GoldWave records and edits digital audio as waveforms. Each open file has its own Sound window, and start and finish markers define the selection used by most edit commands and effects. Recording creates audio samples. Editing changes those samples or the file length. Conversion writes another encoding.
Cut, Paste, Trim, Replace, Overwrite, Mix and Crossfade act differently on the selected range. Some effects can target the complete sound. Snap to zero crossing moves a marker to a nearby point where the waveform crosses zero, which can reduce a click at an edit boundary.
The markers define more than the visible zoom
Zooming changes how much of the waveform appears on screen. The start and finish markers still define the edit selection.
A cue point has another role. It names and marks a position but does not split the sound by itself. Split File writes separate files at cue positions. GoldWave can also import or export a CD cue file, whose positions use a precision of one seventy-fifth of a second.
Ordinary edits move cue positions with the audio. An effect that changes duration can leave them misplaced. A time or speed operation can therefore leave a cue at a different point in the edited audio.
Playback can stop recording without a warning
Starting playback while GoldWave records stops the recording. The program does not warn before this change. The same stop behavior applies whenever playback starts during the capture.
Recording Auto Save only works with bounded recording. A manual stop does not trigger it. Auto Save can also overwrite an existing file without an undo route, so its destination and name pattern require the same care as the recording source.
Timer input has its own interpretation: an entry without seconds means minutes and seconds rather than a clock time. A value entered with the wrong assumption can start or stop the capture on a different schedule.
An effect chain accepts only chainable effects
The Effect Chain Editor runs a series of compatible effects as one unit and can preview the result before it processes the complete file. It cannot accept every GoldWave effect merely because that effect works alone.
Removing an earlier effect can require removing the effects below it first. Changing the order may therefore mean rebuilding part of the chain rather than dragging one item out of the middle.
Batch Processing repeats an exact saved sequence
Batch Processing decodes one source at a time, runs Process-tab items in order, changes file information when configured, converts the encoding and writes the chosen destination. GoldWave overwrites or deletes a source only when the corresponding destination option says so.
A new custom effect setting cannot start inside the batch dialog. The user must create it as a preset elsewhere and then add that preset. Correcting an effect means removing the old item and adding the corrected one. The user then returns it to the intended position.
When an open Sound window becomes the batch source, GoldWave applies only the Process-tab sequence. It does not run the batch conversion or information changes. That path differs from processing files selected from disk, even though both use the Batch Processing window.
