Topic: split mp3 file without re-encoding

[bobsmith19]

Hi, hopefully someone here has done this before.  Here's the setup to the question. 

A guy I know did a soundboard recording with a Microtrack II.  But, he saved the file in mp3 format, not wav.  So now I've got one big mp3 file of the show. 

I'd like to split the file into tracks, but I don't want to re-encode an already lossy compressed file. 

My initial thought was to convert the mp3 to wav, split the file up into tracks (keeping them as wav), and then using flac to compress the wav files.  But now I've got flac encoded mp3 files which defeats the point.  I suppose it preserves the quality since I'm not converting the files back into mp3 again, but I just don't like this. 

So, is there some software that natively works with mp3, and can edit the files without some kind of re-encoding?  I won't be doing any tweaking, just a simple track split. 

I did some quick searching on the forum but either no one here works with source mp3 files (I know!  I can't believe he used mp3 either), or it's just really obvious what program does this and it's so simple I'm missing it. 

Thanks for the help, bob.

[pontiacb]

mp3directcut is simple to use and will split mp3s (and mp2s) without re-encoding.  A lot of people use it to track mp2 shows captured off of digital radio broadcasts.

Basically its like CDwave only for mp3s/mp2s.  You choose a cut point with the cursor and hit 'cut' (or 'split' I forget which) and then it will save all the cut mp3/mp2s for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3DirectCut

[jamroom]

Many thanks for the info. I have an mp3 file that could do with splitting, but I had no idea what to use.

[bobsmith19]

Many thanks pontiacb!  That is exactly what I need.  And it's free, so perfect.