HexaConverter
mp3wav

Convert MP3 to WAV

Free online converter for MP3 files. Uncompressed PCM audio for editing and mastering. Nothing to install, no watermark, and every file is deleted automatically.

Drag and drop your files

or

Upload a MP3 file to convert it to WAV. Up to 3 files at once, 100 MB each.

Free · up to 3 files · 100 MB each · files deleted automatically after 1 hour.

About MP3 and WAV

MP3 .mp3

The format that made digital music portable. Lossy, thirty years old, and still the safest choice when you have no idea what will play the file.

Good for

  • Plays on essentially every device ever made
  • Small files at listenable quality
  • Patents long expired, so support is everywhere

Trade-offs

  • Lossy — detail is gone permanently
  • Beaten by AAC and Opus at the same bitrate
  • No transparency about what was discarded

audio/mpeg

WAV .wav

Raw uncompressed audio samples in a thin container. Exactly what came off the recorder, at roughly 10 MB per minute of stereo CD-quality sound.

Good for

  • Bit-for-bit perfect — nothing is discarded
  • No decoding overhead, so editors handle it fastest
  • The standard working format for recording and editing

Trade-offs

  • Very large — around 10 MB per minute
  • No built-in tags for artist or album
  • Impractical for distribution or streaming

audio/wav

MP3 and WAV side by side

MP3 compared with WAV
MP3WAV
CompressionLossyUncompressed PCM
Typically used forMusic, podcasts, anything that must simply playRecording, editing, mastering

What changes when you convert MP3 to WAV

This is a re-encode, not a repackage

Some tools can move a stream into a different container untouched when the codecs happen to line up. We do not — every job here is decoded and encoded again, so the conversion takes time in proportion to the length of the file and costs a small amount of quality even where a repackage would have been possible. In exchange the output is predictable: it plays everywhere, rather than inheriting whatever the source happened to contain.

What your WAV will contain

The output is 16-bit PCM — as uncompressed 16-bit PCM, the format CDs use. There is no quality setting because nothing is being decided: every sample is stored literally. Expect around 10 MB per minute of stereo audio, which is the price of a format that every editor and every piece of hardware will open.

Quality cannot come back

MP3 already discarded detail permanently, and WAV stores exactly what it is given. The result will be considerably larger while sounding identical to the MP3 you started from — lossless preserves, it does not restore. That is still the right move if you are about to edit, because further saves will not degrade it again.

Tags may not survive intact

MP3 stores its metadata as ID3, and WAV uses RIFF INFO chunks, which many players ignore entirely. Standard fields such as title, artist and album normally map across. Anything without an equivalent on the other side — unusual custom fields, some ratings and play counts, occasionally embedded artwork — has nowhere to go. Check the tags before deleting the original if your library depends on them.

MP3 to WAV questions