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Wave Repair |
| last update: 16th Jan 2020 | |
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Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10
With the introduction of Windows Vista, Microsoft made a number of changes which affect legacy programs like Wave Repair. The problems fall into two basic categories: configuration files and soundcard interfaces.Configuration Files
Wave Repair has a long history. The earliest versions predated the days when programs stored their settings in the Windows registry, and used old-fashioned INI files for that purpose. When later versions of Windows came along, I saw no reason to change. For one thing, if your configuration settings get corrupted, it's trivial to just delete the INI file and let Wave Repair recreate it (with default settings). And if you want to keep a copy of your configuration, you can just make a backup of the INI file. Wave Repair keeps its INI file in the same folder as the executable program. That way everything is kept together in one place and is easy to find. This strategy worked like a charm up to and including Windows XP.Now along comes Vista, and decrees that ordinary applications aren't allowed to write to the Program Files folder, which was the default installation folder for Wave Repair. This on the face of it would appear to be a problem. But in order to help out legacy programs (like Wave Repair) that want to write there, Vista introduced a feature whereby the attempts to create the INI file are diverted to the user area (C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Wave Repair).
As far as I can make out, if you install modern Windows versions as they come "out of the box", then this automatic diversion feature is switched on by default and everything just works. All you need to be aware of is that if you need to find them, your WAVREP.INI and WAVREP.KEY files won't be in C:\Program Files\Wave Repair.
That said, it seems that in some circumstances the automatic diversion is switched off. I'm not an expert in these matters and have not found out when or why this happens, but I do know of a few users that it has affected.
Perhaps the simplest way to avoid all this messing about is to just install Wave Repair into a folder where Windows will allow it to write its files. To this end, starting with release 4.9.5, the default install location has been changed from the Program Files folder to C:\WAVREP.
Soundcard Interfaces
The way that soundcards are presented via the Windows Mixer is different from Vista onwards. Consider a typical soundcard with multiple inputs (eg. microphone, line, CD, etc). In previous versions of Windows, up to and including XP, such a soundcard appears as a single device with multiple "lines" (one line per input). Wave Repair would present the various lines as options in a drop-down list on its Recording screen, so you could pick which one to use.Under Vista and later versions of Windows, this same soundcard will typically be presented as multiple separate devices, each with just one line. So Wave Repair is unable to offer a choice of lines on its Recording screen. Instead, to select the desired input you will have to configure Wave Repair to use the appropriate device:
- Invoke File | Options.
- Click on the Playback/Recording tab.
- Click the Configure Soundcard button. Another screen appears with two drop-down lists containing the recording and playback devices in the system.
- Make sure the desired devices are selected and click OK.
- Close the Options screen by clicking OK.
As with earlier versions of Windows, in the case of semi-pro and professional soundcards which do not provide some of the Windows Mixer controls that Wave Repair likes to use, then you'll not get the drop-down list or the record level sliders, and will have to use the soundcard manufacturer's own control software or the standard Windows Volume Control utility to set recording levels.
USB Soundcards
You may find that when you install an external USB soundcard, Windows regards it as a microphone of some sort, and as a result sets it up as a mono device. This results in only one channel (usually the left channel) coming through to recording applications. So you end up with a stereo WAV file that has only the left channel on both sides.To fix this, in Windows run Control Panel | Sound | Manage audio devices, go to the Recording tab, and bring up the Properties of your USB soundcard (which will probably be called something like "Microphone (USB Audio CODEC)"). Now go to the Advanced tab and change the default format to 2 channel CD quality.
Digital Gain
Windows 7 includes a setting known as "Digital Gain" which gets applied to incoming recordings. What's more, I am led to believe that the default setting is +30dB, which if true is a huge amount - I really can't understand why it would have been set so high.To preserve the audio stream in its original state, and to avoid having to set recording levels very low, you should set digital gain back to 0dB. This is done via Recording Devices > Properties > Levels.