ThePlayTab

The first tab we will take a look at is the play tab. There are a few things to note that you might want to set up here in particular that will help you with things like editing and playing files. Keep in mind these are settings that are customizable and therefore you should set to your own liking.

The Play Buttons

First, let's talk about the play buttons. In GoldWave, you have what are known as play buttons. These are 3 buttons that according to their settings will play different parts of the file according to how you configure them. They can be accessed by pressing either the f2, f3, or f4 for play1 play2 or play3 respectively. The following list of settings applies to the setup of all 3 of these buttons. Having these buttons configured to different parts of the file will help in a better playback experience when working with files.

• All: plays the entire file from start to finish.
• Selection: plays the selected part of the file, in this case, the part of the file between the start and finish markers.
• Unselected: this will play regions outside of the selection, in other words, any data that is not inside the start and end markers but is still a part of the sound window view will be played. This is particularly helpful if you are trying to make a cut or a splice but want to test how it might sound before actually destructively applying it.
• Continue to finish: This options starts playback either from where the play cursor is all the way to the finish marker, or if the play cursor is past the finish marker, will start playing from the start marker to the finish marker, similar to play selection.
• Continue to end: Continues playback from the current playback position all the way to the end of the file.
• View: this play button setting will play the sound that is currently visible in the sound window view. For us this particularly means if you've zoomed in on part of a sound it will show you just how much of the sound you are moving through at once.
• View to end: this will start playback from the left side of the currently viewable part of the sound window all the way to the end of the file.
• Up to finish: plays 3 seconds up to the finish marker. This is particularly useful if you want to see where the finish marker is and if it is in the right spot without looking at the entire selection.
• Intro/loop/end: What this does is play the sound in 3 parts. First, the beginning of the sound that is outside the selection will be played. The current selection is then played and looped according to the number of loops specified, then the end of the sound outside the selection is played once.
• Loop point: Starts playback just before the finish marker and loops back to the start marker and continues playing briefly. Use this setting to test the current selection markers for smooth loop points.

A note about any of these 3 play buttons, there is a checkbox on each of them that says loop, if checked the play button will play the part of the file it is configured to play and then the specified value of times as configured in the spin box where you can specify how many times the part of the file will loop. Example, if you told play 1 to play the current selection, check the loop checkbox, and entered a numeric value in the box after that of 10, the selection would play once, and then loop 10 more times. Also, if you put the number 0 in this field, it will forever loop.

The rewind and fast forward buttons

You also have the option of configuring 2 dedicated rewind and fast forward buttons that will help you rewind and fast forward through a file, similar to a tape player. The rewind button is invoked by pressing f5 and the fast forward button by pressing f6. You can configure how fast or slow you rewind or fast forward through a file. So for example, if a numeric value of 2.0 is entered in either of these 2 fields, the file will rewind or fast forward at twice normal speed. Similarly, if you entered a value like 0.5 or something much smaller, it will rewind or fast forward very slow through a file. This is useful if you are trying to find clicks or pops you want to get rid of.

Marker preview and scrubbing.

This section lets you configure just how much of the audio you hear when moving either the start or finish marker. In the case of the start marker, it will play a bit of audio from the start marker and for the finish marker it will play a tiny bit of audio leading up to the finish marker. I recommend setting a small value here, especially if you are trying to make fine or detailed edits. finally, the combo box after that edit field allows you to pick if the marker previewing is triggered with keyboard, mouse, or both. By default, it's only set to keyboard. It's also worth noting that if a value of 0 is set for marker preview, it will be disabled.