Merge Mp3
It sometimes happens that I discover a need for another software program while reviewing an application.
This happened during the review of DVD Slideshow Gui which is an excellent tool for creating DVD photo slideshows. The problem that I encountered during the review was that the program only allowed one mp3 file for the background music of the photo slideshow.
That's problematic if you add many photos as the single song that you may have picked may not have enough playtime to play through the whole slideshow.
I needed a software program to merge mp3 music to have enough music for all the photos that I wanted to display during the photo slideshow, and I found an excellent solution in form of Merge MP3.
Merge Mp3 review
Merge Mp3 is a free and portable software program for the Windows operating system that does exactly what the name implies.
Mp3 can be dragged and dropped into the application's interface or selected through the file browser. It is also possible to specify folders or playlists to add and merge all mp3 files found in them in one quick operation.
The order of the songs can be changed in the interface in case that is required. Simply select a song and hit the up or down buttons afterwards to do that. While that may be necessary occasionally, it can be avoided most of the time by adding the mp3 files in the desired order to the application.
Basic controls for playing the added mp3 files are available, as are options to add ID3 tags for the new mp3 that gets created in the process.
The biggest benefit of Merge Mp3 is its simplicity. It takes less than a minute to select multiple mp3 files and join them. There are other situations where merging mp3 might make sense. This includes merging all chapters of an audiobook or the tracks of a ripped CD which can be beneficial if the mp3 player you are using has no display at all or only a basic display (this is not a big issue with smartphones, but there are still hardware mp3 players sold today that have sorting issues among other things).
Closing Words
Merge Mp3 is compatible with Windows and available from the developer's website. Its portable nature makes it ideal for situations where you need to get the job done fast. Just unpack and run, that's all it takes to merge mp3 files using the software.
OAlexander: Thanks for sharing that! Merge MP3 didn’t work for me, but the standard windows copy command is currently doing it’s magic.
Commandline:
copy /b short1.mp3 + short2.mp3 + short3.mp3 long.mp3
For more details see helpfile that ships with windows => Command-line reference
What is wrong with simply cat’ing the files together:
$ cat first.mp3 second.mp3 third.mp3 last.mp3 > output.mp3
This works because mp3 is a streaming format, there is no end nor beginning to the file and no envelope.
I have written about a similar method for Windows before. Some users on the other hand like to use a graphical user interface for this and mp3 merge is an excellent tool for them. Oh, Israel was very nice. I really enjoyed the days I was there and I will definitely visit the country again in the near future.