Ok, google has let me down. What I need is a freeware sound file editor, and it really doesn't need to do very much, so naturally the next step is to ask Massassi if anyone knows of one!

Right, what I want to do is very simple - I want to just take chunks out of songs to make mp3 ringtones for my phone - ie just take out a chorus or a particular couple of lines and save it as a little mp3. The problem is that I'm on mac, and the majority of my files are in m4a format, otherwise I'd just use Audacity.

Help me Obi-Wan Massassi, you're my only hope

http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Also, you suck at Google. Bad. The VERY FIRST result first "os x sound editor" is the Audacity home page. :/

Apart from Audacity doesn't work with m4a files.

or then again, maybe it does now

Ah, but it won't play them - now I remember. And I need to track down Lamelib (which I will do now...)

Here's the quote:

Audacity cannot import or export files in WMA, AAC, RealAudio, Shorten (SHN), or most other proprietary formats. Because of licensing and patent restrictions, we are not allowed to add these formats to Audacity. Future versions of Audacity might be able to support these formats using codecs installed in your operating system.

itunes can convert m4a to wav which can then be edited in audacity which can then be reencoded to mp3

Coolios - I'll give that a try.

Binary code....