Mp3 Knife 3.4

MP3 is probably the most popular audio format worldwide. There are certainly lots of applications to edit audio; some of them are rather sophisticated while others are extremely simple. MP3 Knife is one of those light programs whose function is to extract audio segments from larger files. I was hoping that despite the program’s name, it would support other formats apart from MP3, but it does not.

MP3 Knife’s interface is not very fancy, yet it is certainly very easy to use. However, the buttons have captions in English and no graphical clues whatsoever, which would certainly pose some difficulty to users who do not understand English. Only a few icons on the buttons could make them comprehensible to everyone.

You start by loading an audio file to edit. You can use the Play button to preview the file and locate the start and the end of the segment, which you can mark with the Select Start and Select End buttons. The chosen segment can be played with the Play Selected button. Once you have marked exactly the part you want, you can extract it to a new MP3 file. Some buttons will display error messages when the required previous operations have not been performed, as in the case of trying to save a segment before you have set the start and end points. This could be avoided by disabling these buttons until their function is available.

To sum it all up, MP3 Knife is very easy to use. However, it is too limited in terms of available editing actions. There are other intuitive applications that can normalize sound, convert to other formats, add various effects and process file batches; so, if you are looking for really powerful audio editing software, you'd better keep on searching.