What is a WAV file?

The short answer

A WAV file stores sound as a long list of samples with no compression. Each sample is a number that describes the sound at one instant. Because nothing is thrown away, a WAV can hold a recording exactly as it was captured.

The numbers that describe a WAV

• Sample rate: how many samples per second. CD audio uses 44,100 per second (44.1 kHz). Video often uses 48 kHz.
• Bit depth: how finely each sample is measured. 16-bit is CD quality. 24-bit gives more headroom when recording and mixing.
• Channels: one for mono, two for stereo.

How big is a WAV?

The size follows directly from those numbers. CD quality (44.1 kHz, 16-bit, stereo) is about 10 MB per minute. Mono halves that. 24-bit makes it 50% larger.

A standard WAV file cannot be larger than 4 GB, which is about six and a half hours at CD quality.

What WAV is good for

• Recording, editing and mixing, because editing does not lose quality.
• Sampling and sound design, because software reads it without decoding.
• Handing audio to someone who will keep working on it.

When to choose something else

WAV files are large. For listening, sharing and storage, a compressed format such as MP3 or AAC is usually the better choice. If you want smaller files with no loss at all, FLAC compresses audio without discarding anything.