Convert audio
Move audio between the formats that matter, without uploading it anywhere.
Your file
Drop a file here, or click to choose
It stays on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Settings
Which format
| Format | Type | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 | Lossy | Universal compatibility. Anything made after 1998 plays it. |
| M4A (AAC) | Lossy | Better sound than MP3 at the same bitrate. Apple devices, modern everything. |
| Opus | Lossy | The best quality per kilobyte by a distance. Speech at 32 kbps is genuinely fine. |
| OGG (Vorbis) | Lossy | Patent-free. Game engines and older open source software. |
| WAV | Uncompressed | Editing and mastering. About 10 MB per minute in stereo. |
| FLAC | Lossless | Archiving. Roughly half the size of WAV with nothing thrown away. |
Bitrate, honestly
For music, 192 kbps MP3 is transparent for most people on most equipment, and 256 is comfortably past the point of diminishing returns. For speech, 96 kbps is plenty and 64 kbps Opus is still clear. Converting a 128 kbps MP3 to 320 kbps does not add anything back, the detail is already gone, and you just get a bigger file holding the same sound.
Work out which direction you are going
Every conversion here is one of three kinds, and knowing which decides how much care the settings need.
- Lossless to lossy, such as WAV or FLAC to MP3. This is where a high bitrate genuinely pays, because the encoder is working from the real recording with no earlier artefacts to preserve. 256 or 320 kbps is worth the space.
- Lossy to lossy, such as M4A or OGG to MP3. Match or slightly exceed the source bitrate and stop. Going higher spends space storing existing artefacts more accurately.
- Lossy to lossless, such as MP3 to WAV. Nothing is gained in quality and the file grows several times over. Do it only when some piece of software demands uncompressed audio.
Mono, and the halving nobody uses
Setting channels to mono removes half the data before the encoder starts, which is a far bigger saving than any bitrate adjustment and costs nothing at all when the source was a single microphone. Interviews, lectures, voice memos, dictation and most podcasts recorded on one mic are stereo files containing two copies of the same thing. Converting those to 96 kbps mono rather than 192 kbps stereo makes the file a quarter of the size with no audible difference whatsoever.
Keep stereo for anything with music, room ambience or more than one microphone.
Sample rate, and when to leave it alone
44.1 kHz is CD standard and the safe default for music; 48 kHz is what video uses, so match it if the audio is going back into a video. Lowering to 22 kHz or below audibly dulls speech and saves less than dropping the bitrate would, so it is rarely the right lever. Raising the sample rate above the source achieves nothing at all, in the same way that upscaling a photograph does not add detail.
If the audio needs to be shorter or louder rather than a different format, trim audio and change volume are the tools, and doing that work before converting means one encode rather than two.
Common questions
Does converting MP3 to WAV improve the quality?
No. It removes the compression from the container but nothing is recovered. It is only useful when a tool refuses to accept MP3.
Is converting between lossy formats bad?
It loses a little each time, because each encoder throws away what it thinks is inaudible and they disagree about what that is. One hop is fine; repeated round trips are not.
What is the safest all-round choice?
MP3 at 192 or 256 kbps. Nothing anywhere will refuse to play it.