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How to: Split MP3 files

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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When you download an album, it usually comes as a bundle of short audio files, one for each track. But sometimes you may get a single, long MP3 file with all the tracks included in it. In those cases, and unless you want to listen to the whole album from beginning to end every time you play it, the only solution is splitting it up into smaller parts.

I had this problem with a couple of music albums and I spent some time looking for the right app to deal with it. The problem was that one of the albums was recorded in the studio, while the other was recorded live; this means I needed a program that could split MP3 files not only based on silence between tracks, but also on some other kind of technology that enabled me to split a concert – where there’s never a moment of silence. Luckily I think I found just the perfect app: mp3splt.

How to: split MP3 files

mp3splt is an open-source tool that analyzes the selected MP3 or OGG file and lets you choose between different ways to cut it into smaller bits: set the ‘splitpoints’ manually, use a cue file, detect silent breaks between tracks or query online CD databases for information about the album, so that the program knows where to cut.

How to: split MP3 files

mp3splt includes a built-in player with which you can play the selected file at any time. It comes in very handy if you decide to set splitpoints by yourself, as you can do it while comfortably listening to the album. It’s also a great way to check results before actually splitting the file. The online database option is awesome for files without any breaks between tracks, like the concert I mentioned before. With mp3splt, it hardly took me 30 seconds to find the right splitpoints, divide the single MP3 into the 25 tracks originally included in the album and save them to my hard drive not only with customizable file names, but also with perfect ID tags. A real time saver for music lovers!

How to: split MP3 files

The original mp3splt is a command-line app that only takes 1.42 MB of disk space. But if you feel more comfortable using the traditional windowed interface, simply select the GTK2-based version with graphical user interface used in this tutorial, which weighs a bit more (9.42 MB) and as you can see, works great.

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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