Nick,a wave editor:-

When you lay down your tracks they are recorded as individual tracks like guitar, vocal 1, vocal 2, percussion, etc, and these are normally stored in the format of the software you are using, and will only be playable by that software. You put effects like "reverb" and "compression" on at this stage. They might be combined in something like a "bundle", but this will still only be playable by the software that created it. For instance, a recording done on "Cakewalk" won't be playable by "Cubase".

The software will normally have a function called something like "export" which turns the individual tracks into a WAV file which will then be playable by a CD player.

A "Wave editor" can do things to this file, the most notable being "fade-ins" and "fade-outs". From the description of your set-up you may well have something that's fulfilling the function but under another name. Some software has an editor as part of the suite, for instance Cubase has one called "Wavelab". The industry standard editor is called "Soundforge" but this costs around the £600 mark.

I downloaded a cheapo freebie one fromm a firm called "Blazeaudio" (www.blazeaudio.com) , and to upgrade it to the full version only cost me £13.50 due to the exchange rate of the dollar at the time.
It's called "Wave Creator". I find that it just adds a bit of fullness to the sound. One of the problems with recording is that the terminology is confusing -the word "normalise" for instance has two different meanings.