How to convert WAV to MP3
To convert a WAV file to MP3, open a converter, pick a bitrate — 192 kbps suits almost everything — and save the result. On this site that happens inside your own browser tab: the encoder is a WebAssembly build running in a Web Worker on your machine, so the recording is never uploaded anywhere.
The whole job takes about four clicks. What follows is those clicks, the one decision that actually changes the outcome, and the handful of things nobody mentions until a file gets refused.
The short version
- 1. Open the converter and drag your
.wavonto the drop zone. Clicking it opens a normal file picker if you'd rather browse. - 2. Under Output settings, choose a bitrate. It starts at 192 kbps, which is a sound place to leave it.
- 3. Hit convert. Each file gets its own progress bar, and the first run pauses for a second while the encoder loads.
- 4. Download. Tick Download after conversion before you start and each MP3 saves itself the moment it's ready.
No account, no email, no queue, nothing to install. The MP3 keeps the name of the WAV it came from, so a folder of converted files still sorts the way you expect.
Which bitrate to pick
Bitrate is how much data the encoder is allowed to spend on each second of audio. Higher means a bigger file and less thrown away. It's the only setting here that meaningfully changes what you end up with.
| Bitrate | Size | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 128 kbps | ~0.9 MB per minute | Speech. Voice memos, interviews, lectures, anything heading for a phone speaker. |
| 192 kbps | ~1.4 MB per minute | The default. Music that should just sound right without you thinking about it. |
| 256 kbps | ~1.9 MB per minute | Music you care about, played through decent headphones. |
| 320 kbps | ~2.4 MB per minute | The ceiling for MP3. Archive copies and anything going into someone else's mix. |
For scale: a CD-quality WAV runs about 10 MB a minute. Even at the top setting the MP3 is roughly four times smaller, and at 128 kbps it's about eleven times smaller. That gap is the entire reason the format exists.
If you can't decide, leave it at 192 and carry on. You can change the bitrate on a single row after the fact — that one file re-converts and the rest stay as they are. To shrink a file as far as it goes, compress WAV to MP3 at 128 kbps and compare the size before and after.
What MP3 actually does to the sound
MP3 is lossy. The encoder models what human hearing is unlikely to notice and drops it — quiet detail sitting underneath a louder sound, frequencies at the far edges of the range. At 192 kbps and up most people, most of the time, on most equipment, will not hear the difference. That is the deal, and it's usually a good one.
What matters is that the door only opens one way. Running the MP3 back through MP3 to WAV rebuilds an uncompressed file around the audio you have left; it cannot put back what the encoder removed. So keep the original WAV if the recording is a master, or if it's going into more editing. Convert to MP3 for the copy you send, upload or listen to.
Converting a whole folder
Drop the lot in at once. On a desktop browser a batch takes up to 15 files, 200 MB per file and 500 MB in total. On a phone those ceilings fall to 50 MB per file and 120 MB per batch, because a mobile tab has far less memory to work with — this is a limit of the device, not a paywall.
The same file added twice is quietly declined rather than converted twice. When the queue finishes, one button packs everything into wav-to-mp3-converted.zip so you're not saving fifteen files by hand.
The options most people miss
Behind Advanced there are three that save real time:
- Match loudness across files. Brings everything to roughly podcast loudness. Worth it when a set was recorded on different days or different mics and one track makes you reach for the volume.
- Start at / Stop at. Timecodes like
0:00and1:30. Trims dead air off the front or cuts a clip out of the middle without opening an editor. - Track info. Artist, album and year get written into the MP3 tags for every file in the batch. The title comes from each filename, so it pays to name the files before you convert rather than after.
If the file gets refused
“Only WAV files are supported.” The check looks at the extension and at the first bytes of the file, so an AIFF or a FLAC renamed to .wav won't slip through. Re-export it as a real WAV from whatever made it.
Too big. Compare against the limits above — and remember they are lower on a phone. The same file that stalls on mobile usually converts fine on a laptop.
The bar sits still on the first file. The encoder downloads once, before any encoding starts. A slow connection or a blocked request stretches that step; reloading the page is the fix that works.
Doing it without the website
There's a Chrome extension running the same encoder, if you convert often enough that opening a tab is the annoying part. Free as well.
Either way nothing leaves your machine, which you can test in about ten seconds: load the page, turn off your wifi, convert something. It still works. If you want to know who is making that claim, that's on the about page.
Ready when you are — the WAV to MP3 converter is on the home page.