User Manual

Table Of Contents
WAVELAB
Editing in the Wave window 6 – 125
Compression encoded export formats
Apart from the formats available in the Save As dialog and the Save spe-
cial encode MP3/MP2/WMA options, WaveLab allows you to export files
in a number of compression encoded audio formats, suitable for multime-
dia, web publishing, etc. (see “Supported file formats” on page 113). The
basic functionality for this is part of a software technology called Mi-
crosoft ACM (Audio Compression Manager) which is included with Mi-
crosoft Media Tools.
The number of formats you can export, depend on which ACM drivers you
have installed on your computer.
For more information, see www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia.
About “lossy” and “non-lossy” compression
There are two types of compression methods. When you use a “non-
lossy” method (like saving as an OSQ file – see above), all information
about the file is preserved, which means that when you decompress the
file, you get it back exactly as it was.
However, most audio compression techniques are “lossy”. This means
that once the file has been compressed, some information has been lost.
This type of compression always results in some kind of audio degrada-
tion, albeit in many cases a very small one.
WaveLab can also import any file supported by ACM, provided that the
correct ACM drivers are installed.
If you need audio file compression with uncompromised audio quality, you
should use the OSQ (Original Sound Quality) lossless audio compression
format instead (see “About saving OSQ files on page 119).