I used to be able to save little 2 second long sound clips in .wav format and they'd only take up about 30kbs. But now when I go to save, 2 second clips are always 300kbs! That's a big increase! I tried choosing "Other Uncompressed Files" and picking "Unsigned 8-bit PCM" from the options when exporting, the lowest it'll go down to is 155kbs.
Please help!
How to export smaller sized .wavs?
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This forum is for Audacity on Windows.Please state which version of Windows you are using,
and the exact three-section version number of Audacity from "Help menu > About Audacity".
Audacity 1.2.x and 1.3.x are obsolete and no longer supported. If you still have those versions, please upgrade at https://www.audacityteam.org/download/.
The old forums for those versions are now closed, but you can still read the archives of the 1.2.x and 1.3.x forums.
Re: How to export smaller sized .wavs?
WAV format is an "uncompressed" PCM file format.
The file size in "bits" can be calculated like this:
"duration (seconds)" x "number of channels" x "bits per sample" x "samples per second".
To convert to "bytes" divide the result by 8.
So for example:
3 seconds for a mono track (1 channel) 16 bit at 11 kHz:
3 x 1 x 16 x 11000 = 528000 bits = 66000 bytes or about 64.5 kB.
3 seconds for a mono track (1 channel) 8 bit at 8 kHz:
3 x 1 x 8 x 8000 = 192000 bits = 24000 bytes or about 23.4 kB
Note that the sound quality of an 8 bit format 8kHz sample rate WAV file is rubbish. That's why compressed audio formats such as MP3 and OGG were invented.
3 seconds of reasonable quality mono speech in MP3 format can be under 10 kB (try 24 kbps Constant Bit Rate).
The file size in "bits" can be calculated like this:
"duration (seconds)" x "number of channels" x "bits per sample" x "samples per second".
To convert to "bytes" divide the result by 8.
So for example:
3 seconds for a mono track (1 channel) 16 bit at 11 kHz:
3 x 1 x 16 x 11000 = 528000 bits = 66000 bytes or about 64.5 kB.
3 seconds for a mono track (1 channel) 8 bit at 8 kHz:
3 x 1 x 8 x 8000 = 192000 bits = 24000 bytes or about 23.4 kB
Note that the sound quality of an 8 bit format 8kHz sample rate WAV file is rubbish. That's why compressed audio formats such as MP3 and OGG were invented.
3 seconds of reasonable quality mono speech in MP3 format can be under 10 kB (try 24 kbps Constant Bit Rate).
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