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Best Free Software to Cut or Merge Audio Files
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In a Hurry?
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 Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide: Audio Cutters / Splitters | Audio Joiners |
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Introduction
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So, you've got some big mp3 or other audio files which you want to trim, splice, split or otherwise cut down to size, maybe for your mp3 player. Perhaps you want to extract one or more songs from a large audio file, or a particular part of a radio program you recorded (cut-out the commercials!). You want to split a wav file you've transferred from vinyl into its original track. Or you want to use a particular portion of an mp3 file to create a personalized ring tone for your smart phone. You could use an all-round audio editing freeware program like Audacity, but that isn't the most convenient or efficient way. Your best bet is probably to use a smaller, more specific program for the job: a lightweight freeware splitter or joiner. Perhaps something you can run even on an oldish laptop. And you'll be better off choosing a lossless splitter which — unlike Audacity, for example — will cut (or merge) your files without any loss of sound quality due to decompressing and recoding. This review will focus on simple audio cutter/joiner freeware for use with mp3 and ogg files, and also for wav and other formats. |
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Discussion
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Audio Cutters / Splitters
Like other top audio file splitters, mp3DirectCut incorporates an audio player with a volume unit (VU) meter which lets you see as well as hear the points where you want to cut. Mp3DirectCut offers a good range of handy features, including pause detection, CUE sheet support, looping, volume gain, fading, trimming and ID tagging, etc. It's a pleasure to get to know this no frills program. There's an excellent manual (available here or here), as well as a useful tutorial on how to make a ring tone with mp3DirectCut. Splendid, straightforward portable freeware. NB: A particular strong point of mp3DirectCut used to be the clarity of its neatly arranged interface (as illustrated above). However, the most recent version has sacrificed the logical descriptive buttons for a graphically questionable slew of symbols (screenshot here). Therefore, we continue to recommend the older version, while providing download links to both versions. Take your pick.
On the downside, the user interface is less tidy than mp3DirectCut's (at least in its older versions), and the program's response times tend to be somewhat longer. For instance, you have to load the player's VU meter (by checking "Show amplitude wave"). Documentation too seems to be confined to the command line version of mp3splt. However, you can find a good overview of the program and its interface here. |
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Audio Joiners
The mp3 files packed by the program can be played on any mp3 player. It features drag-and-drop files for ease of use and includes a tagging function which lets you tag artist and album title information and album art to the joined files. On the downside, the only audio format it supports is mp3.
Joins mp3, wma and wav files. The mp3 files can be joined using a bitrate ranging from 32 to 320 kbps, wma files with a bitrate ranging from 48 to 160 kbps. The user interface shows a small advert panel linking to the developer's homepage but it is not intrusive. |
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Online applications:
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More freeware review suggestions:
- Merge MP3 - A strong contender for best free joiner based on its ability to merge mp3s very rapidly without the need to re-encode. Recommended by Gizmo reviewer mr6n8, here.
- mpTrim - This portable program will remove silent parts of mp3 files. Its sister program - wavTrim - will do the same for wav files.
- Ventones.com - Another web site to create ring tones online from your mp3 collection; or download free ringtones made by others (free registration required).
- Free Audio Dub - This standalone program promises to let you cut a variety of audio formats, including aac, ac3 and m4a (as well as mp3, wav, ogg, wma and mp2). So Free Audio Dub could come in useful for iTunes files. INSTALLATION NOTE: The installer asks you to install the Ask toolbar and set Ask as your home page and default search engine: to opt out, uncheck all three tick boxes when installing.
- Medieval Cue Splitter - Good for other audio file types if you want to split into original CD tracks a ripped audio file with an accompanying CUE file; supports mp3, flac, ape, ogg, wma, mpc, wv (lossless WavPack compressed) and ta (True Audio codec) files.
- Free MP3 WMA Cutter - Also includes several basic audio file editing functions and can be used as a ringtone maker for iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, etc.
- Free MP3 Joiner - Drag and drop (and can also convert several audio file types).
- Meda MP3 Joiner - Another contender.
Tested and not recommended:
- iWisoft Free Video Converter - This excellent freeware video converter successfully cuts mp4 video files, but it isn't primarily an audio file cutter. Since the developers used to claim the program could cut and merge a wide variety of audio file formats I decided to try to split a Monkey's Audio ape file; the results were not good (far easier to decompress to wav and then split with CD Wave Editor). Still... worth watching.
- Slice Audio File Splitter - Partial reliance on an ambiguously "freeware" audio editor (Wavepad Basic) is an annoyance... as is the stuff these two programs write to the registry.
- Sofonica MP3 Cutter (sofonica[dot]com/?q=node/17) - Supposed to cut ring tones, but on Vista proved impossibly buggy.
- Weeny Free Audio Cutter (weenysoft[dot]com/free-audio-cutter[dot]html) promises some interesting features but has yet to reach the testing stage due to some equivocal AV scans and adware issues.
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If you're transferring LP records or tapes to your computer, or otherwise making high quality audio recordings to store and play from a hard disk or music player, you'll probably want to work initially with a pristine .wav (pcm) file before converting to a compressed format. This process is valuable if you're going to store your audio files in a format which can't be split, such as high quality lossy .mpc (musepack).*
*A few words about how to cut or merge tricky audio file formats:
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Related Products and Links
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You might want to check out these articles too: |
Portable version available for Windows and Mac. To download the mp3splt-gtk for Windows, scroll down to the bottom of the page and go to the far right hand column.
MP3 Album Maker is written in C# and requires the DotNet Framework.
Supports audio formats: MP3, WMA and WAV.
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Editor
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This software category is in need of an editor. If you are interested in taking it over then check out this page for more details. You can then contact us from that page or by clicking here. |
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Tags
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mp3 cutter, mp3 joiner, mp3 splitter, ogg cutter, ogg joiner, ogg splitter, wav splitter, wav joiner, wma joiner, audio file cutter, joiner, splitter, freeware, free, mp3 editor, audio editor, how to cut split merge audio files |
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Comments
mp3DirectCut has now been updated to version 2.15
Thanks Rfrees for your feedback. Product version updated.
Note that mp3DirectCut has now been updated to version 2.14
Wavmerge link no longer works ? Is it still available for download anywhere ?
Mp3 Cutter from Eusing :
http://www.eusing.com/free_mp3_cutter/mp3_cutter.htm
Can also be used to cut wav, and wma files.
Update: Merge MP3 flagged for priority review (based on Steve's recommendation below)
I will point out that it is a simple app-doing only what it says, without any other major options.
I like it because it is like the old time freeware I used to find. Someone wanted to do something on the computer, could not find a program and developed their own and released it for free.
Funny that I found it here even though it was not listed under the prime listing. I can't remember how I picked it out of the bunch.
Steve
You're quite right Steve - thank you.
Btw, I see this BF category is up for grabs if you'd like it :)
maybe down the road if it is still open.
I am updating all my book pages right now and will be on the road for a month or so soon.
I thought this was yours
Steve
Have a good trip, Steve
It'll be there for you on your return if you'd like it :)
Bob
Do we know of a reliable mp3 merger/joiner that can do the business without the need to encode as per my earlier message here.
I use Merge MP3-just tested to make sure and it merged a 256 with a 192 almost instantaneously.
I have it set to use Raw Stream Mode-not sure if that makes a difference-it has been a while since I set it up. Preferences is under View.
http://www.shchuka.com/software/mergemp3/
Did you need to execute the itunes.exe?
No. I think that is to convert MP3 into M4B audiobook for listening to an audiobook in iTunes. I have combined audiobooks, but only to MP3-I only listen off of laptop.
My VBR frame is set to auto and thread priority normal-I am thinking all of the settings were default-but am not sure.
The only other thing I can think of is that I always "select all" under "Select" after the songs are loaded and organized and then under "File" choose "merge selected".
BTW the combined 256 and 192 shows as a "255kb/s tot. Joint stereo" in gspot-whatever that means. Anyways quality is always good.
Thanks very much for this Steve :)
Your recommendation goes to the top of the "to be reviewed" list. I'll have Merge MP3 go head to head with Shuangs.
let's see what e-merges :D
I went for the Shuangs Audio Joiner, and it works fine, however just one little thing I noticed, and that is if you are merging say 320 bitrate files to the same bitrate for example 320 to 320, the program still encodes the file data, and I would have thought that there should be an option to join as source bitrate without the need for encoding.
This of course would save time too.
A new audio cutter on here :
http://www.weenysoft.com/free-audio-cutter.html
My first impressions were that Weeny Free Aduio Cutter has some interesting features, including support for cutting and merging .wav, .wma and .ogg files.
EDIT: But Anupam warns
I finally managed to test this in a virtual environment. I uploaded the InstallManager to VirusTotal, and got 7/40 result. Here is the link.
http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=6c93ca3718edad2cecc75...
GData, Avast, SAS are marking this file as positive, so it makes me suspicious.
Also, I completed the installation, and towards the end of the setup, a window was displayed from which I could download Real Player. This was displayed by InstallManager.
Personally, I dislike such programs, which show such behavior. The sole purpose of downloading InstallManager is to display a screen from where you can download third party software. That's adware.
Thanks Bob for your thorough analysis :)
Dont forget AUDICITY, very good
Audacity is indeed a very good program. But, as mentioned in the Intro to this review, Audacity does not do lossless cutting, splitting or merging: you can do all those operations, but you lose some of the original data. This review focuses on the best free *lossless* cutters (and joiners/mergers, splitters)
I agree with Bob when he says about mp3DirectCut:
>> A particular strong point is the simplicity of its neatly arranged interface
But I was somewhat disappointed when recently I installed the last version of mp3DirectCut where all the text on the buttons was replaced by a bunch of - not always that clear - icons. In my opinion that was - maybe a step forward in the category "having a sexy look", but certainly - a step back in userfriendlyness.
Thanks for flagging this, Geert. I fully agree with you. Er, scarcely cutting edge, I'd say. And I don't even find the new buttons particularly sexy on her. Anyway, an older version (2.12) of mp3DirectCut with the more descriptive interface can still be downloaded from here
(I've updated the review.)
You can just switch buttons / text:
Settings \ Configure... \ Operation \ Button layout
Yes, that's true. But I'd suggest that the text buttons would be a better default layout; personally, I didn't feel the need for the textless layout, especially when the text is so neatly integrated with the buttons.
In the current version (2.13), you additionally always get an toolbar at the top of the window with some useful mouseover buttons. However, I was surprised to find the toolbar remained even after I selected the "slim"[?] layout option.
My own preference would be to have a dropdown "View" menu to make it easy for users to set their preferred appearance without having to restart the program each time. But I realize that sort of solution might be difficult to code within such a small and efficient package (with the main program consuming just 78 KB of disk space and few CPU resources).
I have used mp3directcut for several years. But when I switched to W7 it will not load, play, record or edit any audio. The only thing different is I have MagicJack in one USB port but I don't see how this could affect it. I played with computer settings but no luck. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Personally, I can't think of anything off hand other than a system issue. Try posting your query on Gizmo's Freeware Forum: http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/freeware-installation-and... Someone may be able to help.
Could someone please help me........I am wanting to take some songs in my files and only use part of them. I play music at my sons hockey games and sometimes only have 10-25 seconds to play a song so I want to play the best part of the song. I am not real good w/ the computer so I need something that is very user friendly. Someone suggested acidpro but I found this hard to get around. Is there a free program that is simple to use???? I don't need to do any other crazy stuff to the songs, just cut the pieces out that I want to use (10-40 secs worth).
Truly would appreciate some help.
Stacey
Hello Stacey.
Have you tried CutMP3.net? I think you'll find this online app really simple. However, since the site doesn't actually provide any instructions, I'll briefly talk you through the job. I'm assuming that the files you want to use are mp3 (and that you don't happen to know in advance the exact timings of the points where you want to cut).
To use CutMP3.net, go to the webpage (http://cutmp3.net/), click 'Open MP3' and select the file with the song you wish to cut. Wait for the file to load (this shouldn't take too long unless the file's too big for the app). Press 'Play' and listen till you get to the point where you wish to start your personal selection and then press 'Pause'. When you're satisfied that you've paused at just the right place, you can select the start of your soundbite by dragging the left-hand bottom cursor to exactly the point you paused at (reddish orange line). Now repeat the process, this time using the right-hand bottom cursor to select the end. In other words, continue playing the track, pause where you want your song to end, and then drag the right hand cursor to the chosen point. Your selection should now be highlighted in blue. Finally, press 'Cut', rename the new file (for example, "extract.mp3"), and save it wherever you want. You should now have the soundbite you need.
Hope this helps
Bob
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