Help me break up a large mp3 file into individual tracks
February 25, 2004 6:36 AM Subscribe
I have a couple of full albums ripped as one single mp3 file. Is there any program that will break it up into one file for each song? I'm on XP.
You can use Audacity if you would like to go open source. It works pretty well for that sort of thing.
I use SoundForge daily in my studio and like it quite a bit. It is a couple of hundred dollars I think, we got education pricing on our copy so I am unsure of the exact price. Other probably cheaper solutions include GoldWave and CoolEditPro, but I would would just use Audacity as opposed to either of those.
All that being said, these probably do a lot more than you actually need, and SSF's MP3Trim (which I haven't used) will probably handle it for you without all of the distracting bells and whistles of the packages I mentioned. All of these are also available in less IP concerned parts of the internet, so I'm told.
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 7:31 AM on February 25, 2004
I use SoundForge daily in my studio and like it quite a bit. It is a couple of hundred dollars I think, we got education pricing on our copy so I am unsure of the exact price. Other probably cheaper solutions include GoldWave and CoolEditPro, but I would would just use Audacity as opposed to either of those.
All that being said, these probably do a lot more than you actually need, and SSF's MP3Trim (which I haven't used) will probably handle it for you without all of the distracting bells and whistles of the packages I mentioned. All of these are also available in less IP concerned parts of the internet, so I'm told.
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 7:31 AM on February 25, 2004
MP3 DirectCut, if you want to do it manually. Available at Downloads.com, at least when I got it.
posted by Goofyy at 10:38 AM on February 25, 2004
posted by Goofyy at 10:38 AM on February 25, 2004
Response by poster: Hmm, it seems like mp3trim and direct cut just remove silence, etc. What I'm looking for is something that automatically splits up full-album mp3s into their constituent songs. Audacity looks like fun, though, I'l give it a spin.
posted by signal at 12:11 PM on February 25, 2004
posted by signal at 12:11 PM on February 25, 2004
I'd also recommend Audacity or SoundForge. There are a lot of mp3 splitters out there, but I've found that most of them are slower and less exact than SoundForge.
As far as I can tell, there are no truly automatic mp3 splitters. All the software I've seen requires you to make manual breakpoints, either by listening to the album or by viewing the waveform.
posted by vorfeed at 1:41 PM on February 25, 2004
As far as I can tell, there are no truly automatic mp3 splitters. All the software I've seen requires you to make manual breakpoints, either by listening to the album or by viewing the waveform.
posted by vorfeed at 1:41 PM on February 25, 2004
MP3 Direct Cut works fine for me at selecting and saving any portion of an MP3 file.
Of course since this works at an MPEG stream level you can't get sample-accurate cuts, but for the usual amount of silence between tracks this isn't a problem.
SoundForge and Audacity are fine programs, but you don't want to be using them to cut an MP3 file: you'd be sending the data through an unnecessary decode-encode step, which will in almost every case result in a loss of audio quality.
(Personally I rather like the Forge, but for multi-tracking sketches and such Goldwave's cheapo Multiquence is the best I've found. Cool Edit Pro's interface I find just horrible.)
posted by BobInce at 1:48 PM on February 25, 2004
Of course since this works at an MPEG stream level you can't get sample-accurate cuts, but for the usual amount of silence between tracks this isn't a problem.
SoundForge and Audacity are fine programs, but you don't want to be using them to cut an MP3 file: you'd be sending the data through an unnecessary decode-encode step, which will in almost every case result in a loss of audio quality.
(Personally I rather like the Forge, but for multi-tracking sketches and such Goldwave's cheapo Multiquence is the best I've found. Cool Edit Pro's interface I find just horrible.)
posted by BobInce at 1:48 PM on February 25, 2004
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:55 AM on February 25, 2004