Cut and trim MP3 audio files online. Extract segments with precise start time and duration for ringtones and clips.
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Frame-accurate cuts with intuitive timeline controls
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.mp3 audio files. Batch cutting is supported — each file gets its own cut points.12.5) or HH:MM:SS.sss (e.g. 00:01:42.300). Everything before this point is discarded.HH:MM:SS.sss. The output runs from your start time for exactly this duration; everything after is dropped..mp3 is processed in your browser session and offered for download — no sign-up, no watermark, no upload to a third-party cloud.Cutting MP3 extracts a chosen segment of an audio file by start time and duration. MP3 (formally MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer III, ISO/IEC 11172-3 and 13818-3) remains the most universally supported audio format — every modern phone, browser, car stereo, and DAW can play it — which makes it the safest container for short clips you intend to share or re-use.
.mp3 directly as a ringtone or notification sound, with no length cap; 20–30 seconds is the practical sweet spot. Drop the cut file into /Ringtones on internal storage..m4r (AAC in an MPEG-4 container) and are capped at 40 seconds. Cut your MP3 to 30–40 seconds first, then run MP3 to M4A and rename the extension to .m4r for iTunes/Finder sync.| Property | MP3 | M4A (AAC) | WAV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Codec | MPEG-1/2 Layer III | AAC-LC / HE-AAC | PCM (uncompressed) |
| Compression | Lossy | Lossy (more efficient) | Lossless / none |
| Typical size (3 min) | 3–4 MB at 192 kbps | 2–3 MB at 192 kbps | 30–32 MB at 44.1 kHz/16-bit |
| Sample rates | 8–48 kHz | 8–96 kHz | up to 192 kHz |
| Max channels | 2 (stereo) | up to 48 (5.1, 7.1) | up to 65,535 |
| iPhone ringtone | No (needs .m4r) |
Yes (rename to .m4r) |
No |
| Android ringtone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | Universal playback | Apple ecosystem, smaller files | Editing masters |
| Target | Format | Recommended length | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone ringtone | .m4r (AAC) |
30 s, hard cap 40 s | iOS ignores files longer than 40 s |
| iPhone text/alert tone | .m4r (AAC) |
under ~30 s | Default iOS alerts are ~5–10 s |
| Android ringtone | .mp3 |
20–30 s | No hard cap; long files just loop oddly |
| Android notification | .mp3 or .ogg |
1–5 s | Keep short; plays in the status bar |
| Smartwatch alert | .mp3 |
1–3 s | Wear OS / watchOS treat anything longer as music |
A trimmer that decodes the MP3 to PCM, slices, and re-encodes will lose a small amount of quality on the second pass — that's the nature of lossy formats. Cutting at MP3 frame boundaries (each frame is 1152 samples ≈ 26 ms at 44.1 kHz) avoids re-encoding entirely. Most audible degradation is undetectable for a single cut at 192 kbps or higher; if you're chaining edits or working from a low-bitrate source, prefer WAV cutting and convert to MP3 only at the end.
Not directly — iOS reads ringtones as .m4r (AAC in an MPEG-4 container), capped at 40 seconds. The reliable path is: cut your MP3 to ≤ 40 seconds here, run it through MP3 to M4A, then rename the resulting .m4a to .m4r and drag it into Finder/iTunes "Tones". Android, by contrast, accepts the .mp3 you produce here as-is.
Tools like mp3DirectCut operate at frame boundaries — they find the nearest MP3 frame to your requested start/end (about 38 frames per second) and rewrite the file headers without ever decoding the audio. The trade-off is that your cut snaps to roughly 26 ms granularity rather than landing on an exact sample. For ringtones, podcast clips, and voice memos that's invisible; for music edits where the cut must hit a precise downbeat you may notice the offset.
Two reasons. First, MP3 frame quantization (above) — a "cut at 12.000 s" may snap to 11.987 s or 12.013 s. Second, MP3 encoders insert a short padding/encoder delay at the start of the file (~26 ms for LAME, longer for some others). When you cut from 00:00:00.000 you may include a few milliseconds of that priming silence. Setting your start to 00:00:00.050 usually clears it.
This page extracts a single contiguous segment defined by start + duration. To keep, say, the intro and the chorus from the middle while dropping everything else, cut each segment separately, then merge them with an audio joiner. For multi-cut scenarios on a single file, audio-cutter handles general audio formats and is the better starting point.
Cutting changes the duration — same bitrate, fewer seconds, smaller file. Compressing changes the bitrate or sample rate — same duration, fewer kilobits per second, smaller file at the cost of audio fidelity. They're complementary: you'd cut a 60-minute lecture down to a 5-minute clip, then compress MP3 to drop it from 192 kbps to 96 kbps if you need to fit an email attachment limit.
Most modern MP3 cutters preserve ID3v2 tags on the output file; some strip them. After cutting, check the file in your player — if the metadata is gone, you can re-add it in Mp3tag (Windows), Kid3 (Linux/macOS), or directly from the Finder/Properties panel. Embedded album art typically survives ID3v2 round-trips at the same rate as text tags.
Yes — the cutter runs in any modern mobile browser (iOS Safari 14+, Android Chrome). On iOS the downloaded .mp3 lands in the Files app under "Downloads"; from there you can share to Voice Memos, GarageBand, or any audio app. Android puts it in /Download by default. Note that creating an iPhone ringtone still requires syncing the .m4r through Finder or iTunes on a desktop — Apple does not allow third-party apps to install ringtones over-the-air.
The browser-side processing means very large MP3s (multi-GB DJ sets, 12-hour audiobook rips) consume a lot of RAM during the cut. For files over ~500 MB, allow a few seconds of processing time and close other heavy tabs. There's no per-file cap on the cut itself, but a phone with 4 GB of RAM will struggle on anything past 1 GB — desktop browsers handle 2–3 GB without issue.