To edit an audio file, open it in a free editor such as Audacity, select the part you want, and cut, fade or change the volume. Then export the result as WAV or MP3. The same steps work for an MP3 file, a voice memo or a song.
Some jobs are not editing at all. Removing a voice from a song, pulling out the drums or cleaning echo needs a splitter. The audio tools page on Unmix Studio lists those, and this guide shows where each kind of fix belongs.
An editor changes the shape of the audio. It works on time and loudness. A splitter changes what is inside the audio. It works on the sounds mixed together.
| You want to... | Use |
|---|---|
| Cut the start or end, remove a pause | Editor |
| Fade in or fade out | Editor |
| Make it louder or quieter | Editor |
| Join two files | Editor |
| Remove the voice from a song | Splitter |
| Remove hiss or room noise from a voice | Splitter |
| Take echo off a vocal | Splitter |
Our tools only split or remove things. They do not cut, trim, fade or join audio, so you need a free editor for the first four rows.
Open Audacity and drag your file into the window. You will see the waveform, which is a picture of the sound. Tall parts are loud and flat parts are quiet.
Before you change anything, keep a copy of the original. In Audacity, edits happen in the open project and your original file stays on disk until you export over it. Even so, saving the export under a new name is a good habit.
Click and drag across the waveform to select a part. Press play to hear only that selection. Delete removes it, and the rest closes up.
To keep only a middle section, select it and use the trim command. Audacity puts it in the Edit menu, in the Remove Special group. To remove the quiet start of a recording, select from the beginning to just before the first word and press Delete.
Two tips make cuts sound clean:
A fade makes the sound rise from silence or sink into it. It stops a recording from starting or ending with a bump. Select the first second or two and apply Fade In from the Effect menu. Select the last second or two and apply Fade Out.
For a song, a fade out of three to eight seconds is common. For a voice clip, a very short fade, under a second, is enough. Listen to the result and adjust.
If the whole file is too quiet or too loud, use one of two effects.
If you build a clip from several recordings, give each one the same treatment so they match. A loud part next to a quiet part is the most common thing people notice. Do not push the level up until the top of the waveform is flat. That is clipping, and it sounds harsh.
Noise is the part that an editor cannot always fix. Audacity has a Noise Reduction effect, and it works best on steady hiss. Our step-by-step guide on how to remove background noise in Audacity covers it.
If the recording is a voice, the Vocal Noise Remover is another route. Upload the file, press the orange button, and download the Clean vocal file. You also get a Noise only file so you can hear what was taken out. Most tools cost 1 credit per minute, new accounts get 5 free credits, and the price shows on the button before you start.
For a voice that sounds like it was recorded in an empty room, the Reverb Remover reduces the echo. It does not make a very bad recording into a studio one, but it can bring a voice closer.
Editing a full song is different, because the vocal, drums and bass share the same audio. A cut affects all of them at once. A volume change makes everything louder or quieter together.
To change one part, split the song first. The vocal remover gives you an Instrumental file and a Vocals only file. After that, you can edit each file by itself, such as lowering the vocals without touching the drums. Splitting runs in the cloud, so there is nothing to install. One of our test songs, 3 minutes 22 seconds long, had its drums removed in 88 seconds.
Use your own music or music you have a license for when you publish. Editing a song for practice at home is fine. Posting an edit of someone else's music needs permission.
When the edit sounds right, export the file. Your choice depends on what you will do next.
Each time you save a file as MP3, a little detail is lost, and repeated saves add up. So edit in WAV, or in your editor's own project, and export to MP3 once at the end. Audacity can export MP3 directly from the File menu.
For size, one of our own 4 minute 44 second songs comes out at about 10.9 MB per track as an MP3 at 320 kbps. That is a handy reference for what a high quality MP3 of a full song weighs.
Audacity is free, open source and works on Windows, Mac and Linux. It can cut, fade, change volume, join files and export to WAV and MP3. Many people also use their DAW if they already have one.
Open it in an editor such as Audacity, make your changes, and export. Because MP3 is compressed, each save loses a little quality. Keep the original and export a new file once.
Not in a normal editor, because the vocals are mixed in with everything else. Split the song first with the Unmix Studio vocal remover, then edit the separate files.
No. Our tools split a song, remove a sound, or clean a voice. For cutting, fading and joining, use a free editor and then bring the file to the audio tools if you need a fix.
MP3, WAV, M4A and FLAC, up to 10 minutes. Video files are not accepted, so pull the sound out into an audio file first.