Convert WAV to MP3

Some, and it is permanent — this is the one direction where information is genuinely thrown away. WAV holds every sample exactly; MP3 discards what a psychoacoustic model predicts you will not hear. At 192 kbps and above that prediction is good enough to be transparent on most material and most equipment. Keep the WAV as your master, because you cannot get back to it from the MP3. WAV normally stores raw uncompressed PCM — every sample kept exactly, at whatever bit depth and sample rate was captured. MP3 is lossy: a psychoacoustic model discards frequencies the ear is unlikely to notice, typically at 128 to 320 kbps.

Yes, and it is a genuine gain over WAV, which has nowhere dependable to store any of it. MP3 carries title, artist, album, year, track number and embedded cover art in the container itself, so a music library files it correctly without a manual pass. Nothing beats MP3 for compatibility — car stereos, gym equipment, DAPs and twenty-year-old hardware all read it without question.

If WAV is lossy and MP3 is lossless (e.g. MP3 → WAV), the MP3 file is no better than the WAV — you can't recover information that's already been thrown away. If WAV is lossless and MP3 is lossy, expect the MP3 codec to recompress; at 192 kbps this is transparent for most content.

Several files in one job need a paid plan. Free use is one file per conversion, one conversion an hour. On a paid plan you can add several files to one job, then download each result on its own or all of them in one ZIP.

By default yes (48 kHz WAV → 48 kHz MP3). If you need to downsample for compatibility (e.g. 96 kHz → 44.1 kHz for CD burning) the advanced sample-rate option does this with high-quality resampling.

Not in this step. The converter has no loudness setting and leaves the level as it is. To even out the volume, run the finished MP3 through a Normalize tool on this site.

MP3 plays almost everywhere. AAC plays on Apple devices, most Android phones and Sonos. FLAC plays on Sonos and Android but not on older iPods, and WAV plays on nearly everything but makes large files. There are no device presets on this page, so choose the target format your player supports.

Yes. Nobody listens to or shares the audio, which matters for personal audiobook libraries, and uploaded WAV files and their converted copies are deleted automatically about 24 hours after conversion.

It depends on the size and length of the file. Small documents and images are usually ready quickly. Long videos take the longest, because most video conversions re-encode every frame.