But WAV has better quality. While a three-minute song would average 30MB in WAV or AIFF format, that same song converted to MP3 would take up a tenth of the space—only around 3MB. With .wav files, you are essentially getting a raw bitstream representation of the audio signal in digital form. The MP3 file format was first released in 1993 by the Moving Pictures Experts Group, who at the time were most famous for the MPEG video file format. You May Also Like. Technically .wav is just a container format and can hold various types of compressed or uncompressed audio, but typically you'll see it containing LPCM uncompressed audio (the same as on audio CDs). At 320kbps, most people will find it impossible to tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD. It is one of a kind file format that is widely used on various devices and platforms. Calculates the size of audio files (both uncompressed, PCM/IEEE FP audio, such as “.WAV”, “.W64” “.AIFF/.AIF” and also compressed files such as MP3, WMA, AAC and OGG Vorbis), according to the recording duration and file settings you choose. So, as for WAV vs MP3 size, the WAV file is larger than the MP3 file. The size of a WAV file is related to its length, even silences will be decoded to WAV while FLAC recognizes a period of silence. Both use the same type of encoding that results in a relatively large file size, but a maintaining a higher quality sound than mp3 m4a or other smaller files. It truly means that FLAC -> WAV -> FLAC, repeated infinitely would ultimately yield the exact same bit pattern in the WAV file at the end as it would anywhere in the middle and ultimately the same as the initial WAV file that the initial FLAC was made from (ie, the source CD). The follower is designed to replace the latter, with advantages like higher quality, low bitrates and file size, which is also alleged by many people. The size of a WAV file is related to its length, even silences will be decoded to WAV while FLAC recognizes a period of silence.

For example, the WAV file is about 10 MB per minute, while it will compress an audio file a factor of 10 – 12 after converting to MP3 format. If one takes MP3 -> WAV -> MP3, this second MP3 will sound worse. The WAV and AIFF files turned out to be the exact same size.

With the boom of internet file-sharing in the mid-90s, people quickly realized sending uncompressed files over dial-up connections was impractical—and oftentimes impossible.

MP3 highest quality is 320kbps constant bit rate, whereas lossless AIFF or WAV is minimum 1411kbps. Wave is an uncompressed or lossless format, whereas MP3 is compressed or lossy. When we want to digitise an analogue audio signal, we feed the analogue signal through a digital-to-analogue convrter (DAC). For example, on the internet, or in an email. FLAC is an open-source file format which offers true-CD quality rips at half the size. Related: AAC vs MP3, Top free MP3 download sites, MP4 vs MP3. Here are some file size calculations for common PCM audio settings. However, since these original WAV files are devoid of any sort of compression you will find that one minute of music will result in a file that is about 10 MB in size. Uncompressed audio formats like WAV and AIFF provide gorgeous sound quality, but at the cost of high file size. Take a further look. To compare audio format file sizes, I first recorded one minute of music to a stereo 24-bit/96kHz WAV using Magix Sound Forge Pro 3 software. I then used Magix Convrt to batch convert the file to all the other formats. The important thing to remember here is that this is a specific way to make the music file smaller while retaining much of the quality of the original CD or WAV file. File size is also identical. As for WAV vs MP3, we have compared the lossy compression and file size. There are quite a few other combinations of bits per sample and samples per second which may be used. PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation and commonly uses the file extensions .wav or .cda. With compression algorithms that were capable of achieving impressively small file sizes, MP3 became a staple of the internet era and has maintained its strong position to date. A minute of WAV audio (stereo, 16 bit, 44.1 kHz) will take up approximately 10 MB, about 11 times the size of 128 k/bit MP3.

If file size is a big consideration — as it was when the MP3 became popular — you can get away with as low as 128kbps before sound degradation … This file format is famous and known as MP3 file format with an extension of .mp3. Since WAV isn’t compressed, one WAV file will be significantly larger than FLAC.