Compress WAV to AAC

WAV files are uncompressed and huge. AAC uses lossy compression to shrink them by 90% or more. The size reduction is significant for sharing, uploading, and storage.

For email attachments, 128-192kbps works well. For music sharing, use 256-320kbps. AudioUtils lets you drop your file and convert instantly. No upload to a server, no waiting.

The size drop is the point — around 8× less data, which is what turns an unsendable file into an attachment. Encoding straight from an uncompressed master means one lossy generation, not two — noticeably better than re-encoding from an already-compressed file.

Most people meet WAV through recording sessions. It is a fine format there; the trouble is that WAV is uncompressed, so files are enormous — an hour of audio runs past 600 MB. AAC is the destination because it plays essentially everywhere — HLS streaming segments and every ordinary phone, browser, and player. WAV costs you around 10 MB for every minute; AAC asks for about 1.2. Over a long recording that gap is the whole reason to convert. Because WAV is uncompressed, encoding to AAC here is the clean, single-generation case — the encoder sees the whole original signal, so this AAC is as good as the format gets.