The four steps
- 1Open the cutter. Go to pdfgami.com/mp3-cutter — no install, no account.
- 2Drop the file. MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG and Opus all work, and so do MP4, MOV and WebM videos. The row that appears shows the length, sample rate and whether the audio is mono or stereo.
- 3Set start and end. Both are in seconds, to one decimal place. As you type, the row updates to show how long the kept section is — so you can confirm you are keeping 38.5 seconds before you encode anything.
- 4Cut and download.Pick a bitrate and click Cut & download MP3. The trimmed audio is encoded in the tab and lands in your downloads folder.
Which bitrate should you pick?
The output is re-encoded, so the bitrate you choose is the quality ceiling of the result. There is no benefit to picking a number above the source: encoding a 128 kbps podcast at 320 kbps produces a bigger file that sounds the same.
- 96–128Voice memos, interviews, podcasts. Speech does not need more than this.
- 192The default, and the right answer for most music. A good size-to-quality balance.
- 256–320Worth it when the source is lossless or high-bitrate and you want to keep as much of it as MP3 allows.
Cutting a section out of the middle
Each row keeps one continuous range, so removing something from the middle takes two rows rather than one. Drop the same file into the tool twice. Set the first row to end where the unwanted part begins, and the second row to start where it finishes. The output joins the rows in order and the middle is simply absent.
How to check a no-upload claim yourself
Any site can write “we never store your files” on a landing page. The claim is easy to verify and you should not take ours on trust either. Open your browser developer tools before you cut, switch to the Network tab, then run the trim. If the audio is being uploaded you will see a POST request the size of your file. On a browser-only tool the tab stays quiet, because the decoding and the MP3 encoding both happen in JavaScript on your own machine. The same check works on every tool that claims local processing.
Frequently asked questions
How do I cut the first few seconds off an MP3?
Open the cutter, drop the file, and set the start time to the second you want the audio to begin at — 3.5 for three and a half seconds, for example. Leave the end time alone. Click Cut & download MP3 and everything before that point is gone. The tool shows you how long the kept section is while you type, so you can check the number before encoding anything.
Do online MP3 cutters upload my recording?
Most of them do. The usual architecture is an upload form, a server-side ffmpeg call, and a download link — which means a copy of your audio sits on someone else's disk, governed by a retention policy you did not read. PDFGami works differently: the file is decoded by your browser's own audio engine and re-encoded by lamejs inside the page. Open your developer tools network tab while you cut and you will see no request carrying the file.
Does cutting an MP3 make it sound worse?
A little, because the output is re-encoded rather than copied. MP3 is lossy, so decoding it and encoding it again compounds the loss. At 192 kbps or above the difference is inaudible to most people, and for speech it does not matter at any bitrate. If you need a bit-exact cut with no re-encoding at all, you want a frame-level MP3 splitter instead — those can only cut on frame boundaries, roughly every 26 milliseconds, which is why they are less precise.
How do I remove a section from the middle of a recording?
Drop the same file into the tool twice. Set the first row to the part before the section you want gone, and the second row to the part after it. The output joins the two rows in order, leaving the middle out. That also works with more than two rows if you need to cut several sections.
Can I cut the audio out of an MP4 or MOV video?
Yes. Drop the video file straight in. The browser decodes its audio track, you trim it the same way you would an MP3, and the output is an MP3. The video itself is discarded — you do not need to run a separate converter first.
Is there a length or file size limit?
No artificial one. The practical ceiling is your device memory, because the audio is decoded to uncompressed samples in the tab before it is trimmed. A long recording on a phone will run out of room sooner than the same file on a laptop.
Can I trim several recordings at once?
You can drop several files and give each its own start and end, but the output is a single MP3 containing all the kept sections joined together. If you want separate files, cut them one at a time. If joining is what you actually want, the merge tool is the better page for it.
Continue reading
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