GoldWave Digital Audio Editor - It's Golden: They Knew It, I Learned It (Page 2 of 2)

What's Hot: 

Let’s look at some of the more interesting features from the menu. Your choices of effects include the basic ones and more. [GoldwaveFigure02-EffectsMenu.jpg]
 
The filter branch in the effects menu includes noise reduction and pop/click removal, features I need often. [GoldwaveFigure03-Filters.jpg]
 
Other features I rely on are automatic snap, crackle, and pop removers for my camcorder files. GoldWave has an excellent Pop/Click feature. I go with aggressive removal. [GoldwaveFigure04-Pop-ClickFilter.jpg]

An equalizer is perhaps the most common feature found in audio editing apps. Even users coming right from the analog environment are familiar with it. [GoldwaveFigure05-Equalizer.jpg]

GoldWave's Shape Volume control is one of my favorites. It lets you set the volume levels through the full audio track, or the segment you select. It’s a must-have feature for video editing, more so in Vista’s version of Movie Maker than in XP. Vista pegs the volume level of each clip at the max and only lets you lower it, making it hard to deal with the ‘too quiet’ scenes. [GoldwaveFigure06-ShapeVolume.jpg]

The Tool branch in the main menu offers other interesting and useful choices. [GoldwaveFigure07-Tools.jpg]
 
An Effect Chain Editor lets you create a personal set of effects and apply them to the sound files you want. If you like a chain, you can save it for future use. [GoldwaveFigure08-Chain.jpg]
 
Math and music skills go hand in hand. The Expression Evaluator lets you explore the interplay between math and sound. In this screenshot it is set to play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on a xylophone. Just extrapolate it to other tunes and instruments [GoldwaveFigure09-Expressions.jpg]
 
Under the file open and close menu is a selection for Ba

What's Not: My first attempt at a batch conversion, essentially ripping the audio tracks from a dozen DV-AVI files of an hour each in duration, didn’t work. It created the new wav files but didn’t fill them with content.
 
I opened one of the DV-AVI files in GoldWave Digital Audio Editor and saved it to a wav file to confirm it would do the conversion that way, and it did.

What's Hot: Using external plugins is one dimension of scalability. Select the plugins you want to use and restart GoldWave Digital Audio Editor to make them effective. [GoldwaveFigure16-DirectXPlug-ins.jpg]
 
Here’s a chorus effect from Sony’s Sound Forge, working in GoldWave Digital Audio Editor.
[GoldwaveFigure17-SonyEffect.jpg]

What's Not: As good as computers and computer software have become, any active user will experience error messages that they don't understand. Most of the time the item is benign and simply trying to tell you something to help, but the communication isn’t always effective. [GoldwaveFigure18-Error-importingiTunesFreeorProtected.jpg]
 
This is more apt to happen when reaching out to try new file types such as one from iTunes, or when using external plugins. Help info in GoldWave says the only limits are the system’s memory and free disc space. I did some testing.
 
My video work often starts with a camcorder tape, then moves to a captured DV-AVI file. Initially, opening the captured files in GoldWave was successful, but I ran into some issues which I still don’t understand. Sometimes on my XP system I can open a one-hour DV-AVI file of 13-plus GB, but at other times it seems the largest one I can open is 2-1/2 GB.
 
I’m trying to open a big file now on my Vista system, reaching across my network to an external drive on an XP computer for a one hour-plus audio track from a DV-AVI file. It’s taking more than an hour to get it, but I’m in no hurry and the audio decompression is chugging along fine as I work on another
computer (P.S. It finished fine, sometimes it works).
 
I set up a batch conversion process in XP to rip the audio from a dozen one-hour DV-AVI files; the process gave me a dozen wav files with file names, but with nothing in them in the way of audio content.

What's Hot: GoldWave Digital Audio Editor's local help file is effectively integrated with additional online material.
 
There’s also an online Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

GoldWave hosts a very active online forum with over 1,800 members and over 8,000 posts, with active GoldWave participation and moderation. I joined.

What's Not: Pictures for the full manual are available only to registered users. The process for getting them is to download an executable module only after providing the email address of the license holder.
 
As GoldWave Digital Audio Editor was purchased by someone else for this review, I had the User ID and License number, but didn’t know which email address was associated with the purchase. I took a guess and lucked out. If you use multiple email addresses, keep a note of which one you use when you purchase the app, or contact GoldWave for assistance.

What's Hot: If I haven’t already said it often enough, my primary interest in audio is the routine tossing back and forth of the sound tracks between audio editing software like GoldWave and movie and story making software such as Windows Movie Maker and Windows Photo Story.
 
Movie Maker and Photo Story have no audio editing features, so it's important to have a strong synergy between audio editors and these products.
 
With GoldWave, the process is easy and works well; something I didn’t expect to find in software at this price level. GoldWave handles all of the file types I need, and makes new files that are easily used in the movie and story editing apps. Tweaking audio is easy with GoldWave.
 
Beyond writing this review, I’ll be using the GoldWave product routinely in my video work.

GoldWave's audio editor stands out in the crowd as a great audio software product. I’ve often spent lots more for much less than what GoldWave offers for the price. I recommend GoldWave to anyone seriously interested in audio editing, to movie makers looking for easy and effective ways to edit their sound tracks, and to anyone who wants to have fun and learn about digital audio.