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I would recommend using Rouge Amoeba's Fission (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/fission) which allows you very simply to trim and edit mp3 files and then reexport to iTunes.

I discovered this feature in iTunes 4, the first version of iTunes I ever used, and found it to be a quick fix, but not a robust solution. When playing songs that had been virtually trimmed, I found that those tracks tended to drift during playback; that is, the start and stop time would be slightly off during playback making a quick blurb of the material that I wish to cut. Since then, I resolve the matter by performing actual audio edits in BIAS Peak, but that is obviously too expensive and option for most people. Far less expensive audio editors are available for anyone that is interested in going that route though such as Rogue Amoeba's Fission, HairerSoft's Amadeus Pro or Audacity.

I always retain the original version of tracks in my iTunes library, as it is a repository of my CD collection, so I append "{Album Edit}" to the name of the trimmed version. The "album edit" that I create is what I use in playlists instead of the unedited version; I denote versions with curly brackets instead of parentheses to prevent confusion with tracks that have subtitles such as Aaliyah's "At Your Best (You Are Love)" for which I have multiple versions from the CD Single. By doing this I have the trimmed version for randomized playback where I often do not care to hear the extraneous content at the beginning or end of a track, but retain the full track for the rare occasion that I may listen through an album.

Once you've set the start/stop time in the options, just use iTunes to reconvert the song. Your start/stop times are used, actually trimming the song.

This post has been edited by Scoops98: 11 October 2010 - 10:41 AM

The problem I always had with this was that it never started at the right time within the second. I noticed that some of the end times were something like "4:58.264" which made me realize that you could "fine tune" the start/stop times past a second value. I never found the need to go past a 1/100 of a second but it will allow you to do so.
My 2¢

I can't even begin to imagine why "Nights in White Satin" is the pictured example of how to use the trimmer option. That song is ART!

Scoops98, on 11 October 2010 - 10:41 AM, said:

While this method may work from a procedural standpoint, it also results in further loss of audio quality. Using a lossy compression scheme on content that was already compressed in such a fashion is never recommended.

JoelMathis, on 11 October 2010 - 11:23 AM, said:

I'll bet Mr Breen has even cut In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida down to 3:05.

What Joel said. Picking on the Moody Blues, them's fightin' words!

("In the Beginning" is goofy, but I can't imagine listening to the album without it.)

Not only does the start/stop time transfer to the iPod, it also transfers to CDs. I burn CDs to listen to in the car and they maintain the start/stop times selected.

This is also a good way to make ringtones. Use the timer to select a small snippet of your song - I usually go for about 30 seconds. Then convert it and it makes a new file. Transfer that file to your phone.

As someone else pointed out, the quality is slightly lower but not really detectable and certainly not detectable on a cell phone's speaker.

archtoday, on 11 October 2010 - 11:57 AM, said:

Note where I made the cut. I left nearly all the syrupy strings, the mellotron, flute solo, plaintive wailing, repeated chorus, harp, timpani, blaring horns, triangle, celeste, kazoo, and heaven knows what else they put on there. It's only when they started waxing poetical that I said "Go Now."

Scoops98, on 11 October 2010 - 10:41 AM, said:

Reconvert? Actually, that means degrade the song even further by compressing an already compressed song. That is not an ideal solution. If you want to properly trim the song without using the simple iTunes setting, use the inexpensive (and previously free with some older iMacs) Sound Studio application to trim and edit the AIFF file off the CD. Then import the uncompressed edited AIFF file into iTunes and encode it with your compression of choice. Sound Studio is very easy to use and similar to the old classic, SoundEdit Pro, from the Classic Mac OS days.

JoelMathis, on 11 October 2010 - 11:23 AM, said:

I second that! Chris, what were you thinking? (Just saw your comment above. Pretty funny.) However, classics such as that should not be edited. It is like when classic rock stations play the 3 minute edited version of Steve Miller Band's Jet Airliner. Should not be done.

This post has been edited by hillstones: 11 October 2010 - 12:51 PM

dbso, on 11 October 2010 - 12:03 PM, said:

The degraded quality is quite detectable with a harsher sound for a variety of instruments. It all depends on the type of music and level of compression used. Reconverting is like making multi-generation copies of a cassette tape. Each copy continues to degrade in quality. It may not be detectable on a cell phone speaker, but definitely detectable on a good stereo system. In addition to your ringtone conversion, you also have to change the extension from .m4a to .m4r to become a ringtone. I prefer to edit with Sound Studio to create a ringtone file.