Cut a piece out. Stitch it back together.
Select the cough, the pause or the fumbled take on the waveform and press cut. The two sides are rejoined with a micro crossfade, so there is no click at the seam.
Trim a file nowHow to cut a section out of an audio file
- Open the editor and drop your file in. The waveform appears, and quiet recordings are automatically magnified so you can see what you are doing.
- Drag across the part you want gone. Play just the selection, on loop if you like, and nudge the edges by a tenth of a second until it is exact.
- Press cut and stitch (or just the Delete key). The gap closes with a 4 millisecond crossfade, so the seam does not click or pop.
- Undo if it was wrong; every edit is reversible. Export as MP3 or WAV when the take is clean.
More than a trimmer
- Trim to selection throws away everything outside your selection: top and tail a recording in one move.
- Silence a section without shortening the file, for when timing matters.
- Split a file in two: place the playhead and export each side as its own file.
- Fades and inserted silence for clean starts, ends and breathing room.
Where to cut, so the join is invisible
The seam itself is handled for you: the two sides are rejoined with a four millisecond crossfade, which removes the click a raw cut leaves behind. What software cannot decide is where to cut, and that is what separates an edit nobody notices from one everybody does.
- Cut in the gaps, not through words. Silence splices into silence invisibly. Cutting mid-vowel is audible in any editor ever made.
- Leave the breath in. Removing every inhale makes speech sound synthetic and airless. Take out the long ones, keep the short ones.
- Watch the room tone. If one side of your cut has a fan humming and the other does not, the join announces itself. Removing the noise first makes cuts far more forgiving.
- Land just before a hard consonant. The moment before a t or a p is the cleanest place for a boundary.
Working quickly
The fastest loop, once it is habit: drag a rough selection, tick Loop, press play, then nudge the selection edges with the -0.1 and +0.1 buttons while it repeats until the boundary sounds right. Then press Delete. You are hearing exactly the region that is about to disappear, so there is no guessing.
Worth memorising: space plays and pauses, delete cuts the selection, ctrl+z undoes anything including noise removal, a selects the whole track, f fits the view. Selections can also be typed exactly, in either 1:23.500 or plain seconds, when you already know your timestamps.
Beyond simple trimming
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| Remove a cough or a fumble | Select it, cut and stitch |
| Keep only the good middle section | Select it, trim to selection |
| Mute a noise but keep the timing intact | Select it, silence selection |
| Split a long recording into two files | Place the playhead, export each side |
| Lift one section out to use elsewhere | Select it, send it to the file list |
| Make room for something to be inserted | Insert silence at the playhead |
If a cut sounds wrong
Undo and listen again with the loop trick above. Nine times out of ten the selection was a fraction too wide and took the start of the next word with it. If the seam clicks despite the crossfade, you have almost certainly cut through the middle of a sustained sound rather than in a gap.
Common questions
Will there be a click where I cut?
No. The two sides are rejoined with a short crossfade, which removes the click a hard cut would leave. Cutting through the middle of a vowel is still audible in any editor, so cut in the gaps.
Can I see the waveform of a quiet recording?
Yes. The display auto-magnifies quiet recordings and tells you the magnification, so even a whispered phone memo is visible and editable.
How precise can I get?
Zoom goes down to individual samples, selections can be typed to the millisecond, and nudge buttons move edges by a tenth of a second.
Can I undo a bad cut?
Yes. Every edit, including cuts, noise removal and levelling, is undoable, and a toast with an undo button appears right after each one.