can I edit an mp3 file & save w/o recompressing?

[prescott]

if this is in the wrong forum, spank me and point the way to the right one.

i was led to believe, and perhaps wrongly so, that I could edit an mp3 file and save it out without recompressing. the issue is that I'm using a low quality (poor mic) low resolution file (32000 Hz--which for lectures is doable) and need to edit it significantly. i have previously tried soundtrack pro 2, converting it to aif, editing, tried some processing to see if I could improve listenability, with some success... but when it is compressed back to mp3 at a reasonable resolution for download(these clips are 45mins plus in length), it introduces a lot of unwanted noise. even with all processing removed, leaving me with the original upconverted/edited file to recompress, I'm still unhappy with the results. so I figured I should find a program that would allow me to directly edit the mp3 file and then save out the changes. after googling, I thought Audacity would do this, but can't seem to get it to do that. can it? if so, how?

newbies!

thanks in advance... btw... much improved from what i remembered long ago... i'll be looking a little closer at this program for other tasks.

[steve]

i was led to believe, and perhaps wrongly so, that I could edit an mp3 file and save it out without recompressing.

You can edit the file then Export the result as a WAV file, but they will be huge.

Audacity always works on uncompressed audio data, so if you require an MP3 as the output, then Audacity must re-compress it.

What sort of editing do you need to do? If it is simple splitting/trimming then there is MP3cut for Windows (or Linux with WINE). Perhaps there is something similar available for Mac?

[kozikowski]

There are tools that will do really simple cutting and pasting with MP3 files without changing the compression, but they're pretty rare and very restricted in what they do. I think somebody found one once that would let you change the loudness of the show, too, but you had to do it to the whole show and there were other restrictions.

Someone once compared this to changing the chocolate inside the cake after you baked it.

I don't know of any available for Mac OS-X.

Koz

[prescott]

unfortunately, the quality is already so poor that i am willing to sacrifice the processing that is really needed if it means keeping less noise in the end product. i have 67 hours of files to edit, so if there is a way to do it, i should find out before i start the 2nd hour.

[kozikowski]

What's going to kill you is the recompression. If you opened them up in Audacity and Exported As uncompressed WAV, they would be huge, but sound like the originals (subject to whatever editing and cleaning you did).

Recompressing them will destroy them.

Koz