Your File Won’t Play. Wrong Format.
You’ve downloaded a FLAC album from Bandcamp and your car stereo doesn’t understand FLAC. Your buddy sent an OGG voice note and your iPhone says “unsupported format.” The podcast editing app wants WAV, but your recording is in AAC.
Format compatibility is annoying, but it’s fixable in seconds. Upload your file, pick the format you need, download the converted version.
Five Formats, Explained Simply
- MP3: plays on literally everything. Car stereos, ancient phones, web browsers, you name it. Lossy compression, but good enough for most ears.
- WAV: raw, uncompressed audio. Huge files, perfect quality. This is what recording studios work with.
- OGG (Vorbis), open-source alternative to MP3. Better quality at the same file size. Popular in gaming and Linux circles.
- FLAC: lossless compression. Same quality as WAV but about half the file size. The smart choice for archiving your music collection.
- AAC: Apple’s preferred format. Better than MP3 at equivalent bitrates. This is what iTunes and Apple Music use.
Steps
- Upload your audio file.
- Pick the target format.
- Click Convert Audio.
- Download.
FFmpeg handles the conversion on the server with optimized encoding settings for each format.
When Each Format Makes Sense
You just want it to play everywhere. Convert to MP3. Your car, your phone, your grandma’s tablet, a random Bluetooth speaker, MP3 works on all of them.
You’re editing or producing. Convert to WAV first. Editing lossy files means you’re degrading quality with every export. Start from WAV, do your work, and convert to a lossy format only as the final step.
You want lossless without the insane file sizes. Convert to FLAC. It’s mathematically identical to WAV when decoded, but the files are roughly 40-60% smaller. Perfect for archiving your vinyl rips or studio masters.
You’re publishing a podcast. Most platforms want MP3 or AAC. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, they all accept both. AAC sounds slightly better at the same bitrate, but MP3 has wider compatibility with older podcast apps.
You’re building a game or open-source project. OGG is royalty-free and well-supported in game engines like Unity and Godot. No licensing headaches.
One thing to keep in mind: converting from a lossy format (MP3, OGG, AAC) to a lossless one (WAV, FLAC) won’t restore quality that’s already gone. It preserves what’s there, but it can’t magically bring back frequencies that were stripped during the original compression.
If you specifically need to reduce file size by lowering the bitrate, the Audio Compressor gives you that control. Need to trim the file before converting? The Audio Trimmer handles that.
FAQ
Which format should I default to? MP3 for sharing, WAV for editing, FLAC for archiving, AAC for Apple stuff, OGG for open-source projects.
Is there a file size limit? Up to 100 MB, which covers most songs, podcast episodes, and recordings.
Does conversion lose quality? Going to a lossy format (MP3, OGG, AAC) means some quality reduction. Going to a lossless format (WAV, FLAC) preserves whatever quality the source had. Going lossy-to-lossy (like MP3 to OGG) adds a small amount of degradation each time.
Can I convert video files here? Nope, this is audio-to-audio only. For pulling audio out of a video, use the Extract Audio from Video tool.
Is my file stored on the server? No. Processed and returned, then deleted.