WAV to MP3
Turn an uncompressed recording into a file you can email or upload.
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or drag them here
WAV · one or many
- Takes
- WAV at any sample rate, in 16, 24, or 32-bit — integer or floating point. Drop as many as you like and they convert one after another with the same settings. AIFF is not readable in a browser, despite being WAV's close cousin, and will be refused.
- Size
- No cap, and nothing is uploaded, so the only ceiling is your own tab's memory. The WAV is read off disk a few megabytes at a time rather than loaded whole — what is held is the MP3 being written, about 1.4 MB per minute at 192 kbps. Stereo WAV runs roughly 10 MB per minute: a 74-minute, 747 MB one converted here in about 21 seconds.
Your file never leaves your browser during processing
How it works
To convert a WAV file to MP3, drop it onto this page and choose a bitrate — 192 kbps for music, 96 kbps for speech. The file is decoded and re-encoded by your own browser, nothing is uploaded, and a typical WAV comes out about ten times smaller.
A WAV file stores sound the way a microphone measured it: every sample, in full, with no compression at all. CD-quality stereo works out at 1,411 kbps — around 10 MB per minute — which is why a half-hour interview recorded on a field recorder arrives as a 300 MB file that no mail server will accept.
MP3 discards the parts of that signal a listener is least likely to notice, and how much it discards is the bitrate you choose. At 192 kbps most people cannot pick the MP3 from the WAV on music; at 96 kbps speech stays completely clear while the file drops to about a fifteenth of the original. The bitrate buttons on this page show what each one is for, and the expected size is calculated from the bitrate and the length of your file before you commit to anything, so you can aim at a limit rather than convert and hope.
The conversion runs in your browser. Your file is read locally, decoded to raw audio, and re-encoded by an MP3 encoder compiled to WebAssembly that downloads once, the first time you use one of these tools. Nothing is sent anywhere — the counter under the tool watches the network while your file is processed and stays at zero bytes sent.
What you give up is reversibility. MP3 is lossy: the detail it removes is gone, and converting the result back to WAV produces a big file without restoring anything. If the WAV is a master recording or the only copy of something, keep it and treat the MP3 as the shareable version rather than a replacement.
FAQ
What bitrate should I choose?
Use 192 kbps for music and 96 kbps for speech. Higher bitrates make larger files with diminishing returns — above 256 kbps almost nobody can hear a difference, and at that point a lossless format serves you better anyway.
How much smaller will my file be?
About ten times smaller at 192 kbps, and about fifteen times at 96 kbps. WAV always uses 1,411 kbps for CD-quality stereo regardless of what is in it, so the ratio depends almost entirely on the bitrate you pick, not on the recording.
Will the audio sound worse?
Slightly, and whether you can hear it depends on the bitrate and the material. At 192 kbps and above the difference on music is very hard to detect on normal equipment; on speech, 96 kbps is transparent for practical purposes.
Is there a file size limit?
Nothing is enforced, but the file is held in memory while it is converted, so very long recordings — several hours of stereo — can exhaust a tab on a low-memory device. Files up to a few hundred megabytes convert without trouble.
Is my recording uploaded anywhere?
No. Decoding and encoding both happen in your browser, and the network counter under the tool monitors activity during processing and stays at zero bytes sent.