Convert WAV to MP3 — From Studio Export to Shareable File

Not really, once it is an MP3. The extra bit depth in a 24-bit WAV gives you more headroom during mixing and mastering, but MP3 encoding compresses the final output the same way regardless. A well-mastered 16-bit WAV and a 24-bit WAV will produce nearly identical MP3 files at the same bitrate. The advantage of 24-bit is in the studio, not in the MP3 output.

You do not need to dither before converting WAV to MP3. Dithering matters when you are reducing bit depth for a final lossless master — like going from 24-bit to 16-bit WAV for a CD. The MP3 encoder applies its own psychoacoustic compression that makes dithering artifacts irrelevant. Just export your WAV and convert it directly.

Go with 320 kbps. Labels and A&R reps listen on decent headphones and studio monitors, so you want your demo sounding as close to the original WAV as possible. A 320 kbps MP3 of a four-minute track is only about 10 MB — small enough to email, polished enough to impress. Some people use 192 kbps for rough ideas, but for a proper submission, 320 is the standard.

Yes. If you exported individual stems from your DAW — drums, bass, vocals, guitar — as separate WAV files, you can drag them all into the converter at once. Each WAV gets converted to its own MP3 file, keeping the original filenames. You can download them individually or as a ZIP.

Pro Tools sometimes exports WAV files in the Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) or RF64 format, which adds extra metadata chunks that some converters do not understand. If you are running into issues, try re-exporting from Pro Tools with the "Interleaved" option selected and the format set to standard WAV. Most of the time the converter handles BWF just fine, but edge cases exist with unusual channel configurations.

Yes. If your WAV file is called "rough-mix-v3.wav", the converter will output "rough-mix-v3.mp3". The filename carries over so you can keep your file organization intact, especially when batch converting multiple tracks.

CBR (constant bitrate) gives every second of audio the same amount of data, which makes the file size predictable. VBR (variable bitrate) allocates more data to complex passages and less to simple ones, so you get better quality at a smaller average file size. For music, VBR usually wins on quality-per-megabyte. For podcast hosting or streaming platforms that expect consistent bitrates, CBR is safer.

Yes. The converter runs on your device, so there is no server-imposed time limit. A two-hour WAV file will take a bit longer to process — maybe 30 seconds to a minute depending on your hardware — but it will convert just fine. For audiobooks, 128 kbps is a perfectly good bitrate since it is spoken word.

MP3 encoding works in frames of 1,152 samples, and the encoder sometimes adds a tiny amount of padding at the beginning or end of the file. This can make the MP3 a fraction of a second longer or shorter than the WAV. For practical purposes the difference is inaudible — it only matters if you are trying to sync the MP3 with video or other tracks down to the sample.

For a portfolio or demo reel on a website, 192 kbps is a great choice. It sounds excellent to anyone listening through normal speakers or headphones, and the smaller file size means your web pages load faster. Save 320 kbps for direct submissions where sound quality is being judged critically. For a website where visitors are streaming tracks in a browser, 192 kbps hits the right balance.