Convert WAV to M4A

About WAV and M4A

WAV is uncompressed PCM audio — the raw samples with a small header. It is the standard interchange format for recording, sampling and production work, at the cost of roughly 10 MB per minute of stereo.

M4A is AAC audio in an MP4 container — the default format of the Apple ecosystem and most streaming services. AAC compresses more efficiently than MP3, so the same bitrate sounds a little better.

Converting WAV to M4A is lossy. 192 kbps is transparent for most listeners on most material; pick 320 kbps for the ceiling, or drop lower when small files matter more than fidelity.

How the conversion works

This tool runs FFmpeg — the same engine behind most media software — compiled to WebAssembly, entirely in the browser. The file is read locally, converted locally and saved straight from memory; nothing is ever uploaded, which also means no queues and no server-side file size limits.

The converter itself is a one-time ~31 MB download on the first conversion, cached by the browser afterwards. Once it is loaded, everything works offline.