I have a few sound files (mostly .mp3, a few more exotic ones) that have sections that I’d like to excise. Is there software available that would allow me to select only a section from, say 1:00 to 2:00 on a five-minute file?
Yes.
Care to expand a little?
I use Audacity. It’s a free audio editing program.
I don’t really do the stuff myself but I have heard that the free and open source program Audacity is what you want for this and other sound manipulation needs.
Be aware that there is no software that will let you edit an mp3 in its native format. You have to convert it to .wav first, and save it as .wav when you’re done. Otherwise, you will be encoding it to mp3 a second time, reducing its already depleted resolution in half.
I second the recommendation for audacity. it’s free and very intuitive.
Not true.
http://www.deepniner.net/mp3trimmer/
Editing in the way the OP asks about is not what this software is for. I have it, and it’s good for what it says it does - trimming off the silences at the start and end, fading, truncating, joining, gain changing, etc. But it is not a waveform editor, and it does not edit on sector boundaries like an audio editor. With regard to the seamless removal of a part or parts of an mp3 file in the middle, my statement is true.
The OP wants to extract a section of an MP3 file. It is false to say that this is impossible natively in MP3 format - there are quite a number of utilities that allow MP3s to be manipulated in that way (and more) without recompressing.
What is with you anyway? I am not playing a semantics game with you. Feel free to discount my 35 years in the audio industry, and name an audio editor that will let you do what I described with compressed audio of any kind.
First off, what you described isn’t exactly what the OP asked for - there was no mention of waveform editing, for example, but anyway…
Direct WAV MP3 Splitter claims:
What is missing from this list of features that is specifically requested by the OP?
What the OP asked for was a way to edit (remove) sections of mp3s of songs to make them shorter. This requires an extremely high degree of precision in the software and much practice. I downloaded the trial version of the above software. While you can set edit points and split mp3s into sections just fine, rejoining them seamelssly, on zero crossings, on sector boundaries, is all but impossible. It leaves a glitch or gap, or worse, a crossfade, at every edit point. It’s great if you have an audio book and want to split it up into chapters, but for the fine editing of music, it’s not even a consideration.
Music editing should be performed on a .wav or any other lossless file, and then saved as an .mp3 when it’s done. I edit sound every day of the week, and I am on top of programs used to edit sound. It’s my job. For precision editing of mp3s, there is nothing that will do what the OP requests. Yet.
Apologies if I have caused offence.
Is it actually technically impossible then, to cut/rejoin Mp3s seamlessly without re-encoding? I wonder if it would be possible to just re-encode the frames adjacent to the cut.