A mastering engineer asked me to build a cue sheet tool — and then helped me turn it into a product
It started as a question. Justin Perkins — long-time friend and mastering engineer, WaveLab Brand Ambassador, the guy behind Mystery Room Mastering — asked me if I could build something that would take the XML data WaveLab exports from an Audio Montage and convert it into a clean, professional PDF cue sheet. The kind you’d actually want to send to a client.
The reason he was asking: WaveLab’s native PDF export isn’t great. Justin put it better than I could in a post on the Steinberg Forums:
“For the last decade I’ve been hoping that the Album Report from the Audio Montage in WaveLab looked better but it never really happened. In my opinion, the native PDF export from WaveLab doesn’t look great, takes up too many pages and space for most normal length albums, with lots of wasted space and other inefficiencies as well. While there have been some slight improvements to the native PDF export for WaveLab 13, it’s still not something I’m proud to send to my clients for proofing the non-audio data that goes with most EP and album mastering projects.”Justin Perkins
That’s the gap. WaveLab is excellent at mastering. Its documentation output is a different story.
What started as a template became a product
Justin framed it as a simple question to “his friend and web developer” — could I make a template or formula that converted XML to PDF? What came out of it was cuesheetpdf.com: a web application where WaveLab users export an XML file from their Audio Montage, upload it to the site, and get back a clean, readable, client-ready PDF in seconds.
After seeing it work, Justin encouraged me to monetize it and make it available to the broader WaveLab community — not just keep it as a private tool. He started talking about it publicly on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, and the Steinberg Forums. That push is a big part of why the site exists as a product rather than a one-off script.
On LinkedIn he made the practical case directly: “FWIW, I do many double, triple, and even 4xLP vinyl releases and have never had any client confusion or complaints about there being one report for each side. To me it only makes sense to have a report that goes with each side instead of one report and multiple WAV files. This website can make cleaner PDF reports from XML data exported from WaveLab 13.”
One thing we found during development
WaveLab’s XML export has a version problem. As Justin noted: “We found that the XML export of WaveLab 12 and earlier was missing some critical info which has been addressed in WaveLab 13. So in other words, you need to be using WaveLab 13 for all the essential data to be present in the XML export that CueSheetPDF translates into a nice looking PDF.”
That’s worth knowing upfront. If you’re on WaveLab 12 or earlier, the exported XML won’t have everything the tool needs. WaveLab 13 fixed those gaps.
How it works
You export an Album Report XML from WaveLab’s Audio Montage, drag it onto the upload area at cuesheetpdf.com, add your project details, optionally upload your studio logo, and generate the PDF. The whole thing happens in the browser — no files are stored on the server, which matters for client confidentiality.
There’s a sample PDF on the site if you want to see what the output looks like before signing up.
Pricing and trial
The site runs on a freemium model: a 7-day free trial that includes up to 10 PDF exports, then $5/month or $55/year for unlimited exports. The annual plan works out to a bit under $4.60/month. You can cancel anytime through the account portal.
It’s aimed specifically at mastering engineers and studios using WaveLab — it’s a niche tool for a specific workflow, which is exactly why a freemium model makes sense. Try it on a real project and see if it saves you the time and embarrassment of sending out a PDF you’re not proud of.
You can sign up and try it at cuesheetpdf.com.
Reference Resources & Further Reading
Here are some links relevant to the tools and community that this grew out of.
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