Audio to WAV Converter

Choose the settings for where the WAV is going

“WAV” covers many combinations of sample rate, channels and encoding, and the software receiving the file usually expects one of them. Keep the original sample rate unless the destination asks for a different one — every resample is a small change to the audio.

One destination does not want WAV at all: Audible’s ACX asks audiobook producers for 192 kbps (or higher) constant-bitrate MP3 at 44.1 kHz.

How big will the WAV be?

PCM audio has a fixed size: sample rate × bytes per sample × channels × seconds, plus a 44-byte header. CD-quality stereo is 44,100 × 2 × 2 = 176,400 bytes a second — 1,411.2 kbit/s, against the 128–320 kbit/s of a typical MP3. The tool shows the estimated size before you convert. Per minute (1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes):

A standard WAV cannot exceed 4 GB: its size fields are 32-bit numbers, which can count up to 4,294,967,296 bytes. That is about 6 hours 45 minutes of CD-quality stereo. Longer recordings need RF64 or its successor BW64, which add 64-bit size fields (EBU Tech 3306, ITU-R BS.2088). This converter’s 30-minute limit keeps every file far below that.

Converting MP3 or M4A to WAV does not improve the sound

Apple puts it plainly: “If you convert a song from a compressed to an uncompressed format, its quality doesn’t improve.” MP3, AAC (M4A), Ogg Vorbis and Opus discard detail when they are made; WAV stores exactly what the decoder gives back. The WAV sounds the same as the MP3 — and is about ten times larger.

Converting is still worth it when:

• an editor, sampler, phone system or device accepts only WAV;
• you will edit and export again — each new MP3 encode loses more, so the Audacity manual advises never doing production work in MP3 but in a lossless format such as WAV, AIFF or FLAC;
• you need clean loops: MP3 encoders add a short delay and padding (LAME’s technical FAQ describes 576 samples of encoder delay). In our test in Chrome 154, a 2.000-second MP3 converted to a WAV of exactly 2.000 seconds, so the browser had trimmed that padding.

Going the other way loses detail: a 24-bit source written as 16-bit keeps about 96 dB of dynamic range instead of 144 dB (roughly 6 dB per bit). For high-resolution FLAC or WAV, choose 24-bit PCM. The 16-bit conversion here is plain rounding without added dither.

Phone recordings: WhatsApp voice notes and iPhone Voice Memos

WhatsApp audio to WAV: WhatsApp voice notes are Opus audio in an Ogg file (.opus or .ogg). One examined in the Audacity forum was mono, 16 kHz, about 19 kbit/s. Opus always decodes at 48 kHz, but its header records the rate before encoding, and this tool keeps that rate — a one-minute voice note becomes a 1.92 MB WAV at 16 kHz instead of 5.76 MB at 48 kHz. Safari supports Opus only inside Apple’s CAF files, so open WhatsApp notes in Chrome, Edge or Firefox; the page warns you if your browser cannot play them.

iPhone Voice Memos are exported as .m4a, with layered recordings flattened and Spatial Audio turned into stereo. Those AAC files convert in every major browser. A recording that will not convert may be Apple Lossless (ALAC), which, among the major browsers, only Safari decodes. Renaming a file from .m4a to .wav does not convert it — the audio inside stays AAC, and most software then refuses it.

Getting the sound out of a video

Open an MP4, MOV, M4V or WebM video and the tool converts its soundtrack — video to WAV in one step — at the rate the audio was recorded. Phone videos often store their track details at the end of the file; the tool reads them from there. If a video carries several audio tracks (languages or commentary), only the first is decoded — the Web Audio API draft specifies exactly that. The 200 MB limit applies to the whole video file, so it suits clips; for a long video, a desktop tool such as ffmpeg is the better route.

Files a browser cannot open

The browser’s own decoders do the work, so what converts depends on the browser. These failed in our tests or are documented as unsupported:

Why nothing is uploaded

Of four popular converter pages we checked in October 2026, three send the file to their servers; one says it deletes uploads an hour later, the others give no time. Here the file is read and decoded inside your browser tab and the WAV is built there, which matters for interviews, meetings and voice notes. You can check: open your browser’s developer tools on the Network tab while converting, or disconnect from the internet once the page has loaded — the converter keeps working.

What a WAV file is

WAV (WAVE) is IBM and Microsoft’s audio format from 1991, published in their Multimedia Programming Interface and Data Specifications 1.0 as part of RIFF, a file structure built from labelled chunks. A WAV starts with “RIFF … WAVE”, then a fmt chunk that states the encoding, channels and sample rate, then a data chunk of samples. Nearly every WAV holds linear PCM (format code 1, uncompressed); the same container can carry 32-bit float (code 3), A-law (6) and μ-law (7). More than two channels need the WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE header.

This converter writes the plain 44-byte PCM header (format code 1) for 16- and 24-bit files, and an 18-byte format chunk plus a “fact” chunk for μ-law and A-law, as non-PCM WAVs require. Surround audio is mixed down to stereo, so it never needs the extensible header that some upload services refuse.

Desktop alternatives

• Audacity: File → Export Audio (Ctrl+Shift+E); WAV defaults to 16-bit PCM at 44,100 Hz. M4A, WMA and Opus need its FFmpeg add-on.
• ffmpeg: ffmpeg -i input.m4a output.wav writes 16-bit PCM; add -vn for a video, -ar 16000 -ac 1 for speech, or -c:a pcm_s24le for 24-bit.
• Apple Music app (Mac): Settings → Files → Import Settings → Import Using: WAV Encoder, then File → Convert → Create WAV Version.
• VLC can also transcode a file to WAV.