If you set starting and ending points on a DRM-free track, and then convert the track, you will end up with a true cropped version. I use this for presentations or movies. It also works a treat for cell-phone ringers (the opening riff for "Smoke On The Water," for example.)

This is great for live recordings. You can cut out the applause, often 30-60 seconds at the end, and sometimes at the beginning as well. I have one song that has applause at the end, and then the singer introduces the band. The last 2:00 of the cut is "this is x on drums <cheers and applause> this is x on keyboards <cheers and applause> etc. I was able to get rid of that.

It?s a nice feature.

Yes you can edit using iTunes!! I do this almost daily. I record audio programs for later listening. But of course, these programs have many commercial breaks. Say you have 1hr of recording, but there are 5 commercial breaks, Instead of keeping that one file, I copy the original file 5x or 6x, (so that each file copied will correspond to every 'live' segment. segment1=original audio file, segment2=copy2....etc).
Then I'll import then into iTunes, Edit the Start/Stop times for each segment, re-import them into iTunes by converting each to .WAV. Once I have the .WAV files, I join each segment using "QTSync" you can use whatever audio editor you'd like. QT Sync allows you to join 10files and sometimes I have 18 segments to join! Once you have the joined file, you I can leave in .WAV format (not disk space friendly) or encoded using the Podcast setting for AAC import (99% I do this).

Voila! Only 1 file remains in great listening format since all commercials have been stripped away.