Sound editor needed
March 1, 2013 5:43 PM Subscribe
I need a program that allows me to load WAV or MP3 files, extract out small pieces, and write them back as WAV or MP3 files.
Back in the stone age, when I relied on sound cards from Creative Labs, they always included such a program. (Except it didn't do MP3 because the format hadn't been invented yet.) You could load in a sound file and it displayed it as an oscilloscope display. You could zoom in on parts of it, and set marks, and play between marks, and when you found a piece you liked you could write it out as a discrete file. It also allowed you to increase or decrease the volume of the sound you were writing out.
I need something like that now (to create ringtones and alarm sounds for my phone), but I no longer own anything from Creative Labs. Anything like that out there? It doesn't need to be fancy, and it would be really nice if it was free.
Win7-64, by the way.
Back in the stone age, when I relied on sound cards from Creative Labs, they always included such a program. (Except it didn't do MP3 because the format hadn't been invented yet.) You could load in a sound file and it displayed it as an oscilloscope display. You could zoom in on parts of it, and set marks, and play between marks, and when you found a piece you liked you could write it out as a discrete file. It also allowed you to increase or decrease the volume of the sound you were writing out.
I need something like that now (to create ringtones and alarm sounds for my phone), but I no longer own anything from Creative Labs. Anything like that out there? It doesn't need to be fancy, and it would be really nice if it was free.
Win7-64, by the way.
Best answer: Audacity. Free and open source. Grab the LAME mp3 encoder too.
On preview: I've been beat!
posted by dobi at 5:46 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]
On preview: I've been beat!
posted by dobi at 5:46 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Thirding Audacity. It's free and pretty simple to use. I've used it in the past for things like podcasts but also just short clips.
(You guys are too darn quick...)
posted by juliebug at 5:46 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]
(You guys are too darn quick...)
posted by juliebug at 5:46 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]
iTunes does this but that's only good if you want to use it for an iDevice.
Audacity is too complex a tool for this, try mpTrim or WavTrim.
posted by wei at 6:07 PM on March 1, 2013
Audacity is too complex a tool for this, try mpTrim or WavTrim.
posted by wei at 6:07 PM on March 1, 2013
Win7-64 here too...just used Audacity the other night on some really nice music I bought on vacation that had occasional really annoying cutesy kid voices thrown in...I divided it up into 7 distinct pieces which I put into separate tracks overlapping 1 second, and then used 6 sets of cross-fade ins/outs. It really sounds decent, though not professional. Good enough for listening to as background while I work. If I can do that I imagine ring tones would be easy. Feel free to MeFi Mail me though if you have questions, or Google for tutorials.
posted by forthright at 7:41 PM on March 1, 2013
posted by forthright at 7:41 PM on March 1, 2013
On my Android phone, I use Ringtone Slicer Beta that will do similar. Really easy to use
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:04 PM on March 1, 2013
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:04 PM on March 1, 2013
« Older Who asks who out after a raincheck? | Formatting question: including an infographic with... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by griphus at 5:44 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]