Hey,
When I worked for Syntrillium we used to worry a little about Goldwave...it's dirt cheap and has a whole bunch of great features, some of which aren't available in any other softwares. My favorite was the function that allows you to enter math formulas to generate complex waveforms.
Syntrillium kept an eye on it because they were concerned that if the guy who wrote it decided to market it properly, it would seriously cut into the Cool Edit share of the editor market as it was super powerful at a low price.
Goldwave also makes a nice little audio/video multitrack program for only a few bucks, I never messed with it but it looked the business.
My only complaint with Goldwave was the way you have to make selections. Every program I've used allows you to make one by click-dragging across a section of audio, it's just like making selections in Windows.
For those who haven't used Goldwave, you make selections by using the left and right mouse buttons to place the left and right edges of the selection on the waveform.
It's great that companies try to be innovative, that's what creates new technologies...it sucks sometimes though when they mess with with the wheel, if you know what I mean.
So, I think that Goldwave is probably just about as good as the big boys for sampling and recording; it lacks some of the more professional features SF and CEP have, though, and this may be one of the reasons why not as many people use it. As well as its lack of marketing.
Take care,
Nick