A WAV file holds sound exactly as it was recorded, which is why it is so large: about 10 MB for every minute of CD-quality stereo. An MP3 of the same recording is a fraction of that size, and it plays on almost any phone, car stereo, music app or website. This WAV to MP3 converter makes that MP3 for you, inside your browser.
Drop one WAV file or several, choose the MP3 bitrate and press Convert to MP3. Your recordings never leave your computer: nothing is uploaded, there is no account to create and there is no watermark. It is a free way to convert WAV to MP3 online without handing your audio to a server.
How to convert WAV to MP3 in your browser
- Press Select WAV files and choose one or more files, or drop them anywhere on the page.
- Under MP3 bitrate, pick 128, 192 or 320 kbps. 192 kbps is chosen for you, and each choice shows the size your MP3 will be.
- Press Convert to MP3. When it finishes, press Save MP3, or Save all as ZIP when you converted several files.
Each MP3 keeps the name of its WAV, with .mp3 on the end. Your WAV is only read, never changed, so you can convert the same recording again at another bitrate whenever you like. Press Change settings on the finished screen to go back with your files still loaded.
Before you convert, the panel shows how long the recording is, whether it is mono or stereo, its sample rate and the bitrate the MP3 will have. You can press play to hear the WAV first, which is a quick way to check you picked the right take.
Converting several WAV files at once
Drop a whole album or a set of voice notes together and every one is converted with the same bitrate, one after another. Files you add later join the queue. If one file cannot be read, the rest still convert, and the finished screen tells you which one was left out.
Choosing the MP3 bitrate
The bitrate is how much data the MP3 uses for each second of sound. A higher bitrate keeps more detail and makes a bigger file. Every MP3 this page writes uses a constant bitrate (CBR), so the size is easy to predict and the file plays smoothly on older players too.
| MP3 bitrate | Size per minute (stereo) | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 128 kbps | About 1 MB | Speech, podcasts, voice memos and sharing in a chat |
| 192 kbps | About 1.4 MB | Music for everyday listening; the choice made for you |
| 320 kbps | About 2.4 MB | Music you care about, on good headphones or speakers |
For most music, 192 kbps is hard to tell apart from the WAV on ordinary headphones, at around a seventh of the size. Pick 320 kbps when the recording matters and space does not. Pick 128 kbps for talking, where the smaller file is worth more than the last bit of detail.
What the MP3 keeps from your WAV
When you convert a WAV file to MP3, the sound is encoded once as MP3. The MP3 keeps the length of the recording, its sample rate and its channels, so a mono voice note stays mono and a stereo mix stays stereo.
- Sample rates of 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz, the usual ones for music and video, are kept as they are.
- A WAV recorded above 48 kHz, such as 96 kHz studio audio, is saved at 48 kHz, the highest rate an MP3 holds.
- A WAV with more than two channels, such as a 5.1 mix, is saved as stereo, because an MP3 holds one or two channels.
- Under 32 kHz an MP3 tops out at 160 kbps, so a low-rate WAV picked at 192 or 320 kbps is saved at 160 kbps, and the panel tells you.
The bit depth of the WAV (16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit float) does not carry over, because an MP3 has no bit depth of its own. A 24-bit studio file converts as well as a 16-bit one. The MP3 may also run up to about a tenth of a second longer than the WAV, which is the short silence every MP3 encoder adds at the start and end.
Private, free and on your own device
Most online converters upload your audio, convert it on their servers and send it back. This one does the whole job in your browser tab. The WAV is read from your disk, the MP3 is made on your device, and nothing about the recording is sent anywhere. Our privacy policy explains what the site does collect.
Ordinary PCM WAV files, at 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits, have no size limit. Other WAV files, such as compressed ADPCM WAVs, take longer and can be up to 2 GB. The wait saves you from converting the file somewhere else first. The tool works in current Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
Converting WAV to MP3 here is free, with no account and no watermark. It is not counted in the free daily limit, which applies to document conversions only.
When to keep the WAV, and other audio tools
Keep your WAV if you plan to edit, mix or master the recording, because every round of MP3 encoding throws a little detail away. Make the MP3 at the end, for sharing and listening, and keep the WAV as your master copy.
If your sound is inside a video rather than a WAV, you do not need to convert it twice. Use MP4 to MP3 to save the sound of a video straight to MP3, MP4 to WAV for an uncompressed copy, or Extract audio for MP3, WAV or AAC from MOV, MKV and WebM files too. Every one of them is listed in the audio tools directory.
Make your MP3 now
A WAV is the right file for recording and editing, and an MP3 is the right file for listening and sharing. Choose your WAV files above, keep 192 kbps or pick another bitrate, and press Convert to MP3. Your MP3s are ready in moments, and your recordings stay on your device.