mp3DirectCut

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mp3DirectCut
Editing audio in mp3DirectCut
Developed by	Martin Pesch
Latest release	2.08 / April 30, 2008
OS	Windows
Genre	Digital audio editor
License	Freeware
Website	http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html

mp3DirectCut is a lossless editor for MP3 (and to a degree, MP2) audio files, able to provide cuts and crops, copy and paste, gain and fades to audio files without having to decode or re-encode the audio. By modifying the global gain field of each frame of MPEG audio, the volume of that frame can be modified without altering the audio data itself. This allows for rapid, lossless MP3 audio editing that does not degrade the data from re-encoding.

mp3DirectCut provides audio normalization and pause (silence) detection, and can split long recordings into separate files based on cue points in the audio, such as those provided by pause detection. mp3DirectCut can also record audio directly to MP3 from the computer's sound card input.

All audio operations are performed using frame manipulation so, as such, mp3DirectCut is not a waveform editor. Audio clean-up such as click, hiss and noise removal is not possible.

1 Features
2 Limitations
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Features

Lossless MP3 cut, copy, paste, and volume change operations
Audio normalization and pause detection
MP3 recording with ACM or optional LAME encoder (not bundled)
Fast MP3 visualization
Supports Layer 2 (DVD/DVB audio)
ID3v1.1 tag editor
Cue sheet support with auto cue (track division by time values)
Track splitting with filename and ID3v1.1 tag creation
VU meter, bitrate visualization
Command line usage
Portable operation

[edit] Limitations

Time granularity is the MPEG frame length
Gains and fades are limited to 1.5 dB steps due to the granularity of the 8-bit global gain field
ID3v2 tags cannot be read, and if they are written out, they contain the incorrect song length if the length is modified
Increasing the audio volume can lead to distortion in playback, due to premultiplication against global gain pushing the audio past its clipping threshold. Compressed audio that keeps the overall volume down using the global gain field cannot be easily increased in volume due to the clipping that would result.