14 DAY TRIAL // Sounds surround us. Some are annoying, some are pleasant, and we'd like to keep most of the latter. We are also very curious, inquisitive, always asking "what if?" and this is not restricted (especially) when it comes to music.
What if you could choose the exact excerpt you want to listen to from a specific song and edit as you like it, or eliminate the unwanted pauses or prolonged applauses?
You can find many audio players for listening, encoders and decoders for processing, but just how many of them are so easy to understand and use that you can keep them for years?
Well, nowadays you can just download any software from the dozens that are dedicated to audio editing and take it for a spin. But most of them come at a price and not all of them yield the best results. Then, why not try a free software and see if it gets the job done as good as one you have to pay for? This is exactly what we'll do right now.
mp3DirectCut is a frame-based editor for MPEG audio (Layers 2 and 3) with many useful features, easy to install and just as easy to use. It handles cue sheets, so that you can split a file at cue positions, also allowing you to directly record and encode an MP3 from your audio input device. The installing procedure of this software needs only two clicks and you can begin using it.
When it is used for the first time, mp3DirectCut brings up the configuration tab so that you may customize language, navigation in the edited file, mouse actions, encoder settings, output and input devices and even the colors of the work area and tools. This specific feature comes in handy when you need to clearly distinguish between the cues, cursor, level graph and so on. You can change all these settings whenever you want from within the main window of the program.
When you've finished configuring mp3DirectCut's settings, you can put it at work and here is where you'll see just how useful the program really is. A nice treat is that mp3DirectCut allows the use of both mouse and keyboard even independently, that is you won't need to use both at the same time if don't want to. This application is designed to handle large files and, as a consequence, there are many ways to reach a position. Use just the mouse, or just the keyboard. Neat, isn't it? And another plus is that if you hover the mouse over any button on the interface you will see what it does and what is the specific key assigned for accessing that function. Simple and easy to use even for those with less experience working with this kind of software.
After you load the desired file, mp3DirectCut shows you all the information you need: total time, length of selection (after you perform one), decibel level (while playing the audio file) etc. If you run the application maximized, all the info is very easy to read as the big timer is really BIG, but if you run it in window mode, you'd better give up the big timer because it doesn't reduce its dimensions and this may be somewhat annoying. Other than that, in a few clicks you can select the portion you want to be left out and simply cut it away. Or, the Crop function will allow you to do the opposite: select a section of the file and cut everything before and after it, so that it will be "the sole survivor".
mp3DirectCut has many options specific for this kind of software, but some of them are not to be found in all programs, especially the free ones. Tag ID3 and file info, Pause detection, Gain, Create fade and Normalize options will allow you to add specific information, raise or lower the level of the audio file so that there are no abrupt peaks or sections barely audible.
There is one feature of mp3DirectCut that really caught my attention - High Speed Recording. What it does is to let you grab the old 33-rpm LP records with 45-rpm. Get digital on those vinyl records of yours! However, you will witness some distortions even if you encode at 44.1 kHz, the minimal recommended setting for this job. If the resampling distortions are not a problem, then you have found a good friend in mp3DirectCut.
All in all, mp3DirectCut does very well the job it was meant to do and even has some extra features that prove to be quite useful, so it isn't a sole purpose application. There are other programs that offer roughly the same options and some are also free, the features found in mp3DirectCut give it that little extra advantage needed to aim at one of the top spots in its category.
The Good
Easy navigation, even in the case of really large audio files, large set of options that can easily be customized, plenty of keyboard shortcuts that make it usable even without the mouse.
The Bad
The visualization of the audio file could be improved. The main graph contains higher frequencies only and it can also be too high or too low over the whole MP3.
The Truth
mp3DirectCut is made for editing MP3 files fast and with no loss of audio quality and it does that very well. Easy to install, customizable and with some handy extra features, mp3DirectCut will meet most needs and requirements regarding the work with audio files, so you can at least try it. Did I mention it's free?
