# How to take a sound clip from an audio file ?



## fatheroflies (Apr 18, 2007)

Hello there,

I need to take a sound clip from an audio file but have no idea how to go about doing this.

For instance, a 10 second sound clip from a song on a CD... or a 3 minute sound clip from a MP3 file that I have.

I need to do this for a project that I have been asked to participate in.

I am totally stumped. I do have bits of software on my PC, but do not know if any of them will do the job.... and even if they will..... how to get them to do it for me !!!

I would really appreciate it if someone could demystify this for me & to advise me with regards to what software !! and how to use it.

I look forward to hearing back from you

Regards Richard Milner.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Get Audacity, a freeware audio editor/recorder. You can load a file into Audacity and then cut the section you want to keep.

You also need to get an Mp3 plugin from that site to work with Mp3 files.


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## fatheroflies (Apr 18, 2007)

stantley said:


> Get Audacity, a freeware audio editor/recorder. You can load a file into Audacity and then cut the section you want to keep.
> 
> You also need to get an Mp3 plugin from that site to work with Mp3 files.


Hi there stantley, 

Thanks for messaging me,

I decided to save my audio file, (using the software you recommended) in MP3 because WAV seems to reduce the quality substantially.

The thing is I can't download the plug-in which is required, for some reason !

Please see the 3 screenshots which I have set as attachments !

Is there any other way of getting hold of this plug-in ?

I look forward to hearing back from you

Richard.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

This explains what to do http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3

Make sure you get the Windows version. Did you unzip the file?


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## fatheroflies (Apr 18, 2007)

stantley said:


> This explains what to do http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3
> 
> Make sure you get the Windows version. Did you unzip the file?


Hi there Stantley,

Thank you for getting back to me,

I have downloaded the plug it and it worked well.

Thanks for that.

I just have one small thing that I can't sort out.

You see, when I export my finished file back out of Audacity, afterwards when I playback the file there seems to be a significant loss in quality of the sound.

This does not matter so much if the audio is music, however these are spoken.

I have tried to up the quality so that after exporting it will sound okay but have not figured out what I should be doing and what to twiddle to make this happen, & in fact have caused myself more problems & have lost data because I did not know what I'm doing.

Please could you give me a few tips on how to save an OK quality audio file.

I mean about the same ish sound quality (maybe slightly less but not much) as the file I first imported into the program !

Thank you for all your help

Regards Richard Milner.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

OK, well back to your original question. 


fatheroflies said:


> For instance, a 10 second sound clip from a song on a CD... or a 3 minute sound clip from a MP3 file that I have.


If you're going to make a clip from a CD, then what you would do is rip the whole song as a .wav file, edit it in Audacity and export the Mp3 file. That would give you the best sound quality.

But if you're starting with an Mp3 file, what Audactiy does is uncompress it to a .wav file and then after you edit and export it gets compressed back to Mp3. This uncompressing and recompressing is where the quailty is lost. The best way to do it is like I described before, start with a .wav file.

But if all you have is the Mp3 file, then a better tool to use is mp3DirectCut. It's a freeware editor that works directly with the Mp3 file and avoids the recompression problem.

Also if you use a higher bitrate for the Mp3 file, between 192 Kbps and 320 Kbps, you'll have a better quality sound.


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