Will editing an MP3 harm the quality?

Question

I recently recorded something in MP3 — I should have done FLAC, but it’s way too late — and I wanted to edit those soundtracks from 5 minutes to about 2 minutes each. I edit in Audacity. Will loading it, removing about half the track, and exporting again to MP3 harm the quality?

Related: http://superuser.com/questions/409238/how-do-i-split-an-mp3-file-without-re-encoding-it — rob, Mar 10 '15 at 05:32
always keep your recordings in uncompressed or lossless formats: e.g. wav, flac, etc. and encode for publishing. — Uğur Gümüşhan, Apr 01 '15 at 07:05

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:16

16

Yes. MP3 is lossy so if you re-encode the new file to MP3 with Audacity/LAME, you will lose quality. But if you output the cropped file using a lossless codec such as FLAC, the quality should be no worse than the imported MP3.

Some other tools allow you to crop MP3 tracks without re-encoding, such as mp3splt and mp3DirectCut. See How do I split an MP3 file without re-encoding it?

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:16

Community

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answered Mar 10 '15 at 05:23

rob

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Is there a Linux alternative? – Nick Bailuc Mar 10 '15 at 05:28
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Alternative to what? mp3splt and mp3DirectCut from the linked question are both available for multiple platforms, including Linux and Windows--as is Audacity. – rob Mar 10 '15 at 05:31
Looking at the picture I thought it was a windows program but now I see its an old LXDE theme or something from knoppix. Thanks – Nick Bailuc Mar 10 '15 at 05:52
@NickBailuc glad to help! – rob Mar 10 '15 at 06:00

Will editing an MP3 harm the quality?

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