Chopping up sound files

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:02 pm

Anybody know how easy it is to cut a music file into two files? And what software I'd need to be able to do it?

I'm thinking of it with regards to the annoying habit certain acts have of sticking "hidden" tracks on the end of albums, by way of leaving twenty minutes of silence at the end of the last track, then tacking it on the end.

Would make my mp3ing a lot easier if I could just carve the file up into the relevant bits and stick the two tracks into seperate files. Would also save on space.

Anybody know what's the best way to do this?

Professor Smooth · Post by **Professor Smooth** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:05 pm

I just use Windows Movie Maker 2. It takes about 10 seconds. It's a free download at download.com.

Just import the music file, cut out what you don't want, then save it.

Post by **Denyer** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:27 pm

Save or cut? If it's MP3, you don't want to re-encode and lose sound quality.

http://www.mpesch3.de/

Dylan · Post by **Dylan** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:28 pm

Yeah, it's mucho easy. I like Cool Edit Pro 2.0, though it's not free.

Goldwave is intuitive too. One of these two programs is now called Audacity.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:34 pm

Denyer wrote:Save or cut? If it's MP3, you don't want to re-encode and lose sound quality.

http://www.mpesch3.de/

Save or cut? I want to seperate. Currently I have several files that go "song - silence - song" and I want to change them into two seperate song files.

All my tracks start as wavs and then get transferred to mp3s, so from a sound quality pov it's probably no more hassle to cut up the wavs and then convert after.

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:54 pm

Goldwave is the way forward- and it's free!

Tired Tracks · Post by **Tired Tracks** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 4:01 pm

You just have one massive wav file with 2 songs on it?

I learned this when I was playing with my mic, long before I had the net and downloaded programs:
Open the file in the windows Sound Recorder program, and play the file until the end of the first song and stop it where you think is good. In the edit menu go to 'Delete after current position', eraseing the gap and the 2nd song from this version, and save the wav as the name of the song in a seperate file or folder.

Reload the original wav and position it to just before the 2nd song and use 'delete before current position', and then save that as a unique file as well.

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 5:02 pm

Goldwave. Though in my experience it's only free if you download a crack for it as well. Not that I would advocate software piracy or owt.

Er...

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 3:27 pm

Metal Vendetta wrote:Goldwave. Though in my experience it's only free if you download a crack for it as well. Not that I would advocate software piracy or owt.

Er...

oooh, really? ooops...

it must have been whilst i was suffering from sleep-pirating...

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 3:34 pm

Actually there is a version that you can use for free, but after like 50 mouse-clicks it gives you pop-ups every 5 clicks to go and buy the full version. It really annoyed me so I downloaded a crack just to make them go away.