Convert any audio or video to WAV

Bit depth, sample rate and channels

Bit depth is how finely each sample is measured.

• 16-bit is CD quality, plenty for finished music and speech.
• 24-bit leaves headroom for recording and mixing, and is what studios and video editors usually exchange.
• 32-bit float is for heavy processing in an audio program: peaks pushed past the ceiling during editing are kept rather than clipped. Octoolo offers it for WAV only.

Left at As it is, a 24-bit FLAC or ALAC stays 24-bit, a 32-bit float WAV stays float, and everything else, MP3 and AAC included, becomes 16-bit, which holds all they contain.

Sample rate is how many samples are taken each second: 48 kHz for video, 44.1 kHz for music, and 32, 22.05 or 16 kHz for speech systems and small files. Lossless sources keep higher rates such as 96 kHz unless you pick one. Channels can stay as they are or become stereo or mono, and a 5.1 soundtrack stays six channels in the WAV unless you choose stereo.

Who asks for WAV, and what to give them

These are common requests, not rules: when someone hands you a spec, follow it. Octoolo's lowest WAV sample rate is 16 kHz, so a phone system that insists on 8 kHz files needs another tool. And a higher setting than the source never adds quality, only size: a 16 kHz voice memo saved at 48 kHz sounds exactly as it did.

How big WAV files get, and RF64

A classic WAV file cannot be larger than 4 GB, because its header has no room to describe more. At 48 kHz, 24-bit stereo, that is a little over four hours. Octoolo writes anything longer as RF64 on its own, the extended WAV that broadcast and pro audio programs read, so a long recording is never cut short. Some older programs cannot open RF64, though. If yours is one of them, keep the long recording as FLAC instead: it is lossless, about half the size, and has no 4 GB limit.

From videos and other formats to WAV

The sound of a video often has to go into an audio program on its own: dialogue for cleanup, a concert for mastering, a lecture for a transcription service. Drop the MP4, MOV, MKV or other video files in and choose WAV. Octoolo writes out their sound in full and leaves the picture behind, using each video's first sound track.

The same window takes every other source too, and the common routes each have a page: MP3 to WAV, M4A to WAV, FLAC to WAV, OGG to WAV and MP4 to WAV. Going the other way, a finished WAV gets much smaller as MP3, M4A or FLAC, and only FLAC keeps every sample exactly.