looking for free mp3 trimming/editing software?

[chaseardoin7]

so, i have an entire song on my HD in mp3 format. and there is a part of the song that i want to extract. does anyone know of any good free mp3 editing software online that will run on a mac?

-chase

 

[zero2dash]

Audacity 🙂

 

[chaseardoin7]

thanks! worked great!

 

[zero2dash]

No prob; yeah Audacity is great. I've used it plenty of times under Windows, and thought they had an OSX build so I looked for ya. 😉

 

[rspeaker]

These threads seem to come up frequently, and I was just curious why Audacity is always recommended, and I rarely if ever see anyone recommend Garageband? I use Garageband to create ringtones, and it works just fine. I'm not being a jerk, I am just curious.

 

[mrgreen4242]

These threads seem to come up frequently, and I was just curious why Audacity is always recommended, and I rarely if ever see anyone recommend Garageband? I use Garageband to create ringtones, and it works just fine. I'm not being a jerk, I am just curious.

Well, for me, the reason is that GarageBand is quite large, so it takes longer to load and eats up more system resources (memory and disk space to have it around). For simple tasks like trimming an MP3 Audacity is more than adequate, probably simpler to use, and also faster to get in and out of. I don't even have GarageBand installed on my computer since I don't have any need fo rit and it takes up quite a large amount of disk space when you have all the samples, loops, etc.

 

[rspeaker]

That was kind of my guess; when I had my G4 mini, I didn't have it installed for trhat very reason. With my CD iMac though, it's so much faster. But if Audacity is lighter-weight, heck, it might be worth looking into.

 

[grapes911]

Why doesn't anyone just use iTunes?

 

[Xavier]

cant you just use garageband?

 

[mrgreen4242]

That was kind of my guess; when I had my G4 mini, I didn't have it installed for trhat very reason. With my CD iMac though, it's so much faster. But if Audacity is lighter-weight, heck, it might be worth looking into.

It's definitely much lighter weight than GB, and it's a nice app for what it does.

Why doesn't anyone just use iTunes?

Kind of a pain for iTunes... you have to change the start/stop time of the track and then convert it to another format which introduces some quality loss, then change the start/stop times back to the original setting on the original file. At least that's the only way I can think to do it.

cant you just use garageband?

See above. 🙂

 

[grapes911]

Kind of a pain for iTunes... you have to change the start/stop time of the track and then convert it to another format which introduces some quality loss, then change the start/stop times back to the original setting on the original file. At least that's the only way I can think to do it.

You should be able to import it as the same format. I use it to make ring tones and it only takes a minute or two.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I use Fission for this purpose. It's not free, but it does avoid the quality loss you would otherwise incur by decompressing the MP3 then converting the decompressed file back into an MP3. 😀