Cannot delete parts of MP3 [SOLVED]

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Attempted simple deletions of part of an MP3 file (podcast). Selected a segment, but found no ‘cut’ or ‘delete’ on the Edit menu. Labelled the section in question but then on Edit>Labelled Regions, the ‘Cut’ and ‘Delete’ options are greyed out, inactive. Sorry if I’m missing something really stupid.

Audacity 2.0.2
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core™ i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7
Processor Count: 4
RAM: 3979 Mb
Graphics Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family, 1797 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 459437 MB, Free - 224753 MB; Q: Total - 15999 MB, Free - 4113 MB; S: Total - 1499 MB, Free - 1162 MB;
Motherboard: LENOVO, 41772VB
Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials, Updated and Enabled

2

(Facepalm)…please scratch this and mark it solved. I was in ‘pause’ mode and not ‘stop.’ 'If all else fails read the instructions. Sorry for wasting your time.

3

I’ve never tried it with labeled regions, but you can just select/highlight part of the audio and then Edit → Delete, or just hit the delete key on your keyboard.

FYI - As you may know, MP3 is lossy compression. When you open an MP3 in Audacity (or any “normal” audio editor) it gets decompressed. If you re-save (re-export) to MP3 you are going through a 2nd lossy compression step. There are specialized MP3 editing programs such as [u]MP3DirectCut[/u] that can do some limited editing without decompressing.

4

Yes. Everything gray is a common red flag (so to speak).
Koz

5

Thanks for all the system information. 2.0.2 is old now. Consider updating Audacity to the latest 2.1.1 from http://audacityteam.org/download/windows.


Gale