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If you are a fan of electronic music or live sets, you have more than likely encountered what i like to call the amorphous blob mp3. Often time these large, monster-like mp3s, will come with a .cue file. Originally intended for burning to cd-r, these .cue files detail the individual track information contained within the larger track. Rather than burning to cd, these cue files have a much more appreciable purpose: chopping the mp3 into the individual tracks as god surely intended.

Enter mp3DirectCut, a lovely little utility for just this purpose. Interestingly, finding the right tool for this job is not as easy as I originally thought. It took quite some time to find an app that did this, and did it well. Free of malware, adware, or bloat, mp3DirectCut is a dear favorite app.

From mpesch3 audio tools’s mp3DirectCut page:

All you need to cut your mp3
mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor and recorder for compressed mp3. You can directly cut, copy, paste or change the volume with no need to decompress your files for audio editing. This saves encoding time and preserves the original quality, because nothing will be re-encoded. The built in recorder creates mp3 on the fly from your audio input. Using Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.

Features:

• Non-destructive cut, copy, paste
• Volume change, fade, normalize, pause detection
• mp3 recording with ACM or Lame encoder
• Fast mp3 visualisation and easy navigation
• Supports Layer 2 (dvd/dvb audio)
• ID3v1.1 tag editor · ID3v2 tag keeping
• Cue Sheet support
• Auto cue (track dividing by time values)
• Track splitting with filename and tag creation
• Trim · Crop · Fast play · Loop play
• VU meter, bitrate visualisation
• High speed recorder · Command line usage

It is important to note that while I only use this app for the cue file support, it has numerous other features that hopefully others may find useful.

Download: mp3DirectCut (Windows Only)