GoldWave

I've used a number of audio editors over the years, Audacity (free, open source) and Audition (closed source commercial) among them, though I keep coming back to GoldWave time and time again. I have been using GoldWave on and off for around 20 years.

GoldWave:

• Is no-nonsense, it does exactly what you need it to.
• Has a perpetual licence option (US$ 59.00), or a yearly licence (US$ 19.00), both at time of writing. It hardly breaks the bank considering what it can do.
• Has a free version you can use.
• Still supports Windows XP (up to version 5).
• GoldWave Infinity (web-based) is available as a multi-platform alternative.
• According to sources on Goldwave's Wikipedia page, was used to establish Neil Armstrong's "missing word" from his famous moon landing comment, and was used by Owl City (Adam Young) to record all of his vocals for his first major label album Ocean Eyes.

Considering how long GoldWave has been around, it has held up really well, and is well worth paying for. You don't need to fight it to do what you need it to, unlike other audio editors I've used. It just works.

I am a lifetime licence owner, and do not have a financial interest in GoldWave other than this.

Very nice audio editing/restoration program. Intuitive and nicely laid out.
Many, many useful tools, and nearly all of them work great. Ideal for transferring analog sources such as records and tapes to digital files or CDs. The pop and click removal tool for cleaning up records is one of the better ones that I've tried.

Out of all of the audio programs that I've tried, Goldwave is my favorite.

As a side note, it's a Windows based program, but seems to mostly function correctly in Linux if you run it in Wine. The only thing I found that does not work is the "Save Selection As" function. "Save" does work, however. No idea why.