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What is it?

Making Waves is a software audio sequencer and sampler for the PC.

With Making Waves you may sample any sound you can squirt into your soundcard or import any .wav file (no other format unfortunately) straight into the program, use the internal wave editor for changing them about and then compile them into a tune using DSP effects.

I found a few small niggles whilst evaluating this software, but before I go any further I must say that this software has one massive redeeming feature: It’s less than forty quid! £39-99 gets you this version. A ‘Pro’ version with full MIDI support is planned which will be £139 or an extra £100 to upgrade from v2.3.

Minimum Requirements

The box says, Intel Pentium processor or equivalent, 16Mb RAM, CDROM and a 16bit soundcard – not a lot to ask. PC’s normally need a fairly hefty machine to deal with half a dozen tracks of audio especially when DSP effects are involved. Surely you need loads of RAM and huge hard drive – Nope!

I had it running more than adequately on a Windows Me PIII450 with 196Mb RAM, but then I had to go away for the night so I grabbed the CD and my laptop and off I went. The laptop is a Windows 98 PII266 with 64Mb RAM and it coped absolutely fine. The guys at Making Waves told me it would run on a P60 with no timing problems although it would limit the amount of available audio tracks.

Installation

The software comes on a single CD. A full install takes up an excessive 578Mb although 490Mb of this is sample files and 35Mb of demo songs. The sample files are great to get you started but obviously you can delete them later when you have sifted through them. I found it strange that the program had no mention of registration, serial numbers or anything to do with copy protection. I later discovered that every time you start the program it asks for the CD. This is bad; I spend half my life looking for my car keys and the other half looking for CDROMS. This is unimpressive to say the least, if I really wanted to steal this software, I would copy it to a blank CDR, which now costs less than 30p!

Another minor point is that, by default, Making Waves installs itself into c:\making waves rather than c:\program files\making waves like you would expect. I find this departure from convention slightly irritating.

Dealing with samples

The software comes with a fantastic 78-page manual that is written very well. It has a ‘Getting Started’ section, which is 11 pages of easy reading to get you started. At the end of this section it states, “you should now be ready to start making complete songs…” – I had actually completed my Hardcore/D&B track about 1 hour later.

The program deals with samples as four different categories

Single Play samples are audio files that last for a number of bars without a particular tempo like vocal lines or synth pads

Percussion samples are single drumbeats like a kick or a snare

Note samples are single notes that can be played at different pitches to create melodies.

Sample Loops are break beats or bass lines that have a particular BPM.

You can change the category of sample at any time you like, so say you have a hi-hat line that you want to pitch up and down so it implies a melody, you simply change the sample type from percussion sample to note sample.

Using the note sequencer is a bit like the ‘piano roll’ editor in Cubase, you draw notes in a grid corresponding to the position in the bar and the note you want to play.

You can also select notes by using the computer keyboard or a MIDI keyboard. This is about as involved as MIDI gets with Making Waves, there is no real MIDI support at all, although this is promised for the Pro version.

You can apply effects to any sample you like, and there are a fair range to choose from, all the usual reverbs, flangers, expanders and compressors. These DSP functions can get very processor hungry, which can cause problems, but I didn’t experience any problems whatsoever.

There is an built in wave editor where you can select a certain part of the sound to be played, repeat or sustain a sound by looping the end, or adjust the sound levels using the gain control. It’s fairly basic but not far off what you would find in a dedicated sampler.

Song Layout

Once you have some basic sounds and effects together, you can start to create your song layout, by clicking on positions in the song sequencer you can turn samples on and off and layer them up as much as you like, this is great fun and quite intuitive. You can do the usual cut/copy/paste routines, so if you need to repeat a chunk of the song this is straightforward.

I am familiar with Cubase, Wavelab and their keyboard shortcuts, and it is a habit to try and hit ‘enter’ to play the song and ‘0’ to stop the song. Such shortcuts are not a feature of Making Waves, but something I would like to see in future versions.

Time-Splicing and Re-sampling

Time-Splicing is a feature I wouldn’t have expected for this price. It is pretty much like Steinberg’s ReCycle software. It’s most common use is to separate a sample loop into its individual components so it can be re-constructed. There is an ‘adjust pitch’ function so you can adjust some of the individual sounds to achieve some interesting effects.

If you have a section that you think deserves to be a sample in it’s own right you can export the whole song as a sample, this is really easy and is a great way to free up tracks and decrease processor load.

Of course when you track is finished in it’s entirety you could export the whole song as one big .wav file and use something like Adaptec CD Creator to burn your masterpiece onto an audio CDR.

The Verdict

A couple of months ago I reviewed the Korg Electribe ES-1, which is almost like a hardware version of Making Waves (but with MIDI support). OK that’s quite a sweeping statement to make to compare the two, but I really couldn’t find much difference in the functionality between them.

Making waves will appeal to DJ’s and producers who want to bang out a quick tune without learning all about MIDI and complex sequencers and acquiring synths and samplers. You just need a fairly basic PC with a standard soundcard and that’s it.

DJ’s these days want to make their own tunes and incorporate them into their set. Making Waves offers a cheap and flexible way to do this. It is evident that this is not a ‘mature’ product and is still evolving, this version is good, but I think the future is rosy for Making Waves.

Upside:

Downside:

RRP £39-95

Distributed by SCV London

Tel 0207 923 1892

 

More Info:
Making Waves Audio
Technology House
Dairy Meadow Lane
Salisbury
Wiltshire
SP1 2TJ

Rick Lomas

January 2001