WAV Compressor
Compress WAV audio to a size you choose. A WAV carries no bitrate to lower, so it is encoded to MP3, the only way to make an uncompressed file meaningfully smaller.
Up to 50 MB per file. Sign up free to compress files up to 100 MB.
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Checking files and selected compression settings.
This page stops at 50 MB and one file per run. Pro compresses files up to 1 GB and a full batch in one go, with a priority queue.
How to compress WAV files online
WAV stores audio uncompressed, so it is the one audio format where there is genuinely a lot to remove. A minute of CD-quality stereo occupies roughly 10 MB whether it is music or silence.
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1
Decide what the file is for
A master you will edit again should stay WAV. A recording you are sending to someone to listen to does not need to be. That choice matters more than any target size you pick here.
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2
Choose a target size
Because the source is uncompressed, the reductions are dramatic: a WAV routinely drops by 80 to 90 per cent before anything is audibly wrong. Long recordings benefit most, since they start largest.
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3
Keep the original
Compression here is one way. Archive the untouched WAV somewhere before you replace it, because no later step restores what the encoder removed.
Why WAV files are so large
WAV holds every sample the converter captured, with no encoding applied. That is why it is the format studios keep and the format nobody emails: perfect fidelity and no concession to size whatsoever.
Sample rate times bit depth times channels times duration. A silent WAV and a full orchestra of the same length and settings weigh exactly the same, which is not true of any compressed format.
Audio recorded at 96 kHz and 24 bit for production carries detail no listener needs. Delivering at 44.1 kHz and 16 bit halves the data before any lossy encoding is involved.
Interviews, dictation and single-microphone recordings are usually two copies of the same signal. Dropping to mono removes half the file immediately and changes nothing a listener can detect.
Unlike shrinking a WAV by lowering its sample rate, lossy compression discards information permanently. Converting the result back to WAV restores the file size but not the audio, which is why the original is worth keeping.
If the file is going into a video edit, a mastering session or any further processing, compress it afterwards rather than before. Each encoding stage compounds on the last, and the editing stage is where quality matters most.