MP3 vs WAV
WAV is the raw recording — perfect and enormous, about 10 MB a minute. MP3 throws away what most people cannot hear and lands around a tenth of that. Work in WAV, deliver in MP3.
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Choose MP3 when
- Sharing, uploading, podcasts, and anything going on a phone.
- Long recordings where the size of WAV becomes unmanageable.
Choose WAV when
- Recording and editing, where you do not want to lose anything yet.
- Handing audio to someone who will process it further.
- Short samples and anything destined for mastering.
What MP3 actually is
MP3 discards the parts of a sound that psychoacoustic models say you are least likely to hear, then compresses the rest. It was the format that made digital music portable, and while newer codecs beat it at every bitrate, nothing matches its compatibility.
Converting an MP3 to another lossy format compounds the damage, because the second encoder is guessing at audio the first one already threw away.
What WAV actually is
A WAV file normally holds uncompressed samples exactly as they were recorded: about 10 MB per minute of CD-quality stereo. There is no decoding step, no quality loss, and no ambiguity, which is why it is the working format in recording and editing.
Converting an MP3 to WAV makes the file ten times larger without recovering anything. The detail the MP3 discarded is gone.
MP3 and WAV side by side
| MP3 | WAV | |
|---|---|---|
| Extension | .mp3 | .wav |
| Media type | audio/mpeg | audio/wav |
| Compression | Lossless | Lossless |
| Transparency | No | No |
| Animation | No | No |
| Quality setting | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| We can write it | Yes | Yes |
Questions
Does converting MP3 to WAV restore the quality?
No. It makes a perfect, very large copy of a file that has already lost detail. The only reason to do it is software that will not read MP3.
What bitrate should I use for MP3?
192 kbps is transparent for most listening; 320 kbps if you want headroom. Below 128 kbps the artefacts start to be audible on cymbals and voices.