GoldWave Digital Audio Editor - It's Golden: They Knew It, I Learned It

 What's Hot: At $45, GoldWave Digital Audio Editor sets my personal performance bar for not only working with the standard array of audio file types, but handling common video file types without ripping or converting to get the audio channels.
 
Once you own a license, updates of GoldWave are free. It has a long history of creating new revisions and they show no signs of slowing down.
 
GoldWave has a long way to go feature-wise to be at the level of Sony’s Sound Forge, but the price disparity is quite large. The product is really a terrific value even compared to other audio editing software products.

System requirements are reasonable, unless you’re using a  Mac and you want to use GoldWave instead of GarageBand. You'll need Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista (Windows NT/95/98 are not supported and will not work; use v4.26 instead). Mac OS X is not supported. You'll also need a 700MHz processor, 256 MB RAM, 200 MB of available hard drive space, an accelerated video card running at 16-bit or true 32-bit color, and a DirectX-compatible sound card driver (DirectX 8 or later may be required on Windows ME/2000).
A trial version is available. I like this touch on their website when you decide to purchase the software:
“Before purchasing a license, please download and install the evaluation version… you are welcome to evaluate the program over several days to ensure it performs the tasks you require.”
 
Of course, they’ll sell you the app if you really want to skip the trial.
 
Version 5.19 updated the help info to include Vista, added an eject button to the CD Reader, and added M3U support for batch processing.

The installation on both XP and Vista systems went well.

The full-featured evaluation version is limited to 150 commands in each session and 2,000 commands total.
 
The images and figures for the GoldWave Manual are not included with the evaluation version. And if you purchase the software, you need to do a special download and install to get to the images and figures.

 
Registered customers with old name or password-based licenses must request an ID-based license. Being new, I started with an ID-based one.

What's Hot: 

To get a feel for the overall process of opening files, working on them a little, and saving them to new audio files, I went through a set of test files.
 
The file types accepted by dragging and dropping them into the working window far exceeded my expectations. For example, the wmv video file type wasn't listed as an accepted file, but worked like a charm. It encouraged me to try other video files. Beyond the basic audio file types, I found these to work: 
 
• avi (video) – both older type II and newer type I. A nice touch is being able to lower the process priority when opening a larger file. It lets you continue doing other work on the computer at normal speeds. [GoldwaveFigure11-PriorityWhenRipping.jpg] 
• avi (video) Canon – Motion JPEG – Hard Drive Camcorder.
• mov – from Premiere 6.
• VOB – DVD video file; worked when the file was on the disc or when copied to the hard drive. Very nice.
• wmv - movie from Movie Maker.
• wmv – Photo Story 3 file.
 
 You can open multiple files. GoldWave info says you’re only limited by system memory and free hard drive space.
This screen shot shows the main working window with five sound windows open. [GoldwaveFigure12-AllSamplesOpen.jpg]

 
The Control window goes hand in hand with the sound windows; use it for the controls and some visualizations. 
[GoldwaveFigure13-ControlWindow.jpg]

What's Not: Here's a look at files that didn’t open, had issues in GoldWave, or couldn’t be saved to a working wav file:
• avi – DV-AVI files larger than about 2-1/2 GB opened sometimes but not always. (The jury’s still out on how large a DV-AVI file can be for GoldWave to consistently open it. I haven’t seen any documented limits, but files less than 2-1/2 GB seem to always open while larger ones are spotty. Maybe it’s just my computer.)
• flv – Flash videos, the kind from YouTube, opened but didn't work right.
• m4v - iTunes free video files; got an error message, didn't open, but the app didn't crash.
• m4p - iTunes Protected.m4p; error; didn't open.
• mid - MIDI: This window asked about the settings to use; perhaps giving a little hope to those who understand such settings. MIDI  technology is different. I convert MIDI files by playing them in one player and recording them with another tool via my sound card. [GoldwaveFigure14-ImportingMidi.jpg]
• rm – Real Media video. The process went through the motions but results were not good.
[GoldwaveFigure15-ImportingRM.jpg]
  
This tally is fine, with the only open question the size issue for DV-AVI files. As there are two main DV-AVI file types and Movie Maker captures to the newer type I, there may be sub-issues that relate to file types or other things like which DV codec was used to make it.

Continue onto the second page to read about all the features GoldWave includes, it's performance, and the help and support the company offers to users.