On various other forums I have seen a fair number of posts from people trying to open large mp3 in audio editors. Of course they can’t; the uncompressed file size exceed the OS, and/or the audio editor, file size limit. Such posters are obviously ignorant of one side or the other of this issue, but getting the painful education is only the first step. Then they have to find an appropriate mp3 tool, learn how to use it, and go through whatever amount of trouble is necessary to examine the mp3 and slice it up. Then they can start doing what they wanted to in the first place.

A proper mp3 decoder that automatically put out X number of wav files of length Y would, it seems to me, make things much easier. Many editors are limited to 2Gbyte files, some to 4Gbyte. Files of either of these may ofttimes be inconveniently large. Therefore, the ideal utility would allow the user to specify the output file size before beginning. It would then proceed to pop out file1, file2, etc. until the entire mp3 was decoded. Other options may be sometimes useful, but this basic facility, without user hassle, would probably find a fair number of users. Perhaps it already exists and I just don’t know about it?