[linux-audio-user] Directly editing mp3 files

Is there a tool that will allow me to directly edit mp3 files (i.e. without decompressing them first)? I remember that I used to use a program that would do that in mac os 9. There are a couple of situations in which I need to crop or chop up very long audio recordings and where precision is not important, but the time it takes for the various audio editors to read or write huge uncompressed wav files, as well as to compress the edited files, is a real problem. For instance I sometimes collect sonic doodles on a dictaphone, which means that I need to be able to sample an entire side of the tape, go through it very quickly and save the interesting bits for future reference. I don't want to spend hours doing this. I'm not at all bothered whether I use mp3, ogg or something else as the compressed format. If there is something simple that might work under wine I would happily give that a go. Many thanks Robert -- Robert Persson Conspiracy Bears: Once upon a time there were lots of conspiracy bears...