Must have all. The rest is in the title. Opinions?

Sound forge w/ CDA included.
 
@

That's what I fear...$400 bucks. I can master the entire cd in Sonar, but I would still need a .wav editor cd markers and burning. Sounds like most of the people here prefer Cd architect.

Actually Audio Creator/Pyro will do the job.  Its not great and I would not master in it but it allows you to set markers and burn redbook CD's, you also get an MP3 codec with it too.

A really good editor is Cool Edit Pro V2. Do a search and you will get it free easily. It may not do all the tagging and VST and burning options (I think it can put indexes in though) but it will do a lot of editing and it will have all the processes you need to do most types of things. It can create mp3 files too with all the options etc..

Clint, if burning CDs is the priority, CD Architect is sold separately for $99. Having a good editor is great, but optional.
 
I lucked out and bought Adobe Audition 3. I say "lucked out" because they subsequently turned the product into a subscription model that pretty much everybody hates. Unfortunately, you can't buy AA3 anymore, but the good news is that its predecessor Cool Edit Pro can still be found.
 
CEP was a shareware application before Adobe bought it and Adobe-fied it to make it look like the company's other multimedia products. But CEP has many of AA3's most-important features for editing. 
 
The most popular freebie around is Audacity. It's really a DAW, but it does have basic editing capabilities. A similar product, also free, is Wavosaur. Yet another is WavePad, which has both paid ($50) and free-for-noncommerical versions. Even the free version is surprisingly full-featured, including noise-reduction and click/pop removal features.
 
One thing the freebies lack is detailed statistical analysis of wave files, something I rely on AA3 for. I'm talking about finding, counting and highlighting overs, graphing dynamic range distribution, reporting average RMS and peak values for any arbitrary section of a wave file. 

bitflipper
 
One thing the freebies lack is detailed statistical analysis of wave files, something I rely on AA3 for. I'm talking about finding, counting and highlighting overs, graphing dynamic range distribution, reporting average RMS and peak values for any arbitrary section of a wave file. 

WaveShop has pretty good reporting for freeware.

Sony has the Studio edition of their stuff which is much cheaper.  I don't know if CDA comes w/ it.
 
Pyro is another choice, and is good for tagging and markers, tho it is a step down from CDA.
 
Then there are free ones out there - if you can find old copies of Audition you are good to go (a lot of people use it) and you can master in SOnar and just find a cd burner program.
 
@

Audition, Wavelab, Samplitude, Sequoia, Soundforge

scook
 
WaveShop has pretty good reporting for freeware.

Thanks, I did not know about that one. Apparently it just came out this past January.
 
Looks like it could be useful. Says it does peak, RMS and spectral analysis, and reports overs. Sample rate conversion, file format conversion, metadata editing, unlimited undo. No VST support, but that's really not important.
 
I'll have to try this one out.
 
[UPDATE]
So I gave it a spin. Pretty cool. If this keeps on being developed, it could be really good.
 
It has a level histogram like Audition's, which I find to be a helpful quick indicator of how dynamic one's mix is. Shows DC offset (but no way to remove it, AFAIK). Nice spectral display, very reminiscent of Audition/CEP. Another handy feature, one that I use often in Audition, is a tone generator, again very reminiscent of Audition/CEP. 
 
The similarities make me wonder if the Cool Edit guys aren't involved in this GNU project. Maybe they got bored after selling out to Adobe.
 
I've not explored every corner of the application yet, but the tone generator alone is reason enough for everybody to want to add it to their toolkit.