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An audio editor can only help you if you can find its tools. GoldWave Digital Audio Editor makes it really easy to access all of its features – even for someone with little experience. There are some great tools to be found too. GoldWave can edit files up to 4GB, and it offers you real-time visual and audio previews. The application processes your edits instantly and allows you to discard cue points when splitting a file. There is even a speech converter tool, which is a feature that is gaining momentum but is still pretty rare in this type of software.

GoldWave is easy to personalize too. You can associate your own keystroke combinations with the applications functions and rearrange toolbars and colors until the screen is perfect for your specific needs. We like that.

This audio editing software lacks some features we expect to see in audio editors, though. For instance, there is no frequency tuner, and the application doesn’t have the ability to burn CDs. Also, its effects arsenal is missing the ability to add noise, a chorus effect or vibrato.

Although it is missing a few features we like, GoldWave does offer batch processing, information editing, mixing and channel mixing. It also includes an equalizer, processor, expression evaluator, format converter, effect-chain editor and signal analysis tools. Visual representations of your music can take the form of a waveform, spectral view, VU meter, analog meter, X-Y graph, spectrogram or a "blowing inferno ."

All of your edits will be processed quickly, and you will have access to a preview option that allows you to check your work before moving on. The application has a handy mouse scroll zoom and right-click edits to make things more efficient.

This product has more than 20 preset effects, including a compressor/expander, voice/vocal reduction, doppler, cross-fading and a time warp function that alters a files playback speed so that you can mix audio files recorded at different tempos. This is a good audio editing software option for restoration projects too because it includes noise reduction, pop/click, smoother and FFT filters. GoldWave can split files but does not have the ability to split tracks. It is compatible with a wide variety of formats, including several WAV formats, AIFF (Apple compatible), FLAC, MP3, MP4, Ogg and WMA (Windows Media).

GoldWave can record from sound cards, streaming audio, CDs, video files and MIDI files. It can also instantly record anything that is playing on the sound card, which is a great feature to have. It can work with many popular formats, including RAW, AU, AVI, Dialogic VOX, Ogg Vorbis, SND and text data.

This audio editing application offers exceptional help through FAQs, help pages, a product manual, tutorials, an online user forum and email correspondence for technical support. When we contacted technical support, a representative answered our questions within a few hours, which is impressive.