Easy way to split an audio track into multiple parts?

Question

I often need to edit an audio track by keeping only some parts of it, removing the rest, add some fade in/out, and save the whole edited track back into an audio file.

I just checked Audacity, but unless there's a better way, it's a bit cumbersome, as I need to label each section, before telling Audacity to remove the unlabeled sections.

My dream application would simply let me,

1. select a section
2. remember it without requiring me to give it a name
3. go on to the next section
4. split the audio track to remove the unselected parts.

Is there a Windows application that can do this?

Answer 1

If you are working mainly with MP3 files, i can recommend the freeware tool mp3DirectCut. The tool is able to split MP3 files lossless (without decompressing and compressing the original track).

Answer 2

Because it's 3 days after, I will advise you a software that may be over-sized and also very expensive (if you buy the licenses) for what you need to do but at least will do exactly what you need to do.

It's called Ableton Live, it is mainly used for music composition and creation but it's one of the most powerful tools in his domain. With this tool, you can easily add audio track and edit them like professionals.

There is also few competitors that I never used but that can do the job, one of them is called FL Studio.

Those softwares may be really complicated for a simple task like yours but they are made for it.

Answer 3

Check out some video editing programs, as most have such features and audio export already built in... I've been using camtasia studio 8 for a while (mainly for video editing, but i have used it a couple of times for this task), but it is paid. If you do not feel like paying money perhaps check oht OpenShot... Haven't tried it personally but it should work... Also windows live movie maker can kinda do that as well, believe it or not... Just add any image, and make the length something ridiculously long like 30 mins. Then import the audio track, cut it, reorganize it, do whatever, and when you are done just delete the excess image length and export as audio file... (Yes I actually tried it once and it worked, I had to since the only pc I had around me was a 20 year-old rotten potato...)