WAV to MP3 Converter

WAV to MP3 — the 90% file size reduction that actually sounds the same

A 3-minute song recorded at CD quality (44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo) takes up about 30 MB as a WAV file. The same song as a 192 kbps MP3 is about 4.3 MB. That's an 85% reduction. On any normal pair of headphones, in any normal listening environment, you can't hear the difference.

This is what psychoacoustic compression does: it doesn't randomly delete data, it specifically removes audio information that your auditory system can't perceive under normal listening conditions. The sounds that get cut are masked by louder simultaneous sounds, or they're above the threshold where compression artefacts are imperceptible. The result sounds the same because, perceptually, it is.

Which bitrate should you use

• 320 kbps — maximum MP3 quality. Completely transparent in blind tests on any equipment. 2.4 MB per minute. Use this if file size isn't the primary concern and you want the best possible quality.
• 192 kbps — the real sweet spot. Genuinely indistinguishable from 320 kbps on any consumer headphones or speakers. 1.4 MB per minute. This is what most music streaming services target for standard quality.
• 128 kbps — excellent for speech, podcasts, audiobooks. On music you may occasionally notice a slight softening of high frequencies on a good system. 1 MB per minute.
• 96 kbps — fine for voice, noticeably worse for music. Use only for spoken word where small file size matters more than fidelity.

Variable bitrate vs constant bitrate

VBR (Variable Bit Rate) encodes simple parts of the audio (silence, quiet passages) at lower bitrates and complex parts (dense chords, lots of instruments) at higher bitrates. The average bitrate ends up lower than a constant bitrate encode at the same quality level. VBR 192 kbps average will typically sound better than CBR 128 kbps. Most modern MP3 players and streaming apps handle VBR MP3 perfectly.

One thing to understand about encoding from WAV

WAV is lossless — it stores the exact audio signal. MP3 is lossy — it permanently removes some data. This is a one-way journey. You can go from WAV to MP3, but you can't go from MP3 back to WAV and recover the lost information. Re-saving an MP3 as WAV just wraps the MP3 data in an uncompressed container — it doesn't restore anything. If you're archiving music you care about, keep the WAV original alongside the MP3 copy.

For podcasters and voice recorders specifically

Podcast recordings are almost always WAV or AIFF from the recording software. Podcast hosts like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Buzzsprout accept MP3 natively. At 128 kbps mono (podcasts are typically mono), a 60-minute episode comes in at about 58 MB. At 64 kbps mono for talk-only content, the same episode is 29 MB — both are perfectly adequate and sound great for speech.