Two big things you should be mindful of:
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The jump from 6 to 7 (and 8) is huge in terms of the GUI … it’s almost a different application, so be prepared to spend a lot of time scratching your head (and hair pulling!). Most things are similar but there are some new concepts to get your head around which can be frustrating for a while. Most of the kerfuffle about this has died down in the meantime, but personally I think the new GUI is well worth any initial frustration – and I’m still learning! PG is very responsive to user concerns and is here on the forum most days, 8.5 is a great improvement on the initial 7 release and getting better with each update.
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WaveLab Elements 8 has one potentially serious limitation for radio/dialogue work: the montage is limited to 3 tracks (stereo or mono). However, as you say you only need 2-3 stereo tracks, you should be OK. Even if you did occasionally need more, you might be able to get around this by bouncing to intermediate tracks.
Other issues that may influence your decision:
– You can run WLE8 without a hardware dongle, which might be useful seeing as you’re going to be using a laptop. You can later transfer the license to a hardware dongle and install the application on as many computers as you wish, but it will only run on the computer with the dongle. You can’t, however, go the other way and transfer a dongle license to a “soft” eLicenser.
– You can’t “cross-grade” or “down-grade” from your existing WL6 to WLE8 … you would basically have to buy WLE8 as well. Against this background, you might want to consider the upgrade from WL6 to WL8 (full version).
– I agree with the “yucky Windows 8.1” bit … I have both WL8.5 on Windows 7x64 and WLE8 on a laptop running Windows 8.1. What I can say is that it works flawlessly on Windows 8.1 (which I still hate) so at least the WL6 incompatibility issue goes away. You might however want to try the following: copy the WaveLab 6 folder from your old computer to the laptop, download and install the latest update for the eLicenser, plug in your dongle and try running the WaveLab 6 exe! Completely unsupported, but it just might work … I believe there’s someone on the forum here who does this on Windows 7. It will require that you run it as Administrator, but it may be one possible zero-cost option in your case. (Sorry Steinberg, I’ll get me coat …)
Finally, WaveLab Elements 8 is one of the best value options out there in terms of what you can achieve with it, and I would have no hesitancy recommending it, if you decide to go that route. I still somehow think that you would be well advised to retain your investment in WL6 by upgrading to the full version of WL8, because for relatively little money you get a whole lot more, even if you don’t initially make use of all the features.