Convert WAV to MP3 Waveform Audio ↔ MPEG Audio Layer III Free Online Secure
Your WAV is decoded here in your browser and written out as an MP3 at the bitrate you pick. Nothing is uploaded, so there is nothing to delete afterwards.
Convert your file
Drop a WAV here, or choose one.
Your file never leaves this device. Everything runs in your browser.
Nothing uploaded
Where these formats come from
MP3 came out of years of research at Fraunhofer and was standardised in 1993 as part of MPEG-1. Its trick is psychoacoustic: it throws away the sound a human ear is unlikely to notice, mostly quiet detail masked by louder sound nearby, and it was that trick which made music small enough to travel over a modem. AAC — the thing inside an .m4a file — was designed as its successor and does the same job better at the same size. Ogg Vorbis appeared in 2000 as the patent-free answer, at a time when MP3 still had to be licensed. FLAC compresses without discarding anything, giving back the identical recording at about half the size, and WAV stores the raw samples with no compression at all.
Where you meet them
MP3 is still the format that plays on anything with a speaker, which is why it is the safe choice for sending something to a stranger. M4A is what Apple devices and most phones record and buy in. OGG travels inside games and open-source software. FLAC is for archiving a collection or ripping a CD when the original quality must be kept. WAV is the working format of recording and editing, where the file is opened and saved repeatedly and compression artefacts would accumulate.
Questions people ask
Will converting my MP3 to FLAC restore the quality?
No. FLAC will preserve perfectly whatever it is given, but what it is given here is already an MP3 — the detail removed when the MP3 was made is gone, and no later format can invent it back. You end up with a file several times larger that sounds exactly like the MP3. Converting to a lossless format is worth doing only from a lossless source; from an MP3, the honest answer is to keep the MP3.
Each time I convert, does it sound worse?
Between lossy formats, yes — a little. MP3, AAC and Vorbis each decide separately what the ear will not miss, and each conversion decodes the previous guess and makes a fresh one on top of it, so the losses accumulate. Converting once rarely matters; converting back and forth repeatedly does. Lossless formats have no such problem: WAV to FLAC to WAV returns exactly the samples you started with.
Does the file lose quality?
It depends on what the two formats can hold. Converting between formats that store the same thing — a PNG to a BMP, a WAV to a FLAC — loses nothing. Converting into a format that throws information away to save space, such as JPEG or MP3, loses a little every time, and converting back does not bring it back. Where a choice exists, this page errs towards keeping the original quality rather than making the smallest file.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The conversion happens inside your browser, on your own machine; the file never leaves it and there is no server here that could receive it. That is why a large file is limited by your own memory rather than by an upload, and why nothing you convert can appear in anybody's logs — including ours. The audio and video tools do fetch their conversion engine from this site the first time you use them, some thirty megabytes once; after that the work still happens entirely on your machine.
Why people convert WAV to MP3
WAV is what recorders, audio editors and studio software produce when they want to keep every detail of a sound. It is uncompressed, which means it is enormous: a single minute of stereo sound takes about ten megabytes, and a song takes around fifty. That is wonderful for editing and terrible for sending, storing and playing on a phone. MP3 is the answer people have used for decades: the same recording in a fraction of the size, in a format that plays everywhere. That is why people convert WAV to MP3: they have a large, faithful recording and they need a light one that anyone can open.
The situations are everyday ones. A podcast recorded and edited as WAV that must be uploaded as MP3. A song from a home studio that has to be emailed to a collaborator. A recording of a rehearsal or a concert to share with the band. A voice recording from a dictation device. A piece of audio for a website. In each case the WAV is the master and the MP3 is the copy you send, and converting WAV to MP3 is the standard step between them.
This page converts WAV to MP3 in your browser. Your recording is not uploaded to a server, so there is nothing to delete afterwards, which matters for unreleased music, private recordings and confidential interviews. Below you will find how the conversion works, what is kept, what is permanently discarded, and how to choose a bitrate.
How the conversion works
Decoded here, written as MP3 at the bitrate you pick
Your WAV is read in your browser, which means its sound data is taken in as it is, and then written out as an MP3 at the bitrate you choose. The bitrate decides how many bits are used for each second of sound: a lower number gives a smaller, rougher file; a higher number gives a larger, cleaner one. You pick the balance that suits the recording and where it is going.
Nothing is uploaded
The whole process happens on your own device, so your recording never leaves it. There is no copy on a server and nobody else who could hear it. For unreleased music or a private recording, that is exactly the right way to convert WAV to MP3.
Choosing a bitrate
For speech, such as podcasts, interviews and dictation, 96 or 128 kilobits per second is plenty and keeps the file small. For music, 192 gives a good result, and 256 or 320 is close to what most listeners cannot tell from the original. Because WAV is the full-quality source, you have the freedom to choose any of these; the higher the number, the larger the file.
What is kept
The full length and the sample rate
When you convert WAV to MP3 here, the full length of the recording is kept, and so is its sample rate, which is how finely the sound was sampled. A forty-minute recording stays forty minutes. Nothing is cut or sped up.
Both channels, mixed down properly if there are more
Both channels of a stereo recording are kept. If the file has more than two channels, it is mixed down properly into stereo, so nothing in the middle goes missing. That matters for recordings made with several microphones, where a careless conversion would drop channels and lose voices or instruments.
What "mixed down properly" means
A WAV can hold many channels, but a standard MP3 holds two. A careless conversion would keep the first two and discard the rest. Here the extra channels are blended into the left and right, so that every sound is still present in the result.
Opens anywhere
The MP3 you get opens on practically any device and in any program: phones, computers, car stereos, players and websites. That universality is the purpose of the conversion.
What is permanently discarded
MP3 is lossy and WAV is not
Here is the one thing you must understand. WAV keeps everything; MP3 does not. To make the file small, MP3 discards some of the sound, mostly details that the ear is least likely to notice. At a good bitrate, the difference is hard to hear, but it is real, and no later conversion brings it back. Once a WAV has become an MP3, the discarded detail is gone.
Keep the WAV if it is your only copy
That is why the golden rule is simple: keep the WAV if it is your only copy. The WAV is your master. The MP3 is the copy you send, publish or play. If you ever want a different bitrate, or a different format, or to edit the recording further, you will want the WAV to start from.
Titles, artist names and cover art are not carried over
Only the sound itself is read. Titles, artist names and cover art are not carried over, so the MP3 appears under its file name without tags. If you are releasing music, add the tags afterwards with a tag editor, so that players show the title, artist and cover.
A note on tagging
Tags make a collection usable. Without them, a player shows file names and no cover art. After you convert WAV to MP3, take a minute to add the artist, title, album and year. Most music managers let you do this for a whole album at once.
What WAV and MP3 are
WAV, short for Waveform Audio, stores sound as a plain list of measurements, thousands per second, with nothing left out and nothing packed. It is the audio equivalent of a bitmap: simple, exact and large. Every audio program reads it, which is why it is the working format of studios and editors. MP3 stores the same sound in a very different way. It analyses the recording, works out which parts the human ear is least likely to notice and throws those away, then packs what is left. The result is a file about a tenth of the size, which sounds nearly identical to most listeners.
When you convert WAV to MP3, you are trading exactness for convenience. The trade is a good one for listening, sharing and storing, and a poor one for editing and archiving, where exactness matters. That is why the sensible workflow keeps both: the WAV as the master, the MP3 as the copy.
How big is the saving?
CD-quality stereo WAV takes about ten megabytes a minute. An MP3 at 128 kilobits per second takes under one megabyte a minute; at 192, about a megabyte and a half; at 320, about two and a half. So an hour of speech that is 600 megabytes as WAV comes to around 55 megabytes as MP3 at 128. For a large collection, the saving is the difference between needing a hard drive and fitting on a phone.
Choosing the right bitrate
The bitrate is the one decision you make when you convert WAV to MP3, so it pays to choose well. Think about the content and the listener. For speech, a voice is simple to compress, and 96 to 128 kilobits per second sound clear on any device. For everyday music on phones and earphones, 192 is a sensible default. For music you care about, listened to on good speakers or headphones, 256 or 320 leaves very little to complain about.
Going higher than necessary wastes space; going lower than necessary damages the sound. If you are unsure, convert a short section at two settings and listen to both on the equipment where the recording will be played. The cheapest way to judge is with your own ears, on your own speakers.
Variable detail and busy music
Some music is harder to compress than other music. A solo voice or a quiet piano is easy; a loud rock mix with cymbals and distorted guitars is hard, and low bitrates show artefacts, a kind of swishing around the high frequencies. If your recording is dense, choose a higher bitrate than you would for a simple one.
Recorders, studios and podcasts
Many devices write WAV by default: portable recorders, dictation machines, audio interfaces and editing software. The files are faithful, which is exactly what you want while you work, and unwieldy once you are done. Podcasters edit in WAV and publish MP3; musicians mix in WAV and share MP3; interviewers record in WAV and archive both. In every one of these workflows, the WAV is where the quality lives, and the MP3 is how it travels.
If you are producing something for release, remember that platforms usually accept either and may convert the file themselves. Where they accept WAV, give them the WAV: they will make their own MP3s, and you will not have compressed twice. Where they require MP3, give them a good one, at 192 or 256 kilobits per second for music, made once from the WAV master.
Editing after converting
Avoid editing the MP3. Each time an MP3 is edited and saved again, it discards more. Make your edits in the WAV, then convert WAV to MP3 as the last step. That way the MP3 has been through the lossy step only once.
How to convert WAV to MP3 here
Add your recording
Drop the WAV onto the page or pick it from your device. It is read inside your browser and is not uploaded.
Pick a bitrate
Choose a bitrate that suits the content: lower for speech, higher for music. If you are not sure, a middle setting is a safe choice.
Convert and listen
Press the button and download the MP3. Listen to the beginning, a stretch from the middle and the end. If it sounds good on the equipment where it will be played, you are done.
Questions people ask before converting
Will the sound get worse?
Yes, slightly. MP3 is lossy, so some of the sound is discarded to make the file small. At a good bitrate it is hard to hear, but it cannot be undone. Keep the WAV.
Why is the MP3 so much smaller?
Because WAV stores every detail of the sound, and MP3 stores a clever approximation. A WAV is typically around ten times larger than the MP3 of the same recording.
Why are the song titles missing?
Only the sound is read. Titles, artist names and cover art are not carried over. Add them again with a tag editor if needed.
Is my recording uploaded?
No. Everything runs in your browser and the recording never leaves your device.
Who converts WAV to MP3
Musicians and home producers
Mixes and demos are made in WAV and shared as MP3, which is light enough to email and plays on every phone.
Podcasters
Edited episodes are exported as WAV and published as MP3, the format hosting services expect.
Anyone with dictation and field recordings
Recorders often save WAV. Converting makes the recordings small enough to store and send.
Common mistakes
Deleting the WAV
You cannot get the discarded detail back. Keep the WAV as your master.
Converting in circles
Do not go from MP3 back to WAV and then to MP3 again, hoping for better sound: each pass through MP3 discards more. Always convert from the original WAV.
Choosing too low a bitrate for music
Below about 128 kilobits per second music begins to sound thin. For speech, lower is fine.
Related tools
To go the other way, convert MP3 to WAV, remembering that it cannot restore what MP3 discarded. For other formats, FLAC to MP3, M4A to MP3 and OGG to MP3 work the same way, and MP3 to FLAC, MP3 to M4A and MP3 to OGG cover other destinations. If the audio belongs to a video, AVI to MOV and MOV to AVI change the video container.
When to convert WAV to MP3, and when not to
Converting is right when the recording has to be sent, published, stored or played on equipment where a huge file is a nuisance: an email, a website, a phone, a hosting service. It is the wrong move for a master you still intend to edit, mix or archive, where the WAV is the better file, and it is pointless if the destination accepts WAV directly and has the space.
For the common cases, such as podcasts, demos, rehearsal recordings and dictation, it is quick, private and dependable to convert WAV to MP3 in the browser. Your original is never changed, so you can come back and convert WAV to MP3 again at a different bitrate whenever you like.
Batches of recordings
If you have many recordings to convert, do them one at a time and keep the originals in a separate folder. Try one first and listen to it on the device where it will be played, so you do not have to redo twenty of them. When you convert WAV to MP3 in bulk, consistency matters more than speed.
Long recordings and slow devices
Everything runs on your own device, so very long recordings depend on its memory. An hour of audio is no trouble for a modern computer. A very long WAV may be slow on an older phone. If it struggles, give the browser a moment and avoid switching to other apps while it works.
Checking the result properly
After you convert WAV to MP3, listen to the beginning, a stretch from the middle and the end on the equipment that matters. Check that the length is right and that nothing is cut off. If it sounds good there, you are done; if it sounds rough, convert again from the WAV at a higher bitrate.
A simple routine to convert WAV to MP3 well
Finish all editing in the WAV. Keep the WAV safe. Convert WAV to MP3 once, at a bitrate suited to the content: lower for speech, higher for music. Listen to the result on the target device, add tags if you need them, then use the MP3 and keep the WAV. This routine takes a couple of minutes, and it works whether you convert WAV to MP3 once a month or every day.
Your recording stays on your device
The conversion happens locally. Your recording is read by your own browser, written as an MP3 there and handed back. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no copy on a server and no one else who could hear it. For unreleased music, interviews and private recordings, that is the safe way to convert WAV to MP3.
A worked example
Say you recorded a podcast episode of forty minutes and edited it as a WAV of about 400 megabytes, and your hosting service takes only MP3 up to 100 megabytes. You drop the WAV here, choose 128 kilobits per second, which is plenty for speech, and press the button. You download an MP3 of about 38 megabytes, forty minutes long, with the voices as clear as before. You upload it and the service accepts it. The WAV stays on your computer as the master.
Before you close the page
Check that you downloaded the MP3, that it sounds fine on the equipment where it will be played, and that you kept the original WAV.
Summary
To convert WAV to MP3 here, drop the recording, pick a bitrate and download the result. The full length, the sample rate and both channels are kept, and a file with more than two is mixed down properly. MP3 is lossy and WAV is not: some of the sound is discarded to make the file small, and no later conversion brings it back, so keep the WAV if it is your only copy. Titles, artist names and cover art are not carried over. Nothing leaves your device.