The most common audio conversion
WAV files come straight from recorders, music software, sample packs and CD rips. They sound great but are huge, so before you email a demo, upload a podcast or put an album on your phone, you convert WAV to MP3. MP3 plays on every computer, phone, car stereo and website, and it is about seven to eleven times smaller.
Picking the bitrate
Since WAV is uncompressed, this is a first-generation encode and the MP3 will be as good as MP3 can be. The bitrate decides the trade-off between size and quality:
| Bitrate | Size per minute | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 64 kbps | 0.48 MB | speech in mono, voice notes |
| 96 to 128 kbps | 0.7 to 1 MB | podcasts, audiobooks, lectures |
| 192 kbps | 1.44 MB | most music, everyday listening |
| 256 kbps | 1.92 MB | music on good headphones |
| 320 kbps | 2.4 MB | masters, DJ sets, when size does not matter |
For comparison, the same minute of 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo WAV takes about 10.6 MB.
Speech, mono and sample rate
Spoken recordings rarely need stereo. If your microphone recorded mono but the WAV is stereo, choose mono output: the bitrate is then spent on one channel, and 64 kbps mono sounds as clean as 128 kbps stereo for a voice. MP3 supports sample rates up to 48 kHz. If your WAV is 88.2 or 96 kHz, it is converted to a rate MP3 can use; this does not reduce audible quality. For WAV files at 32-bit float, the converter handles the format change for you, but very loud recordings that clip in the WAV will also clip in the MP3, so check levels first with normalize.
Tags and next steps
WAV files seldom contain tags, so the MP3 will usually have no title or artist. Any music player or tag editor can add them afterwards. Cutting silence at the start and end with Cut audio before converting also makes the MP3 shorter and more pleasant. If you want a smaller file but no quality loss at all, use WAV to FLAC instead.