Hi,
Man, you should have tried Samplitude pre-V6.0. It was a total nightmare to use, but it sounded damn good. I waited till 6.0 to buy it, and have been in love ever since. The user interface is soooo much better, and yes, it really does sound great. There's a misconception out there that all DAW software sounds the same, that it's all 1s and 0s. That's only true for recording and playing back 1 track, no eq or effects, no summing.
To try to answer your question, my best advice would be to get over the learning curve and keep it in Samplitude, which is a total end to end solution. I played the two program game with Samp and Wavelab for a while, and Wavelab fell into obsolescence pretty quickly. A few editing sessions with Samplitude will get you in the flow, and there's practically nothing it doesn't have several ways to do. It's the immense capabilities of the program that makes it a little steep, but well worth the climb.
Now if you're doing a lot of MIDI work, then it may make sense to work in two programs. Samp is the bomb for audio, but it started out as a superior audio app, with very little MIDI, and the MIDI still hasn't caught up.
Regards,
RD