Which audio format should you pick?
- MP3, the format everything understands: phones, car stereos, smart speakers, old media players, every editing app. At 192 kbps most people can't tell it from the original.
- M4A (AAC), the successor to MP3 used by Apple Music, YouTube and most phones. It sounds better than MP3 at the same bitrate, so you can save space without losing quality.
- WAV, uncompressed audio. Nothing is thrown away, which makes it the right choice for editing, mastering or handing files to a video editor. It's big: about 10 MB per minute of CD-quality stereo.
- OGG (Opus), the most efficient codec here. 96 kbps Opus holds up against much higher MP3 bitrates, which makes it great for websites, games and voice notes. Some older devices and car stereos can't play it.
- FLAC, lossless like WAV, usually at around half the size, and it keeps 24-bit recordings at 24 bits. The best way to archive music or masters without losing a thing.
Bitrate, sample rate and channels in plain words
Bitrate is how much data is spent on each second of sound. Higher means closer to the original and bigger files. For music, 192 kbps MP3 or 128 kbps AAC is plenty for everyday listening; choose 256 to 320 kbps for a library you'll keep. Speech needs far less, a mono podcast sounds clean at 96 kbps.
Sample rate is how many times per second the sound is measured. 44.1 kHz is the music standard and 48 kHz the video standard. Keep the original unless a platform or editor asks for a specific rate; converting up doesn't add detail.
Channels: switching a stereo file to mono halves the data and is ideal for voice recordings, where both channels usually carry the same thing. Surround files are folded down to stereo for MP3, M4A and OGG, and kept intact in WAV.
Converting a whole folder at once
Drop in a batch and every file joins the queue with its own status: waiting, converting with a progress bar, done, or a plain-language reason if something went wrong. A file that can't be read doesn't stop the rest. You can keep adding files while others convert, and remove anything you don't need.
When the batch is finished, Download all packs the results into one ZIP. Files with the same name get a number added, so nothing is overwritten.
Good to know
- Converting a lossy file (MP3, AAC, Opus) to WAV or FLAC doesn't bring back detail that was already discarded, it only makes the file easier to edit.
- Converting from one lossy format to another loses a little quality each time, so start from the best source you have.
- Got a video? Add it here to save just the sound, or use Extract Audio, which can copy the original track without re-encoding.
- To check or fix how loud a file is before publishing, run it through the loudness meter. To cut or clean it up, open the audio editor.