File Identification”, I recently changed what I THINK might be the default setting in “Name Interpretation #1” from “-L” and “-R” to simply “L” and “R” when I was messing around a bit with dual mono files. I now changed these back to “-L” and “-R” and now my files are working as expected. If I now change the name of any of the files to include for example “-R”, it ends up on its own track. Note that this happens regardless of if the “Allow Opening of Dual Mono Files” box is ticked or not.

As a side note: Selecting any of the “Name Interpretation #5” or #6 or #7 crashes the application for me.

Sorry for the late answer on the topic.
Indeed, file suffixes used for surrounded files cause the problem.
This will be fixed in the upcoming 10.0.50 update.

Very good to hear, thank you for the update PG.

Yes, thank you. Good to hear it will be fixed soon…