Sound Forge has two versions: Studio and Pro. When an audio card is installed in your computer that has line in capability, you can record two channels of audio at a time, either by hooking up a pair of microphones or using instrument cables or RCA cables, in the Studio version, or up to 32 tracks at a time in the Pro version. Sound Forge's Audio Studio can be used to digitize and restore old vinyl records and then burn them to CD.
Wavelab is available in two versions: Elements and the full version. Elements allows you to record or work on two tracks at a time. With the full version, you can record up to eight tracks at once, and you can mix and master up to 1,000 at a time. Wavelab includes a Sonnox restoration suite for digitizing and restoring vinyl records.
Wavelab supports recording at sample rates up to 384 kHz at 24 bit depth, as well as floating 32 bit and 64 bit floating bit depth for greater headroom and clarity. Sound Forge supports recording at sample rates of up to 192 kHz at 24 bit, as well as floating 32 and 64 bit depth. Both Sound Forge and Wavelab support 5.1 multichannel editing and mastering.
Both Wavelab and Sound Forge come with a variety of VST and Direct X effects plug-ins, such as compressors, gates, pitch correction and spectrum analysis. These plug-ins can be used to even out the loudness between tracks and apply cross fades that they play seamlessly on a CD. You can add third-party plug-ins in either format to the plug-in library. With Wavelab, you can apply up to 10 plug-ins per track. You can also use the plug-ins as part of the recording chain, so that they are applied to the audio as it is recorded. With Sound Forge, there is no limit to the number of plug-ins that can be applied to a track.