Live
Video → Audio
Extract the MP3 from a video
Audio Converter
LiveConvert an audio file between MP3, M4A, OGG, Opus, WAV and FLAC. Every converter hands back a file; this one also tells you which of five things happened to your sound, including when the answer is that nothing was re-encoded at all.
What it does
- Six formats, four of them with three quality levels
- Says whether your file was copied untouched or compressed a second time
- Titles, artist tags and the software that made the file are left behind
Your files
Gone within the hour.
Files are uploaded over HTTPS, used only to run this tool, and deleted from our server automatically about an hour later. Never sold, never used to train anything.
How to convert an audio file
Add one audio file
Drop it on the box or click to browse. One file at a time, up to 50 MB and up to 60 minutes. MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG, Opus, AIFF, WMA, WavPack and Monkey's Audio are all accepted. This tool is for audio files: if what you have is a video and you want the sound out of it, use Video to Audio, which is built for that question and answers it properly.
Choose the format you want
MP3 plays on everything. M4A sounds better at the same size. Opus is the most efficient of the lossy four and the best choice for speech. WAV and FLAC are lossless, WAV uncompressed and FLAC about half that size for identical sound.
Choose a quality level, if one applies
Higher quality, Standard and Smaller file set the bitrate, and the exact numbers change with the format: MP3 offers 320, 192 and 128 kbps, while Opus offers 192, 128 and 96 because it needs fewer bits for the same result. WAV and FLAC have no bitrate to choose, so the setting disappears when you pick one.
Press Convert, then read what it says
The result screen names which of five things happened: copied across untouched, converted with no loss, compressed for the first time, compressed a second time, or made larger without gaining anything. Then download the file. It is deleted from our server about an hour later.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert M4A to MP3?
Drop the M4A in above, leave the format on MP3, pick a quality level and press Convert. It is worth knowing what that particular conversion costs, and this tool says so on the result screen rather than leaving you to guess: M4A and MP3 are both lossy, so converting between them is a second pass of throwing sound away over audio that had already lost some. Nothing is recovered and a little more is lost. It is the most commonly requested conversion there is and it usually sounds fine, but if you still have the original recording, convert from that instead.
Will converting my audio lose quality?
It depends entirely on which two formats are involved, which is why the result screen tells you rather than the page promising. There are five cases. If your file already holds exactly the audio the chosen format wants, nothing is decoded at all and the sound is bit-identical. Lossless to lossless, such as FLAC to WAV, changes the bytes and not the sound. Lossless to lossy, such as WAV to MP3, throws some detail away for the first time, which is the normal cost and the reason the file shrinks. Lossy to lossy does it a second time. Lossy to lossless recovers nothing and only makes the file bigger.
Why did my MP3 to MP3 conversion finish instantly?
Because there was nothing to re-encode. If the file already carries exactly the codec the target format uses, the encoded audio is moved into the new container without being decoded, which takes about a second and leaves the samples bit-identical. Asking for MP3 with an MP3 in hand costs you nothing and loses you nothing, and the result screen says so plainly instead of implying work was done.
Does converting to WAV or FLAC improve my MP3?
No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding about audio formats. A lossless format preserves whatever it is given perfectly, so converting an MP3 to WAV or FLAC preserves the damage perfectly too. What you get is a file several times larger containing exactly the sound the MP3 already had. It is occasionally what an editing program wants, which is why the option exists, but it is never an upgrade, and the result screen says so when this is what happened.
What are the limits?
One file per conversion, up to 50 MB and up to 60 minutes long, with a 250 MB ceiling on the result. That last one bites mainly on WAV, which is uncompressed and runs to roughly 10 MB a minute: a long recording converted to WAV is refused before any work starts rather than after a long wait, because the size of PCM can be worked out from the length in advance. There is no daily allowance on this tool and no account.
What happens to my file afterwards?
It is uploaded over HTTPS, converted on our server, and then both your upload and the result are deleted. The retention window is an hour from when the job was created and a sweep runs every ten minutes, so nothing lives longer than about seventy minutes. One more thing travels nowhere at all: the title, artist, album art and the name of whatever software made the file are dropped during conversion, so only the sound comes back. If a file is small and private enough that you would rather it never left your machine, that is an honest reason not to use this tool.