Trim an audio file
Cut a clip out of a recording by choosing where it starts and ends.
Drop a file to start
Runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Recordings start before the talking does. A voice memo has thirty seconds of a bag being opened, an interview has a minute of setting up, and a song has a false start. Trimming is the fix, and it is the most common thing anyone wants to do to an audio file that is otherwise fine.
The format is kept, which has a consequence worth knowing: when nothing else about the file changes, the encoded samples are copied across rather than decoded and re-encoded. A trimmed MP3 is bit-for-bit the part of the MP3 you kept, so trimming here costs nothing in quality — which is not true of most tools that offer it.
The result plays in the page before you download it, because the only way to check an audio edit is to listen to it. Drop several files in and the same start and end apply to all of them, which is how a batch of recordings from the same session gets the same dead air removed.
Step by step
- 1Drop in the audio.
- 2Set where the clip starts and where it ends.
- 3Press Trim, listen to it, then download.
Questions
Does trimming reduce the quality?
No. Nothing is re-encoded when only the length changes — the samples you keep are the samples that were there.
Can I cut a piece out of the middle?
Not in one pass. Keep the part before it, keep the part after it, and join the two with the join tool.
Can I trim several files at once?
Yes, and the same start and end are used for all of them. That suits a batch from one session; files of different lengths are better done one at a time.