New Sound

Menu Command: File | New

GoldWave supports a number of sound attributes, as explained below. These attributes must be specified when creating a new sound. You can choose one of the Presets to automatically set appropriate attributes based on the class of audio. The file is created virtually and requires no storage space initially. It should be noted that it is possible to create a file that is too large to save on your hard drive later.

Channels
Mono sounds have one channel of audio. Stereo sounds have two channels. Stereo sounds use twice as much storage as mono sounds and can take twice as long to process. You can edit individual channels of a stereo sound by using the menu.

Sampling Rate
This value affects the quality and quantity of the sound. Higher values allow a wider range of frequencies to be recorded and give better quality. Smaller values require less space. The drop down list box provides many standard rates. For high quality, a minimum of 44100 should be used.

Rate (Hz) Quality
8000 Telephone quality.
11025 Low end radio quality. Good for voice.
22050 Radio quality. Fair for music.
44100 CD quality.
48000 Digital Audio Tape (DAT) quality.
96000 DVD quality.
192000 High-end DVD quality.

When setting up recording, make sure you specify attributes that are compatible with your audio device. Many devices do not support rates over 48000Hz. Even though higher rates may appear to work, they could be simulated by software, the driver, or the device. Higher rates could give lower quality in such cases, so check the device specifications if you plan to use rates above 48000Hz.

Initial file length
This value specifies the length of the sound in hours, minutes and seconds. You can enter any time up to about 99 hours for the length. Be sure to use the colon after the minutes. Enter 1.00 for one second, 1:00 for one minute, or 1:00:00 for one hour.See the for more information.

For CD quality sound, GoldWave requires about 20 million bytes (20MB) per minute of audio (60 seconds/minute x 44100Hz x 2 channels x 4 bytes/channel). You can save the file in a compressed format to use much less space, but you'll still need a large amount of storage space if you re-open the file.

To change the default save format shown in the status bar after creating the file, use the Default Save Format tab under . To change the recording bit depth quality, see .

See Also