WAV to MP3 converter, free and no upload

More from a WAV, or to an MP3

M4A to MP3 Voice memos and iTunes files, for players that only know MP3.
FLAC to MP3 Lossless albums onto players and cars that will not read FLAC.
MP3 to WAV For editors, CD burners and anything that asks for WAV.

Or open the audio converter for any other format, and the audio compressor when the problem is size rather than format.

A WAV is sound with no compression at all, which is why one song is fifty megabytes. Drop it above and it comes back as an MP3 a fraction of the size, written on this device rather than on someone’s server.

From every sample kept to most of them predicted

A WAV stores every sample: 44,100 numbers a second for each channel at CD quality, every one kept exactly. That is 1,411 kilobits for every second of stereo, and it is why a WAV is the size it is. An MP3 encoder looks at the same sound in short slices, works out which parts a listener will not hear — quiet sounds right next to loud ones, detail above what the ear resolves at that moment — and spends its bits on everything else.

This page writes 192 kbps for stereo and 96 for mono. Those numbers are not arbitrary: they are the level where the audio compressor on this site says “barely any change”, and the one most ears cannot tell apart from the WAV it came from. It is not the smallest MP3 that could be written — that is the compressor’s job, with a size you choose.

So the two tools split the same file differently. Here the question is “I need an MP3” and the quality is fixed high. On the compressor the question is “I need it under 10 MB” and the quality moves to fit. If you are sending a voice recording to a form with a size limit, that is the better page.

The fifty-megabyte song problem

WAV is what recording gear and editing software write, because nothing is lost: a DAW bounce, a Zoom recorder take, a sample pack, a phone call recorded by an app. It is the right format to work in and the wrong one to send. One CD-quality minute is about ten megabytes, so a four-minute track will not go through email and takes a while on a phone connection.

MP3 at the setting this page uses keeps the sound and drops roughly six of every seven bytes. That is the whole reason this conversion is searched for more than any other in audio.

Getting an MP3 out of a WAV

MP3 is already selected above.
Drop your WAV file in, or click to browse.
Download the result. It never left your device.

A long recording takes a moment longer here than an M4A would, because there is far more raw sound to read — still on your device, the whole way.

What is different once it is an MP3

About a seventh of the size for a CD-quality stereo file. A 40 MB WAV lands near 6 MB.
Anything above 48 kHz is brought down to 48 kHz, because MP3 cannot hold more. A 96 kHz studio file becomes 48 kHz; a 44.1 kHz file stays 44.1.
A WAV with more than two channels — a 5.1 mix, a multitrack recorder file — is folded down to stereo. MP3 holds two at most.

Asked about WAV to MP3

Is 192 kbps good enough for music?

For listening, yes — in blind tests most people cannot pick it from the original. If you are archiving a master or sending stems to someone who will keep working on them, keep the WAV or convert to FLAC instead, which shrinks it by about half with nothing lost.

Can I choose a different bitrate?

Not on this page; it writes one high setting so the answer is always a good MP3. The audio compressor takes a WAV too, and lets you pick a smaller quality or type the size the file has to fit under.

My WAV is 24-bit. Does that carry over?

MP3 has no bit depth to carry it into. The extra detail in a 24-bit file sits far below what MP3 keeps, so the result is the same as from a 16-bit copy of the same recording.

Can I turn the MP3 back into the original WAV?

Into a WAV, yes; into the original, no. What the MP3 left out is gone, so keep the WAV if it is the only copy of something you care about.

WAV to MP3 converter