Compress WAV files in your browser
WAV is raw PCM, so size is arithmetic: channels, sample rate and bit depth. This page writes 16-bit WAV and lets you cut the rest honestly.
or browse your device. Everything is processed on this device
No WAV to hand?
How to compress a WAV file
It is read in this tab. There is no upload, and a long recording is not stopped by a server limit.
Lower the sample rate for speech, turn on mono when the second channel is unused, and leave metadata stripping on unless you need the tags.
Duration, channels and sample rate are shown for the file you get back. The engine keeps the original when the output is not smaller.
A plain 16-bit WAV written from memory to your downloads, still playable anywhere WAV is accepted.
What actually makes a WAV smaller
WAV is almost always uncompressed PCM. The file is a header plus a stream of samples, so its size is sample rate times channel count times bytes per sample times duration, give or take a few dozen header bytes. There is no secret encoder setting that keeps every sample and still halves the file.
The honest levers are therefore physical. Downmixing stereo to mono removes a channel. Lowering 48 kHz speech to 22.05 kHz or 16 kHz removes samples the ear does not need for voice. Writing 16-bit PCM instead of 24-bit halves the payload again on high-resolution masters. This page always writes 16-bit little-endian PCM for that reason.
A target size works here as arithmetic rather than a search: once duration and channel count are known, the highest sample rate that fits under your figure can be chosen from the ladder, or refused when even 16 kHz mono cannot reach it.
If you need the file much smaller still, WAV is the wrong container. MP3 or Opus will throw audio away on purpose and land at a fraction of the size. Keep WAV when you need an editable PCM master; switch when you are shipping something to play or attach.
WAV compression FAQ
Can I compress a WAV without losing quality?
Only by removing things that are not the samples you care about. Stripping tags is free. Downmixing or lowering the sample rate changes the audio. Writing 16-bit from a 24-bit source also discards low-order bits. There is no lossless WAV-to-WAV setting that guarantees a large saving on an already lean 16-bit mono file.
Why is there no bitrate control?
Because uncompressed WAV has no bitrate in the MP3 sense. Size follows sample rate, channels and bit depth. A bitrate box would either be ignored or imply a lossy encode inside a WAV wrapper, which this page refuses to pretend.
What sample rate should I choose for speech?
22.05 kHz is a practical default for interviews and voice notes. 16 kHz is enough for dictation and phone-quality speech. Keep 44.1 or 48 kHz when the recording includes music or you still need headroom for editing.
Does this convert WAV to MP3?
No. The output is still WAV, written as 16-bit PCM. If you want a much smaller lossy file for email or phones, use the MP3 tool instead.
Why did nanofile keep my original WAV?
The attempted output was not smaller. That usually means the file was already 16-bit, at or below your chosen rate, with the channel count unchanged and little or no metadata to remove. Returning a larger PCM file would not help.
Does my recording leave this device?
No. Decoding and writing happen in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, queued or stored on a server.
Related
Same format joins the queue. Anything else re-routes to its own tool.