WAV to MP3 for Podcasts

Nearly every podcast is recorded and edited in WAV and published as MP3, because that is what hosts and podcast apps expect. So this conversion is the final step of your workflow, and the order matters: record in WAV, edit in WAV, level and mix in WAV, and encode the MP3 once, from the finished episode. Converting earlier means every subsequent edit sits on top of lossy audio, and your export adds a second lossy generation on top of that.

Podcast bitrates are lower than most people assume, and that is deliberate. 128 kbps stereo is the widely used standard. For pure speech, 64-96 kbps mono is entirely respectable and is what many large talk-format shows actually publish — it roughly halves the download for every listener, which matters across a back catalogue and for anyone on limited mobile data. Reserve 192 kbps and above for shows where music is genuinely part of the experience.

Mono is the decision most worth revisiting. If your episode is voices with no meaningful stereo image — which describes most interview and solo shows — then mono at 96 kbps is perceptually equivalent to stereo at 192 kbps and half the file size. Publishing stereo by default is a habit, not a requirement.

Higher bitrates do not make speech sound better. Past a certain point you are only encoding the room, the mic noise, and the compression you already applied — at a cost your listeners pay in download size and your host may pay in bandwidth. Spend the quality budget on the recording and the edit, not on the encoder.

Archive the WAV. Once an episode ships you will eventually want a clip for social, a segment for a best-of, or a fix for something you missed — and all of those should come from the lossless edit, never from the published MP3, which has already thrown detail away.