Portable SplitWave

Audio files may be found in an abundance of different formats, but only some are widely used. For instance, basic recording comes out as WAV, which might need some processing before integration in other projects. If splitting is what you need, the applications like Portable SplitWave are sure to come in handy.

As the name successfully explains, this is the edition of SplitWave you can directly save and use from an USB flash drive, requiring no installation. As a consequence, your computer’s health status remains intact, because registries are not tampered with.

All the application’s features are stored in a pretty compact main window. Beginners and experienced individuals alike can easily get acquainted with the set of features because of this simplicity. Most effort on your behalf narrows down to selecting the file to be processed, choosing a destination folder, and pressing a button to start.

However, the application uses silence detection as the main method of analyzing inserted file, so if you just want to chop an audio file into multiple chunks, chances are it doesn’t work unless there’s any bit of silence. Before the process can start, you need to specify the length of silence for which to divide the track, as well as the maximum number of parts, but the main ingredient is silence.

The application is only capable of processing WAV files, both for input and output. Loading a file needs to be done through the built-in browse dialog, because drag and drop is not supported. Before initiating the process, a name can be given to each part, while leaving the dedicated field blank automatically adds track numbers as name.

Targeting the right file makes the process run smooth, with little time spent in the split operation. You need to know where the destination is, because the final prompt only informs you whether the process is successful, as well as the number of files produced.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that Portable SplitWave is a straightforward utility with which you can have large WAV files split in multiple chunks with little effort and time. However, it feel a little rough around the edges overall, with no real sense of control over the output files, especially because of the silence detection method used.