Which programs do you use to prepare instrument samples with looping?

I’m aware that the excellent Melas Waveform Editor has this ability. I wonder if there are other widely-used, long-standing programs that allow one to quickly prepare instrument samples with sophisticated cross-fade looping.

I’m based in mac, but have an old Windows 7 PC I can use.

I suspect some of the possible candidates may be:
SoundForge (Win only)
Audacity
Wavelab

The part that baffles me is how would the Loop In/Out points, and the corresponding cross-fading be preserved when exporting it from the audio editor into whatever gets it into Melas Waveform editor.

(I"d post this in the Sampling section, but that doesn’t seem to get much traffic.)

Based on its manual, it seems Wavelab may be able to prepare instrument sample with loop start/end points, and crossfading; and has tools to assist this process.

It is very cool that Melas Waveform editor has this. My concern with Melas Motif Waveform editor is how long it will keep up with the current OS’s.

Things I don’t understand yet:
- How the loop points get assigned and retained from Wavelab to Melas Waveform editor. (I guess it “just does”, possibly after proper configuration.
- how the crossfading works. I suppose it gets baked into the new, resultant wave file. And that’s that.

I can imagine the cross-faded material get baked in at the section leading up to and before the end point.

- Does the wave file portion immediately following the loop start point get new crossfading material baked in?
- does crossfading info get added to the portion *before* the loop start that will “justify” and make the progression past the loop start sound natural? I guess that would be the only way. If so, and so, that would mean the audio file gets altered before the loop start as well.

So my guess is that baking-in crossfading alters the audio file on both sides of the start and end loop points.

- can one retain the “release” portion of the envelope as the material after the end loop point? That would be cool.

FWIW, I use Audacity.

I should elaborate.
I use Mac. Audacity is multi-platform.
I typically do ‘one shots’ so Hopefully someone else can answer to cross fade questions.
Cheers

Hey thanks, keyman. I’ll check it out.

Among other things, Sample Robot does allow you to create loops with crossfade, then save them to wave file for import into the XF.