By calling "cutmp3" you will get this: cutmp3 version 3.0.1 Usage: cutmp3 -i file.mp3 [-a inpoint] [-b outpoint] [-f timetable] [-o outputprefix] [-c] [-C] [-k] [-q] cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -a 0:37 -b 3:57 copies valid data from 0:37 to 3:57 cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -f timetable copies valid data described in timetable cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -o song writes the output to song0001.mp3, song0002.mp3,... cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -O song.mp3 writes the output to song.mp3 cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -O - writes the output to STDOUT cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -d 2 use second sound card cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -s 0 no maximum silence length cutmp3 -I file.mp3 [-F] prints file information [in raw mode] So this means you have to type cutmp3 -i file.mp3 to edit the file named "file.mp3" interactively. At every position the sound is being played for 1 second. 'r' plays it again. With the keys 12345 you can rewind, with the keys 67890 you can go forward. '0' means 10mins forward, '9' is 1min forward, '8' is 10secs forward, '7' is 1sec forward and '6' is 1/10sec forward. Keys '1' to '5' go symmetrically back (so '1' means 10mins back). When you are at the starting position of your part of interest, press the key 'a'. When you are at the last position of your part of interest, press the key 'b' (What you hear after pressing 'b' will then be the last second inside the new file). By typing 's' the resulting file will be written to result0001.mp3. If it already exists, cutmp3 will increase the number to result0002.mp3, result0003.mp3 and so on. -c copies metadata in non-interactive mode -C ignores given metadata for the output filename in non-interactive mode -k keeps old filename and full path and appends 0001.mp3, etc. -s changes the maximum silence length factor, 0 means infinity -q switches on quiet mode, cutmp3 won't make any sound, useful for debugging and piped commands like: "echo 7a9bsq | cutmp3 -q -i file.mp3" *** CLEVER KEYCODES IN cutmp3: *** You can seek to the end of the next silence by pressing 'p' (for pause) or to its beginning by pressing 'P'. By default the silence should last for 1000 milliseconds, which is one second, and the maximum volume during this second is the minimum: 1 (whatever that is in dB). You can change - the length of the silence by pressing 'n' or 'm' and - the length of playback by pressing 'N' or 'M' and - the maximum volume during this silence by pressing '+' or '-'. These values will be saved to ~/.cutmp3rc by pressing 'S'. You can seek to the next ID3 tag by pressing 'T'. This is useful in case someone has merged several mp3s into one file without removing the ID3-tags. For other useful keycodes type 'h' in cutmp3. By typing: cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -o blah the resulting files will be written to blah0001.mp3, blah0002.mp3, blah0003.mp3 and so on. If you only want to cut a file once and you know the times for start and the end, you type: cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -a 0:37 -b 1:25 and cutmp3 will write the passage in file.mp3 starting at 0:37 and ending at 1:25 to blah01.mp3 If you want to cut a file more often, you need to create a file which contains a timetable and type: cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -f name_of_the_timetablefile Please read README.timetable for details. NEW: You can use the second soundcard by typing cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -d 2 cutmp3 -F -I file.mp3 only prints total number of frames, sampling frequency, number of channels, average bitrate, MPEG version and total time in milliseconds, in this order If you want to clean an MP3 from any data that is not sound, just use: cutmp3 -i infile.mp3 -a 0:0 -b 99999:0 Cutting in interactive mode does _not_ remove invalid data! cutmp3 only accepts one inputfile, so using wildcards like '?' or '*' in filenames will result in editing only the first file that matches.