The frame editor shows the selected frame large, with the frames before and after it as faint lines for reference. Whatever you draw is written into every selected frame, so selecting a range and drawing once changes them all. Each stroke or drag is one undo step.
Zooming the editor
Scroll or pinch on the wave to zoom in horizontally around the pointer, down to a tiny slice of the cycle. Scroll sideways, or hold Shift and scroll, to pan. Fit shows the whole cycle again. A frame louder than full scale makes the view zoom out so you can see all of it.
Tools
Pick a tool in the frame editor’s header.
Pencil
Draw freehand. Hold Shift partway through a stroke to draw a straight line from that point to the pointer.
Line
Drag from one point to another for a straight line. Hold Shift to keep it level.
Curve
Curve reshapes the frame with smooth handles. It has two modes, in the bar under the editor:
- Bend: drag handles to push the wave up or down between neighboring handles. Templates: Hump, Dip, Tilt ↗, Tilt ↘ and S-curve.
- Envelope: the handles set a gain envelope the wave is squeezed into, mirrored above and below the center line. Templates: Window, Ramp ↗, Ramp ↘, Triangle, Gate and Decay.
Click on the wave to add a handle (it starts on the curve, so nothing changes until you drag it). Double-click a handle to remove it. Each selected frame is shaped from its own starting point. Handles reset when you change frames or the selection.
Harmonics
Harmonics shows 64 bars, one per harmonic, under the wave. The Levels and Phases switch chooses what the bars control.
- Levels: drag across the bars to set each harmonic’s level. Fast drags fill in the bars you skip.
- Phases: the bars set each harmonic’s phase, from +180° at the top to −180° at the bottom, without changing levels. Phase shapes the wave and its peaks, though on its own it barely changes the sound.
Four phase actions work on the selected frames:
- Align starts every harmonic in step. That gives the sharpest peaks; the sound barely changes.
- Randomize scrambles the phases, for diffuse, noise-like shapes with the same harmonics.
- Minimize peak rearranges the phases to lower the frame’s peak, then brings it back to full level. The frame can come out a few dB louder with the same headroom. WaveStack tells you how much.
- Match phases (with several frames selected) gives the other frames the current frame’s phases, so they morph into each other smoothly.
Bounds: region and limits
The Bounds bar under every tool confines what you draw.
- Region: click it, then drag across the wave. Edits only land inside the region; the rest is dimmed. Clear region goes back to the whole cycle.
- Limits: upper and lower lines that clamp everything you draw. When you turn them on they sit at the frame’s current range, so nothing clips yet. Drag their square handles to move them, which clips the selected frames as you drag; pulling a limit back out restores what it clipped. Click a limit line to add a handle, and double-click a handle to remove it. Templates (Squeeze, Taper, Ceiling ↘, Floor ↗, Half-wave) set the limits to a shape and clip the selected frames. Apply to all frames clamps the whole table.
Region and limits apply to every tool, including Curve and Harmonics. They last for the session and aren’t saved with the table.
The Edit tab
The Edit tab on the right works on the selection. Its first line says what that is, with Select all to widen it to the whole table, or Just frame N to narrow it back. The Key button marks the current frame as a keyframe.
Shape
Sine, Triangle, Saw, Square, Pulse and Noise replace the selected frames with that wave. The shapes are band-limited and normalized; the pulse is 25% duty, and noise is new each time.
Process
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Invert | Flips the wave upside down |
| Reverse | Plays the wave backward (reverses the samples, not the frame order) |
| Normalize | Scales each frame to full level, each on its own |
| Remove DC | Centers the wave on zero |
| Align 0✕ | Rotates the wave to start at a rising zero crossing |
| Clear | Silences the frame |
Filter & phase
Choose an effect from the menu, then drag the slider. The effect is applied live as you drag and kept when you let go, as one undo step. The slider springs back to the middle, so you can drag again to add more. Dragging left and right gives different versions of each effect:
| Effect | Drag left | Drag right |
|---|---|---|
| Low-pass | resonant low-pass | low-pass |
| High-pass | resonant high-pass | high-pass |
| Band-pass | low band | high band |
| Comb | notches every 3rd harmonic | notches every 6th harmonic |
| Dispersion | disperses one way | disperses the other way |
| All-pass | bends the phase one way | bends the phase the other way |
Dispersion and all-pass change phase only, smearing sharp edges without changing which harmonics are there.
The rest of the Edit tab covers the table’s size and keyframes. See Tables, views and selecting and Keyframes and in-between frames.
The frame menu
Right-click a frame (in the strip, the grid, the 3D view or the editor) for:
- Set as keyframe / Remove keyframe
- Copy wave and Paste wave. Paste goes into every selected frame and resamples if the frame sizes differ. This clipboard is WaveStack’s own and lasts the session.
- Shape: sine, triangle, saw, square or pulse
- Invert, Reverse, Normalize, Remove DC, Clear
- For rows, Duplicate frame and Delete frame; for grids and volumes, Select row, Select column and Select layer.
Right-clicking a frame inside the selection applies the menu to the whole selection; right-clicking outside it selects that frame first. On a touch screen, a long press opens the same menu.