Hello.
Do you know any free software for joining and trimming audio files (mp3 for instance? Can you recommend me any?
I don't need anything fancy, just user-friendly.
Thanks.
You'll want to get something that can work with MP3 data directly, as decompressing and re-compressing the file can diminish quality. (It's probably imperceptible, mind you, but it happens just the same.)
MP3DirectCut is what I usually go for, since I can remember its name.
I think Audacity is what you're looking for. I personally use Cool Edit Pro which is a thousand times better, but is not free. If you're re-encoding to MP3 then get the program Jorpho mentioned.
I will give Audacity a try... Thanks.
As Jorpho says be very careful when working with mp3s. If you want to do lots of operations on lossy
audio data be sure to convert it to cd-audio uncompressed or higher quality and re-encode as
mp3/ogg/whatever as the very very final step (keep the last uncompressed data in case
you want to re-edit something).
I'm another Audacity user. ;)
But yeah, as has been said already, if you're working with data from a lossy format such as MP3s, you'll want to ensure you're saving and loading from a lossless format (such as Audacity's native format) before you save your fully edited file back to MP3.
The only catch is that the encoding process for MP3s is still covered under a software patent, so it's hard to find free software that will encode back to it. The Audacity help pages suggest downloading LAME and linking Audacity to use its lame_enc.dll file.
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wrote:The only catch is that the encoding process for MP3s is still covered under a software patent, so it's hard to find free software that will encode back to it.
Not really. LAME is all one really needs, and LAME is not even remotely difficult to find.
I agree with Jorpho on this one, and I also prefer LAME encoded MP3s to the other options if I must go with MP3 encoding. I personally prefer FLAC, which is lossless but comes with the file sizes one would expect for that.
I think using MP3 is a bit pointless nowadays, hard drive space is very cheap and current internet bandwidths easily allow streaming uncompressed CDs (except near the edge of the world, where I live). I don't see why many people still don't use FLAC or uncompressed PCM.
I like Goldwave and older versions of Audition, say 2.0. Goldwave isn't exactly user friendly , and neither are free.
I have seen the Lame link. I have even used it sometime.
Yes, it's a good idea to work losslessly first.
