How To Edit MP3 Files?

I mentioned that I have Les Crane’s Desiderata as my sms notification ringtone. I might as well add that I have Sarah Brightman’s I Lost My Heart to A Starship Trooper (SB-ILMHTAST) as my incoming call ringtone. Both songs are about 4.5 minutes long.

SB-ILMHTAST starts off slowly and softly with a radioed message to contact the starship. There is also another attempt towards the end of the song, but this time the music is louder with words of passion being mumbled followed by noise of passion (this is where I usually turn up the volume way up high and low in tandem with the “noise”). Then there is the sound of lasers of the troopers firing at each other. Followed by strong repeats of the chorus.

What this means is that if I have to choose just 30 seconds of this song as my ringtone, there are so many parts I can choose from. The beginning 30 seconds is great. It comes on softly. So when I am near my phone I can pick it up before it becomes too loud for others to hear. But when I am not near my phone, I can’t hear it and might miss my call. I also like the passionate words & noise (obviously!) part and the laser part. So I ended up cutting this song into four parts of 30 seconds each.

To do the above, you just need Audacity. Audacity is a free (open source), extremely easy to use, audio editor and recorder. It supports wav, aiff, ogg and mp3 files. You can also change the pitch, tempo and bit-rates and remove noise easily. You can also install plug-ins for more functionalities. Despite its functions working quickly and smoothly, it does not hog up computer resources.

However because of software patents, you need to install the free LAME encoder to export (save your edited version of) mp3 files with Audacity. Detailed instructions are on its website.

To edit an mp3 file is like and as easy as editing a word document – you just Cut, Copy, Paste or Delete, and Save.

In a word document, you open the file, click on the beginning of the text you want and highlight it to the end of the text you want, either Copy or Cut and then save the selected portion.

Likewise to edit an mp3 file, you open the file and you will see the song’s sound wave and the time-line. Click at the time-line corresponding to the point you to want to start and drag to the end-point. You can click on the Play button to listen to your selected portion and make any adjustments you want. When you are satisfied, just save the file using another file name; otherwise your original version will be overridden.

If you have the time and are adventurous, you can play around with the other functions which can produce some amusing results.

Besides the Windows version of Audacity, there is also one for Mac OS X and Linux.