GoldWave is a great recorder, player, and editor with many effects that come stock, but sometimes we just want to improve the functionality of it, perhaps maybe giving it even more effects. We can do this by telling it to search for even more effects for us to use. In this case, we will insert vst plug-ins in order to expand it's functionality. You can get lots of free vst plug-ins from the vst archive page.
Searching for VST's
First, in order to get GoldWave to even see the new effects we can use, we have to tell it where to search for them. It's important that in the case of the free vst archive for example, you have it extracted to somewhere on your hard drive you can easily remember. Once you know where your folder of vst effects will be, you tell GoldWave to search for them by doing the following:
- With the GoldWave window in focus, go to the options menu by either pressing alt+O or going to the menu bar and pressing right arrow till you hear the options menu.
- Arrow down till you hear plug-in submenu, then right arrow to get into the submenu.
- When the plug-in submenu is opened, you will hear effects as the first submenu choice in that menu. Pres right arrow to open it.
- When the effects submenu is opened, the first choice you will hear is gw-vst32, press enter to launch the vst configuration dialogue box.
- When the dialogue box first opens, you will see not much in it, an edit box where GoldWave is looking if it is already, a search for VST's button, and ok button, a cancel button, and a help button.
- Press enter on the search for VST's button.
- Another dialogue box opens that has a list of folders where GoldWave is already searching for VST plug-ins.
- Press enter on the add button.
- A standard browse for folder dialogue box appears. browse for the folder where your VST's are stored.
- Once you've found the folder, go to the ok button and press enter on it.
- From here you can choose to include all subfolders, which is something I tend to do in case plug-ins have their own specific folders, check the box to do so if you want.
- If it warns you about a folder that isn't a verified vst folder, press enter on the yes button to continue.
- Now it will bring you back to the search for vst dialogue again where all your vst folders were.
- Press enter on the begin search button. It will take awhile but it will eventually search through the folder you specified and find all the vst effects.
- You'll be put back in the vst configuration dialogue box, and in the list view you should see any number of effects it found for use, by default, they are all checked.
- Press ok to exit the dialogue box, it will eventually update itself and the effects and then tell you to restart GoldWave.
Conclusion
As you can see, the process to insert VST plug-ins is quite involved, but the good news is once they're all inserted, they will work every other time you use GoldWave. You only have to do it once whenever you have new folder of vst's to check, and you will be able to expand it's plug-in functionality.
