Convert WAV to MP3 in your browser

A WAV stores every sample in full, which is why it is enormous. This is the first lossy pass the audio has had, so 192 kbps really is transparent rather than merely tolerable.

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WAV to MP3 options

Bitrate (kbps) 192

Your WAV is lossless, so nothing has been discarded yet and this is the only pass. 192 is transparent for most music, 256 or 320 if it is going to be mastered further, and 96 or below is voice territory. Mono halves whatever you pick.

Downmix to mono Off

One channel instead of two, so roughly half the size again. Right for interviews, dictation, lectures and anything recorded on a single microphone. Wrong for music.

Strip tags and cover art Off

Off by default here. A WAV rarely carries much, but if yours has LIST INFO or ID3 chunks with a title in them they will be written into the MP3 unless you turn this on.

Convert to a target size Off

MP3 size is bitrate times duration, so we work the bitrate out from the length of your recording rather than encoding it five times to find out. If your figure needs less than 32 kbps we say so instead of pretending.

How to convert WAV to MP3

01

Drop the WAV files

One recording or a folder of them. Nothing is uploaded, so a two hour session is not stopped by a server limit and a batch costs nothing extra.

02

Pick a bitrate

192 for music, 96 or 64 with mono on for speech. Or type the size you need to land under and let the arithmetic pick.

03

Save the MP3

A .mp3 that every phone, car stereo, podcast host and upload form accepts, at a fraction of what the WAV weighed.

Why is a WAV so much bigger than an MP3?

A WAV is uncompressed PCM: the raw amplitude of the waveform, sampled 44,100 times a second, two bytes per sample, times the number of channels. That is the whole format. Three minutes of CD-rate stereo is 44,100 x 2 x 2 x 180, which is about 31MB, and it is 31MB whether the recording is an orchestra or thirty seconds of silence followed by a cough. Nothing about the content changes the size.

MP3 throws away what the ear does not reach: frequencies masked by louder ones nearby, detail above the range most people hear, the second channel where both channels are nearly identical. What is left is stored at a fixed rate you choose. At 192 kbps that is roughly a tenth of the bytes, and for most listening on most equipment the difference is not audible.

The important part is that this is the first lossy pass your audio has had. Converting an M4A or an OGG to MP3 means transcoding a file that has already been through an encoder, and the two rounds of damage compound. A WAV has lost nothing yet, so the encoder gets to make its own decisions from the original waveform, which is the best case for this format.

WAV to MP3 FAQ

What bitrate should I use?

192 kbps for music is the honest default and what this page starts on: transparent for most material on most equipment. Go to 256 or 320 if the file is going to be edited or mastered again afterwards, since every further encode compounds. For speech, turn on mono and drop to 96 or 64, which sounds identical on a phone and is a fraction of the size.

Will it sound worse than the WAV?

Technically yes, audibly almost certainly not at 192 and above. MP3 discards detail permanently, so a directly measured comparison will always show a difference. Whether you can hear it is a different question, and on a laptop, a phone or a car stereo at 192 kbps you will not.

Is there a length limit?

No. The encoding runs in this tab, so there is no upload to time out and no server rule about file size. A two hour recording works the same way a thirty second one does, it just takes longer to encode.

Can I convert a whole folder at once?

Yes. Drop the folder or select the files and they queue up with one set of settings applied to all of them. Because nothing is uploaded, a hundred files is no different for us than one.

Do the tags survive?

If the WAV had any, yes, unless you turn on "Strip tags and cover art". It is off by default on this page, which is the opposite of the compressors: somebody converting a library wants the titles to arrive with it.

Should I keep the WAV?

Keep it if it is a master, a multitrack bounce, or anything you will edit again, because the MP3 cannot be turned back into it. If it is a finished recording you only listen to, the MP3 is the copy worth keeping and the WAV is ten times the storage for a difference you cannot hear.

Are my WAV files uploaded to convert them?

No. The WAV is decoded and the MP3 is written by your own browser, in this tab. There is no upload endpoint in the site for a file to go to, which you can check in your network tools: convert something and watch that no request carries it. Disconnect from the network after the page loads and it still works.