Man seeks mp3 splitter

[lazyhour]

Yes, yes, hello.  Could anyone point me in the direction of a good, free bit of software to split a long mp3 into 2 or more shorter ones?  A titchy, simple app would be perfect as I'm on dial-up.

I'm asking because I've had fucking huge problems with Spyware recently and consequently do not trust the major download sites anymore.  For some reason, though, I have decided that I do trust the opinions of some bunch of weirdos I've never met before who just happen to post on this particular forum.

I'm sadly lumbered with a PC running WinXP, by the way.  Oh how I dream of being back with my girlfriend's Mac...

[mr rou-rou]

there was another whore who had the same location as you,

anyhoo,

WAV's are your friend, if you can convert your mp3 into a WAV and open in soundforge, or with the right plugin you can drag an mp3 straight into soundforge and you get a visual display of it, see pic



now you can play it and more importantly chop it up and save the sections, plus there's a couple of useful functions the amateur music tinkerer shouldn't be without; fades, cross fades and normalise.

then you can save it as an mp3, or leave it as a WAV, whack it on CD or compress it using some other mp3 program.

[weekender]

I think Sound Forge may be a tad large for the chap to download.

When I was on dial-up, I used to go here:

www.download.com

for nifty free apps, maybe there's one there that suits your needs?

[mr rou-rou]

there's a stack here, but I couldn't vouch for any of them

http://www.dailymp3.com/splitter.html

[Jon]

http://mp3splitter.sourceforge.net/

When in doubt, look on sourceforge.  Since all it's hosted projects are made available for free, with full sourcecode provided, it's very unlikely that you'll get spyware or shareware-style nagging or limitations.  The thing I linked to is a basic app for splitting mp3s into several parts.  I downloaded the Windows version and had a quick look and it looks okay, but I didn't test it on an actual mp3s.

[lazyhour]

Thanks all for your advice!  I'm going to try sourceforge first... [Edit: It was absolutely useless so I'll try another recommendation]

Oh, and mr rou-rou, the whore with the same location as me is... me.  I changed my name in the great Site-Down of 2004.  Used to be Bearbrick, you see.

[lazyhour]

Grrr.  Even the most simple and crap ones are "Hey, give me $20 to make it work at all!"  Poo.  Any other recommendations?  Or places where I can get registration codes to teach these rip-off self-important bedroom-coders a lesson?  

Obviously I'd only use them to unlock software that can't justify the extortionate registration fee.  Like "My software can rename your file - give me $50!"  I'm not evil, I promise.

[Rats]

goldwave'll do you, it's so good it's worth paying for, nearly.

http://www.goldwave.com/gwave426.exe (845kb)

[lazyhour]

Cor, thanks Mr BowlerHats!  Much obliged.  I've jotted down the offending information, so delete away.

[gazzyk1ns]

Bah, wish I'd have seen this sooner.

http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch/#mp3dc

MP3DirectCut is freeware and will do the job. I assume things like Goldwave and Soundforge transcode (i.e. decode to wav to do the editing whether it's behind your back or not) so you'll lose a whole generation of quality, so doing it directly like this is preferable.

[Rats]

Ooh, yes, that is better for what you want to do. I wondered if there was a program like that. Goldwave's still a handy thing to have though.

[lazyhour]

Bah, wish I'd have seen this sooner.

http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch/#mp3dc

MP3DirectCut is freeware and will do the job. I assume things like Goldwave and Soundforge transcode (i.e. decode to wav to do the editing whether it's behind your back or not) so you'll lose a whole generation of quality, so doing it directly like this is preferable.

Fabbo!  Thanks gazzyk1ns, I'll give it a try right away.  Goldwave looks useful for some things (thanks Rats), but this seems to be exactly what I'm after at this point in time.

I've had a fucking shit day, me.