Guide
How to cut an MP3 without losing quality
Open the MP3 in Anyfile’s audio editor, select what to keep or remove on the waveform, and press Download. As long as you only cut, trim and delete, it’s saved as an MP3 by copying the original frames, so nothing is re-encoded and nothing is lost.
Step by step
Open the MP3
Go to the audio editor, or the MP3 page, drop the file and choose Edit file. The waveform appears with a ruler, an overview strip and the playhead.
Select a stretch
Drag across the waveform to select, or hold Shift and use the arrow keys. Play and Loop let you hear the selection before you change anything; zoom in to land on a pause.
Trim, delete or cut
Trim keeps only the selection and drops the rest, so a long intro and outro go in one move. Delete removes the selection and closes the gap. Cut does the same but keeps it to paste elsewhere. Undo steps back through every change.
Download as MP3
Press Download. With only cuts made, the Format stays MP3, marked Original, and the file keeps its name; open the arrow next to Download to see it.
An MP3 is a chain of short frames, each about 26 milliseconds long, and Anyfile cuts between them, copying the frames you keep rather than decoding and compressing them again. A cut can land up to a frame from where you clicked, which you won’t hear in speech or music.
Fade in, Fade out, Volume, Normalize, Silence and the other effects change the sound itself, and browsers can’t write MP3. After any of them, MP3 is no longer offered: the editor saves M4A by default, with WAV, FLAC, AIFF and Opus as the other choices, and the download says why.
Nothing is uploaded: your browser reads the file and makes the new one on your device. See how it works, and how to check.
Other ways to do it
Audacity. Free for Windows, Mac and Linux, and far more powerful, with multi-track editing and noise removal. It decodes the MP3 to edit it and encodes it again on export, so the result is compressed a second time.
mp3DirectCut. A small free Windows app that also cuts MP3 frames without re-encoding, with tools for splitting a long recording at its pauses.
On a Mac or iPhone. QuickTime Player trims audio with Edit › Trim, but saves the result as M4A. Voice Memos on iPhone trims its own recordings, not other files.
When Anyfile is quicker
For trimming a recording, a voice note or the silence around a song, the browser is quickest and keeps the quality. For mixing, noise removal or anything with several tracks, use Audacity. If you also want fades, accept an M4A, or fade in a desktop app and export MP3 there.
Questions
Will the cut MP3 sound worse?
No. When you only cut, trim and delete, the frames you keep are copied exactly, so they sound as they did.
Why can’t I save as MP3 after a fade?
A fade changes the sound, so it has to be compressed again, and browsers can’t write MP3. Save as M4A, which plays almost everywhere MP3 does.
Do other formats cut without loss?
WAV, AIFF and FLAC keep every sample exactly whatever you do. Other formats, such as M4A, are encoded again when they change.
Is my file uploaded?
No. It’s edited in your browser, on your device, and never sent to a server.